A lesson in anxiety.
Anxiety.
Even just typing the word makes me feel all the things that the word itself means: I can feel my heart rate coming up, my breathing quicken, my jaw tightening…sometimes it’s from a thought that brings me fear or worry, and sometimes it’s from nothing at all, but either way, I’m well accustomed to the physical response that anxiety provokes. I’ve been in a season of high anxiety for a few weeks now. I wish I could say that I wasn’t and that ever since the moment I decided to follow Jesus, I have had total, complete trust in The Lord, His plans for me and my family, and that I look to the future with open hands and a heart full of peace and joy knowing that God is already there and everything is okay…but the reality is, that’s not where I’m at today.
Looking back on my younger years, I can clearly see how I’ve wrestled with anxiety all of my life, particularly in the health department. I remember being 11 or 12 years old and noticing a small bump on the back of my neck and asking my mom if she thought it could be cancer. Talk about a worrier! Most kids at that age are thinking about what snack they are going to have next or what game they are going to play with their friends. Not me, I worried. I worried to the point where I had severe stomach aches and went in for multiple CT scans only to determine that nothing was actually wrong with me. But that didn’t stop me from worrying. I was still convinced that something was wrong with me and everyone had just missed it.
Turns out that bump was only a swollen lymph node from having had a cold and it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, but I had immediately jumped to the worst case scenario in my mind. As I have grown, seen more of the world, and my responsibilities have increased, so has my fear. Six years of alcoholism in my home expedited the process, but the conditions for anxiety to thrive were already there. I’ve never been very adept at dealing with stress, and I have come to learn that anxiety presents itself in many different ways, but a consistent one that shows up in my life is control. When I’m in fear, the more I try to control all the things that make me feel afraid and all the variables around me, so I can protect myself from possible threats. But control is such an elusive concept. We can convince ourselves that we feel safe when we feel in control, and then something can shatter that illusion and we realize we never actually had as much control as we thought we did. I can’t control what happens to my kids when they are away from me; if they are safe, if they make friends, if they get their feelings hurt, all of it is beyond what I have power over as a human being. As much as I want to protect them from every bad thing in life, I just can’t. Neither can I control what my husband or people around me may or may not do any more than I can control whether I will feel anxious again.
But here’s what I do know: anxiety is not always a bad thing.
For most of my life I have subconsciously categorized things all day long in my head as either “good” or “bad”. I don’t always realize I am doing it, but I am constantly analyzing things in my world and thoughts in my head to put them into one of those two categories. What I have found though is that more often than not, the category that I should be putting things into is one of “it is what it is.” A lot of times, what I have initially viewed as bad, isn’t actually bad, it just is what it is.
Recently, I had to have some dental work done suddenly after it was discovered that a few of my bottom teeth were exhibiting signs of internal resorption. If you are like me, you may have never heard of this term before, so what do you do when you don’t know something? Well, you go to trusty ‘ol Google to figure out what in the heck it is, read about all the terrible things on the internet and finally put your phone down only when you feel sick to your stomach and your heart is pounding in your chest. (No? Just me?) Now, I have to go to get a more in-depth evaluation of these teeth from an endodontist. I go to the referral appointment thinking that the worst case scenario will be 2 root canals - which seemed scary at the time because I had never had one - instead, this endodontist sits me down and proceeds to tell me that four of my bottom front teeth are showing signs of resorption and they need to be extracted. “The tooth has turned on itself,” he said, “there’s nothing we can do when this happens.” What? I had just had my six month dental cleaning two days prior and they didn't say anything to me remotely to this degree. How could this have happened? How could this have been prevented? I am immediately jumping to all of the things I should have done differently, oscillating between blaming myself and blaming my dentist for not seeing it sooner on my last exams. I sunk deep into fear, anxiety and sadness at this news. It was a lot to process when I thought I would only be going in for an evaluation. Through my sobs, I could hear them continuing to explain to me the process that would occur to receive dental implants, all of the steps required and healing time, but I was only halfway there, the rest of me was going over every detail of my life and every mistake I could have made that lead me to this moment. I blamed myself for having anxiety, I blamed myself for having tmj as a result of anxiety, I blamed myself for that one time I forgot to wear my night guard and my teeth probably shifted. I went over and over all of it in my head unable to process how someone who took such good care of their teeth and never missed a dental appointment could have received this kind of news. I had done everything right! I had controlled all of the variables that would cause this kind of thing to happen. All except one…anxiety. So that’s where I landed. It was because of anxiety, I thought, and if I could just stop being anxious, my teeth wouldn’t be suffering as a result.
I had tried my best to protect myself from any “bad news” by doing everything right, but it wasn’t enough, I thought. I had failed.
This is the before x-ray of my bottom front teeth with the permanent retainer still attached. On the left three teeth you can see the gray area of inflammation where the resorption has started in the root of the tooth.
That night was a rough one. My teeth were all I could think about. I kept replaying the conversation in that dental office over and over and imagining myself looking into the mirror and missing my bottom front teeth and I would start to sob all over again. A while back, for about an entire year, I would have this dream where I woke up and looked in the mirror and my teeth were either jagged or crooked or missing…and I would always wake up and feel relieved that it was just a dream, but this time it was like my worst nightmares were coming true. I tossed and turned all night thinking about it, feeling on the verge of a panic attack.
The next morning, through red puffy eyes, I managed to get myself and the kids dressed and we headed out the door to their pediatrician appointments. I knew they were both going to have to get their annual flu shots at this appointment but I chose not to tell them because I knew if they knew about it in advance they would worry. Especially Holly. Hunter bravely stepped up first to get his and then it was Holly’s turn. As she is walking up to the table I can see her fear of needles taking over; she’s wide eyed, breathing shallowly and looks visibly nervous. I take her hands and squeeze them gently as she leans back on the table to lay down. I’m holding her hands in mine to her chest and telling her it’s going to be okay, but I can see her fear is gripping her and she’s trying to look around our joined hands and down at her leg where the needle is going to go. She’s watching and waiting for the nurse to get ready and trying to squirm in a way where she can see the thing she is most afraid of. I know what she’s thinking. I know that she believes that if she can see it, maybe she won’t be as afraid. But I know this isn’t true. When you are afraid of needles, watching a needle go into your body doesn’t make it hurt any less. I would argue that it could actually increase your level of pain because now your brain is interpreting what it sees and what it feels simultaneously instead of only feeling it momentarily and that image will linger far longer than the sensation. While she is trying to watch and brace herself for the pain, I’m trying to calm her by reminding her to look at me and keep her eyes on me and not on the things she’s afraid of. I’m letting her know that I am right there with her, she doesn’t have to face this fear alone, it’ll be over in the blink of an eye and she will be okay.
September 2021. Holly, age 7.
As we left that appointment, the Holy Spirit whispered something to me. He told me that this is what God is like as my Father. That image of me holding my daughter’s hands, my heart hurting knowing that she is in so much fear, but asking her to trust me and that I would be right there with her as she faced her fears, is what God has been wanting to show me through this season of anxiety. He hasn’t withheld anything from me because he wanted to be cruel, just as I didn’t withhold the fact that Holly would need a flu shot at her appointment. I didn’t tell her because I wanted to blindside her later on or see how she handled that information to “test” her. No. I didn’t tell her because I knew it was going to happen regardless, and me telling her about it 1 hour before or 1 minute before was the difference in her state of mind now and the peace and joy she would be robbed of if I told her too far in advance. I had made the mistake before of telling her ahead of time thinking that if I gave her more time to prepare, she wouldn’t be scared any more when the time came, but what I found was that the more time she had to think about it, the more afraid she became. Anxiety can be like that for me. When I ruminate and obsess over a thought or an event, trying to “prepare” myself for it, that thought loops over and over in my overactive mind and it becomes scarier each time. The longer I have to think about the things that make me afraid, the more time I have to think about the things that can go wrong and all of the possible scenarios that I have to mentally prepare for. My imagined reality now becomes my actual reality in my head and it can overwhelm me with worry and panic. But God already knows all of this. He already knows that I am afraid of tragedy striking, of being unable to protect myself or those I love, and that living in this broken world can be really scary. He has also promised to never leave us or forsake us while we are here. (Psalm 23, Psalm 56, Psalm 91, Isaiah 43, Deuteronomy 31)
When I think about my fears, whether it be health related or fears of death, grief and loss, it can feel very heavy. It can feel so heavy to look out into the world and see so much brokenness all around us. I open my eyes in the morning, take my phone off of the charger, turn off my alarm and often I am greeted with some tragic news article about something terrible that has happened while I slept. It’s all around us. No wonder so many of us are anxious! The world may not be any more broken than in previous generations, but now we have instant knowledge of it because of immediate access to news and information, even when we don’t go searching for it.
The same day that my kids had their flu shots, I had an appointment that afternoon to get a second opinion about my teeth. The night before I had gone out on a hopeful limb and Googled a few endodontics practices near me and left some tearful voicemails explaining my situation and in the hopes that one would call me back. The first place had called me back bright and early that next morning and said they could squeeze me in that afternoon. I was eager to take it. I did not want to wait any longer, but I also knew that if they told me the same thing that I might be crushed twice and I didn’t know if my anxious heart could handle it. I prayed and prayed. I cried. I journaled. I asked friends to pray and I cried some more. I was feeling a little more encouraged however, now, after leaving this pediatrician appointment and having such a clear vision of what God is like and how He cares for me, so I dropped Holly off at school and headed to the second appointment. I asked God to send me to people who could show compassion and gentleness, and I prayed that if they also told me the same thing, that I’d be able to handle it and that He would give me strength and courage.
We do more x-rays, scans, and tests, and the endodontist comes in. I can see that he is smiling behind his mask and glasses and he asks me how i’m doing in a friendly and genuine tone. His calming presence soothes my racing heart slightly and I relay to him what the previous endodontist had told me the day before. He looks at my x-rays again and tells me how surprised and baffled he is as to why someone would want to take my teeth out. I feel a sense of huge relief. But anxiety quickly says to me: How could two medical professionals have such different views? And now, how do I know who to trust? Which one of them is wrong? Surely they can’t be seeing the same thing. Maybe this guy missed something. Yep. I’ll bet he’s going to keep scrolling down my chart and change his mind any minute now, he’ll give me the same diagnosis as before and that relief I felt a moment ago will all be shattered once again by devastation and heartbreak. Anxiety is a ruthless b**** if you ask me.
But he doesn’t change his mind.
He explains to me that he does see the areas of resorption, but it’s very mild, only ranking about a 1-2 on a scale of 10 and it’s very treatable. He continues to tell me that he sees cases much, much worse than this on a daily basis and he’s still been able to save those teeth! Cue the tears. Again. Only this time they came from relief and hope. He pulled up a chair and I asked him about 85 questions. He answered every one. And with every answered question I felt an answer to my prayers. Every time I would ask him the question “so…is that bad?” he would reply “it’s neither, it’s just different.” That was the first time I began to realize how often I categorize my own thoughts as either good or bad. Most of the time my brain immediately categorizes things I can’t comprehend as bad, and labels it with a big red X. Then, before I know it, I have 25 red X’s in my brain that are all sounding alarms and flashing lights to alert me that something is wrong and needs my attention and then guess what? I feel overwhelmed and anxious.
We made a plan for my teeth and he told me that the best option for me would be to do root canals on the teeth to stop the process of resorption and save the teeth while it’s still early. So that’s what we decided to do. It’s been about a month since we started this process and we have now fully finished two of the four teeth and things are going very smoothly so far. He even told me he’s going to use this photo of my teeth in a presentation he will give because it is a “textbook perfect” tooth. Ha! What a perspective shift this has all given me.
This is the after x-ray of 2 of the 4 completed root canal teeth filled with a special florescent filling and sealed with a dental core. (My endodontist was particularly proud of how symmetrical and uniform they turned out. It sounds very hard to do, especially when it’s only a few millimeters wide! *Claps*)
Throughout the last several weeks, God has shown me so much compassion through a journey that has been tough for me, and through that compassion I have felt from Him, I have in turn been able to show it to myself. I am so grateful for that image that He gave me that day with my daughter, for that reminder of how He sees me as His own daughter. He loves me more than I love my own daughter, and He knows me intimately and intricately. He knows what I need, what I love, what I’m afraid of. He doesn’t like to see me in fear and anxiety any more than I like to see my own kids struggle with it. He wants me to be healthy, just like I want my kids to be healthy, and sometimes that means enduring a little bit of pain in order to achieve that. It was painful for Holly to get a shot that day, but in doing so, she’s now protected from something that could be really dangerous for her. It’s painful to be in anxiety; it feels incredibly fragile and vulnerable. He doesn’t want me to stay there, He wants me to be healthy mentally physically and emotionally, but the road there is sometimes one of pain and confusion learning to trust that which I cannot see or control. I can’t snap my fingers and tell my kids to stop being afraid, it doesn’t happen that way. It happens slowly, over time, by asking them to trust me and each time they do, I prove to them that I am trustworthy and they prove to themselves that they can face their fears and make it to the other side. Unlike me however, God doesn't make mistakes, and He knows exactly how everything unfolds and He’s there to guide and lead us through the twists and turns on this road called Life.
My sister sent me this quote and I love it. And who better to trust than God. Our Father, our Creator, the Maker of our Universe and everything and everyone in it. The One who was there before the foundation of the world, the One who sent His only Son that I might have eternal life, the One who knows every detail of everything before it has even happened, and the One who loves me more than I can even comprehend. It might not always be easy to trust, but it truly is the only remedy I have found.
