Faith and Anxiety

Part of me just likes to write when I don't feel well.

You know how sometimes you go to church and you listen to the sermon and you learn something cool; and then on other days you go to church and you are almost positive that the pastor spent a considerable amount of time stalking you and wrote his sermon based on the things he saw in your life? That's how I felt when I went to church on Sunday.

I haven't really found a home since I moved to Phoenix so I've been church hopping going here and there with whatever friend will let me be a tag along on Sunday morning. The past two Sundays I went to The Vineyard with my friends Federico and last Sunday Alicia, his girlfriend and my friend, was with us too. I've been before but these two times I really learned some cool things that I'm working on applying in my life. I'm a first service kinda girl, it makes a world of difference for me, I hear The Word better.

Back to the story. So I know the Pastor didn't spend the last month of his life stalking me in mine because he was a guest pastor from Michigan. He's wasn't even here in Phoenix long enough stalk me. Otherwise I would have been convinced. The sermon was about calming anxiety with the power of the Lord. He talked about practical ways to calm your heart with prayer. All of us get a little anxious from time to time but some of us suffer from it. I'm a sufferer. I probably should be on some kind of medication but I fear medicating would just make me feel worse so I don't go to the doctor for it. Instead I've developed this long list of coping mechanisms. One thing that wasn't on my list was Jesus. How silly of me. The one thing that should be at the top of every list in my life wasn't on my list of ways to cope with my anxiety. Don't get me wrong I've tried to pray my anxiety away, I've begged on hands and knees to not suffer from anxiety anymore. I've petitioned to God for it to be taken away completely more than a million times I've asked. I've been pray for and prayed over before but it doesn't go away. I thought it did because until this past summer I hadn't had a panic attack due to my anxiety since high school. But alas it doesn't go away, it rests. Like a dormant volcano it rests waiting to be triggered so it can erupt into my life at Universal Studios or some other completely inconvenient place. It just doesn't leave me, it won't leave me, I don't know if it ever will. I desperately wish it would, but Sunday I realized that in the moments that my mind and body lock up from fear I've never asked God to be in it with me. I breathe deeply and concentrate on the rhythm of my every breath, but I don't notice that I'm breathing in The Spirit. I make myself small and think about oceans and I rock as though the waves are causing me to move back and forth, but I don't notice that those are God's waves on His ocean and that he's the one causing me to sway. I don't pick up on the divine all around me. The divine that could calm my heart.


I'm particularly anxious today I don't know what's the source of it and I've never known what sends me from fine to manageable anxiety to full panic but I'll make it through the day walking by faith.

And with prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, the sinner.