Dear Younger Me: You Need To Know This About Anxiety

You’ve heard of it. It might even hide in your closet. Or perhaps it greets you in your glory moments, on the days you just want to claim victory, but it begs you to believe that you do not deserve to win. 

The culprit: Anxiety. 

 

You’ve heard about it. You battle it. It probably affects you or someone you love in some way, somehow.

 

Perhaps it’s taken up residence in your heart for way too long, and you feel as though you are just now getting a good grip on it. Maybe it’s moved in as a new neighbor of your mind that you just haven’t quite gotten the chance to figure out.

 

Anxiety - I have known it for far too long.

 

When I beg it to leave, it digs its roots a little deeper. When I push it out, it demands that it will stay. I have stopped trying to erase something that is apart of me to only realize that it cannot be demolished. You cannot erase the valleys of your heart.

 

I didn’t know exactly what these valleys were when I was younger.  

 

When I was in middle school, my oldest sister had just moved off to college. I spent many comforting nights knowing that she slept right across the hall from me, so the first few weeks and months that she was gone, I remember lying in bed, unable to sleep for hours. Her room was empty and the lamp was off.

 

No matter how much I begged the feelings to go away, my mind could not get past the change that had occurred.

 

The hardest part in all of that was trying to accept that change, but being unable to call the feelings what they were. I missed her, and I knew that what I was going through was hard; I was empty and didn’t know why I couldn’t simply push those feelings out of my mind.

 

I tried to look forward to having my family all together again, but all that I seemed to be able to focus on was the emptiness I felt in my stomach. It was as though

 

I could not look forward to what was to come for fear of the good that my family was leaving behind. Anxiety.

 

Transitions have never been easy for me, and I struggled with that the most when I first started to realize my anxiety.

 

My family would go to Wilmington often to visit my sister at school and take her to dinner. I specifically remember one evening, sitting in Outback Steakhouse in the waiting area, and suffocating under the weight of my anxiety. We were all together again, but my mind was ravaged with how life would only continue to change from that point forward. I often think back to this experience as one of the very first times that anxiety reared its ugly head.

 

As we sat, and we waited, anxiety silently crept in to steal the good in spending time with my whole family all at once.

 

I didn’t know what it was then -- I did not understand that while I really missed her, my mind and soul were struggling with what the beast was.

 

The hardest part in growing up with anxiety has been accepting that as I grow, anxiety grows too. As I reach milestones and my life changes, anxiety changes, too. It digs a little deeper and tries so hard to take the reins of my heart.

 

“But, as anxiety grows, Christ grows too. Faith gets bigger. ”

I had a hard time after my sister left. I tried to suppress my anxiety with straightening my hair, dating, and friendship. As I grow older, I try to suppress my anxiety with many of the same things as my younger self.

 

I have a great boyfriend, but no matter how much he loves me, he cannot fill me with the same kind of love that The Lord can. I love my dog to pieces, but no matter how excited he gets when I walk through the door, it does not compare to the love that The Lord looks down upon me with.  

 

“As clearly as I can remember my first ugly confrontation with anxiety, I can also remember the day I rose out of the water, committed to living the Christ-life, and when you life the Christ-life, you do not have to fight anxiety alone.”

I’m going to say that again. When you live the Christ-life, you don’t have to fight anxiety alone.

 

Praise God.

 

The more that I ground myself in worldly things, even wonderful worldly things that serve a pure and healthy purpose, the deeper my anxiety gets, and while it may temporarily make me feel better to surround myself with the ways of this world, there is no refuge like the refuge that I find in Christ.

 

There is no love like His.

 

I can search all my days for a cure to anxiety. I can search all my life for a solution to my anxious thoughts and feelings. But, the beautiful truth is this: There is no more searching when I take it to The Lord. He takes my every worry and fear and calms me to my core. That is a love that I will never find here on this earth.

 

So, while I wish I could go back and tell the younger me that I was in for the long haul, and that I would only refuge The Lord, I know that I wouldn’t be half the woman I am today if I had started this race with that mindset.

 

The Lord knew that I needed to start this race when I was a younger me so that I would one day be able to understand just how much I need Him because while I thought I needed Him then, nothing compares to growing older and realizing just how much of this life I cannot do alone.

 

If I could go back and tell the younger me something about anxiety it would be this: Stop trying to figure it out -- anxiety is too complex. It’s not your fault. Give it to God. He is constant and full of grace. The refuge that you think you will find in the ways of this world will never, ever, ever compare to the comfort of the Lord.

 

Dear younger me, you will live each day with the beast, but nothing can compare to the power of the Lord. Give up control.

 

Take it to Him.

With love,

Brittany Jeanine