On a Friday, the 18th of April 2015, I was at breaking point. I could not eat, I was fidgety, my heart was racing in my chest and paranoia clouded my mind. I almost threw up multiple times. The anxiety that I thought I had somewhat defeated, reared its ugly head unexpectedly.
I was down with other's from my church to attend C3's Presence conference and was enjoying it up to that point, but I was distracted. This was unlike any other time I had been anxious. I was on the verge of throwing up and I could not tell you why. Sure, there were little things that made me mildly anxious, but the control I had up to that point seemed to all but disappear. I had anxieties coming at me from all angles and was losing control, the realisation of which amplified it exponentially.
So I tried to escape; I tried to run. I grabbed my things and as I was doing so my brother's wife asked where I was going. I wanted to tell the truth; I wanted to cry out for help. I quietly, barely holding myself together, told her that my anxiousness was making me feel like I was going to throw up and I needed to go. She, seemingly taken aback by my honesty, nodded. I moved through the rows and exited the building, feeling it lessen slightly, but knowing I would face it again once I got alone. I was halfway down the street when my phone received a text from my brother asking if I wanted prayer instead of leaving. I promptly walked back knowing that that was the only thing that could save me from this. My brother was up the stairs with his wife and one of my mates as I walked in.
They were looking for me and turned to walk away. I called out to them and they turned around. My mate asked if I was okay and I let out a laboured 'Nup'. They got me to sit down and they started praying for me. Almost immediately I began to weep. I felt all the grief of my anxiety bubble up and overflow. I wept so bitterly that my eyes, my nose and my mouth all dripped. I wept so loudly that I was running out of breath. My body was bent over as it all poured out. As the prayer went on I began to cry out to Jesus through the mess of my tears. All this happened as the sound of worship music thundered through the walls.
There seemed to be no end to the grief. It poured out as if it had been filling up for a lifetime. Then I heard a whisper within me. 'It's not your fault,' it said. It continued to repeat, 'it's not your fault.' The Holy Spirit was ministering to me in that moment. Eventually my pastor came and took me for a walk to talk about what I was going through. We talked about a lot of stuff, and I am now stronger for that experience with a better understanding of myself, my motivations and needs. With hindsight, what was broken that day was a fear. A fear of never being good enough.
I do wonder though, what if I had walked away? What if I had continued to the station, got on that train and gone back to my grandparents? What if I never addressed it?
Any person that looks at this situation could say that I would simply implode. That is probably true. There is a deeper question within this, like why do we try to keep up appearances and at times refuse to reach out to God or people? Pride is too simple an answer. I believe sometimes we try all we can to be responsible for ourselves; sometimes even over our own punishment. Like somehow forcing ourselves to endure further pain is a great recompense for our failures and perfect partner for our apologies. God is not into punishment as much as you think. If He cared so much to punish us, He never would have sent His son Jesus to stand in our place and take the wrath that we deserved.
We cannot fix ourselves; though we try to resist the things that God wants to deal with. Sometimes entering the wound in which our pain resides is the scariest thing imaginable, but it is necessary. My weeping was an incredibly painful process, but I am now free because of it. Our resistance to God's prompting can be so strong that he allows us to break in order to save us. God has no problem in bypassing our dignity; often putting us in a position of forced vulnerability in order to deal with what is causing us pain.
We need to accept that we are broken, and need God to take us into places that we don't want to go.
