Fear & Anxiety
My heart starts pounding and I cannot breathe, and nothing is actually happening. It feels like my body is turning on me. What do I do with that?
“And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.”
Elijah had just won the most public victory of his life, and days later he was lying under a tree in the wilderness asking God to let him die. God's first response was not correction or a vision. It was sleep, food, and a second meal brought by an angel who said the journey was too much for him. Scripture treats a body at the end of itself as something to be fed, not scolded.
“And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.”
Mark writes for a church under real pressure, and he keeps this detail: the disciples, several of them experienced fishermen, were genuinely terrified in that boat. They did not pray a composed prayer. They shouted at Jesus for not caring that they were about to die. He answered the storm rather than shaming them for panicking in it. Your fear does not have to be reasonable before you are allowed to bring it to him.
A path forward
When it starts, say one short line of prayer out loud, something as small as 'Lord, I am here and you are here.' Praying aloud gives your breathing something slow to do and gives the panic somewhere to go.
Book an appointment with your doctor and describe exactly what happens in your body. Panic is a medical event as well as a spiritual one, and getting it named by a professional is not a failure of faith.
Tell one person in your life what these episodes actually look like, so that the next time one hits you are not also carrying the work of hiding it.
Closing verse
“From the end of the earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is overwhelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
- Psalm 61:2
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