Over the weekend God showed me that I had not fully surrendered myself when it came to dealing with my anxiety! All this time I thought I was truly free, I thought anxiety was a thing of the past! Technically it was as I hadn’t suffered with it for so long that I fooled myself into thinking I was truly over it, but the catch was I was still heavily relying on medication for it! before we go forward let me take you back to 2018.
Its important for you to know that I had no history of anxiety or depression before 2018, I didn’t even know what anxiety was until then, anxiety wasn’t something really talked about, it’s one of those things that people seem to suffer with privately. I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and like a child of hard hearing I ignored doctors advise to use medication, in my defence I had tried some medication back in 2015 when I was first diagnosed, but I had an extreme reaction to it that resulted in me going to A&E with symptoms that were similar to someone going into cardiac arrest (oh the drama of it all!) So after being told to try something else I am sure you can understand why I was reluctant to and decided I would try to manage it myself! Well clearly I failed because by 2018 I found myself back in A&E, same symptoms as before but with blood pressure so high I was told I could have a stroke at any moment! To top it off on that same trip to A&E after having the routine blood test that they give you, when my results came back I was told they had found what looked like a blood clot on my lung!(again, the drama of it all!) After having a scan, being prodded and mishandled by the NHS, and having to inject myself with blood thinners for 3 days, when I received the results of my scan it came back as normal. It was at this point anxiety reared its ugly head! The fear of “what if…” started to set in, I remember my biggest question about my health being “if I don’t have a blood clot, what was up with my first results that said I did??” then it morphed into “I must have something wrong with me, it’s just not a blood clot!” I spiralled out of control at that point, and after numerous visits to my doctor who at the time was THE WORST, I was dismissed and told I was fine without further investigation. I fell in to a dark place from that point, every time I had a palpitation it set me into a panic! I remember one week being in A&E three times because of panic attacks! I was scared to sleep because I feared I wouldn’t wake up, it got so bad that I needed my mum to stay with me because I couldn’t sleep in bed alone. My doctor ended up signing me off work for two months because I was mentally unfit for duty! That’s how bad it got.
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It was at my next doctors appointment that I was offered anti-depressants, now I knew enough to know I didn’t want to take them, as I heard they could be quite addictive, plus I knew I wasn’t depressed! I was just sure I was dying (so dramatic lol) I remember after that appointment I was convinced it was my GP surgery that was the true villain of my story so I found a new practice and spoke to someone new. At this point the severity of my anxiety had reduced where I could sleep alone and was ready to return to normality, even though I was still easily triggered! I remember going to the cinema with friends one night and having a complete meltdown at the start of the movie because it was so loud it caused my seat to vibrate and that, for some unknown reason triggered my anxiety! The only way I could sit through it was to put my headphones in my ears to reduce the sound, after that I didn’t go to the cinema for a very long time out of fear! My new doctor suggested medication I could take that would help to prevent the physical symptoms I was experiencing, since I was assured they would have no affect on my mood, I started to take them! They worked, they reduced some of my physical symptoms so I was able to get a better control of my anxiety. But it never left, I still suffered, I was still triggered, and sleep became a myth because I still carried this fear of dying in my sleep. I just accepted that this was my life now, and I would just have to get used to it! PROVERB 12:25 “ANXIETY IN A PERSON’S HEART WEIGHS IT DOWN, BUT A GOOD WORD CHEERS IT UP.” My anxiety began to control me, I always had to consider my anxiety when doing anything social, I missed out on a lot of things because the fear of “what if…” I just wasn’t the same person! Now let me just say it’s normal to experience anxiety, Life can be like that, but it is not meant to control you!
When I first came to Christ in 2019 I was still sure anxiety was gonna be apart of my life! I was getting to know God and as I got to know Him, TRUST began to build (like it does in any good relationship!) Fear causes us to doubt, and that has been the enemies tactic since Eve in the garden of Eden! 2 TIMOTHY 1 “FOR GOD GAVE US A SPIRIT NOT OF FEAR BUT OF POWER AND LOVE AND SELF-CONTROL.” This verse is what put things in to perspective for me on my journey! I realised that if I was calling myself a child of God, there was no way I should be letting anxiety control me, because what was really going on was that I had allowed the enemy to control me! That scared me but it was the scare I needed to realise I couldn’t have this bondage over me anymore! The enemy might have had control before, but now because of the mighty name of JESUS I had the authority to get rid of that spirit! I had to really start getting into my bible, I had to start a spiritual discipline for myself to get into the habit of reading everyday, and it wasn’t anything major to begin with, it could of been a chapter a day, but I was making the effort to feed myself spiritually, just like you feed your body daily to survive we must also feed our spirits daily to survive, because after all we are in a spiritual battle! JESUS said “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from God.” (Matthew 4:4) If we are honest there are a lot of mal-nourished Christians out here, and that’s not a judgment but an observation, even I could do better in that department!
I started to notice that my anxiety started to lessen, we went from being best friends, joint at the hip, to friends that got together occasionally for a life catch up and gossip. The more I began to TRUST and BELIEVE in Him, the more I discovered my identity in Christ and what that meant for my life, I started to sleep easier, and before I knew it six months had passed without a whisper from my old pal anxiety! Death was no longer a concern for me, because I had a greater understanding of what eternity meant for me now I was a believer! JAMES 4:7 “SUBMIT YOURSELVES THEREFORE TO GOD. RESIST THE DEVIL, AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU.” That’s exactly what happened! It’s really that simple but we tend to make it much harder than it need be.
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Now lets fast forward to present day, like I said before I haven’t suffered with anxiety for a long time, and that’s saying something considering we all just experienced and are still experiencing the most trying time of our generation! This has anxiety alert written all over it! Yet I have not folded, not even once. My mind has been the most sound and at peace considering I have had to go out everyday to work consistently while a potentially fatal virus rages around me, and it’s because of this I know God orchestrated everything leading up to this pandemic because honestly I don’t know how I would have managed if I was still bound! He called me when He did because He knew I would need Him now the most! I say thank you, and thank you some more to Him daily! During my claim to freedom, God showed me that my faith was not complete! Well this whole time I had still been taking my anxiety medication, to be clear I take multiple medications for various things because I am literally falling apart lol So it’s become a habit to pop my pills without thought. I order my meds online because that’s the “thing” these days, and because I take so many I have a repeat prescription. Now please tell me why, of all times my meds were delayed?! Causing me to run out and be without! And please tell me why the only medication I ran out of was my anxiety pills!?! Bare in mind I receive the same amount of meds each delivery, so the fact that I don’t have these particular pills gave me the “Ah hah!” moment, a revelation that I still had trust issues! The Holy Spirit revealed that I had a little more work to do in that department! JAMES 2:22 “YOU SEE, HIS FAITH AND HIS ACTIONS WORKED TOGETHER. HIS ACTIONS MADE HIS FAITH COMPLETE.” This verse refers to Abraham being shown to be right with God because he offered his son to be sacrificed, trusting in God fully, a true act of faith! As I lay in bed feeling the stress of the unknown start to build in my chest, I broke down into tears at the realisation that I wasn’t truly free because my actions were not in line with my claim to faith! But I knew deep down in my heart that I was gonna be ok because I knew that God was testing me, He was asking me to truly let go and trust him! And after a tearful and heart felt prayer after reading that James verse, I some how let it all go! Its been a week without any anxiety pills, “we did it Joe!” (insert Kamala Harris meme here)
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I know now that I didn’t need them, I was hanging onto them like a “break in case of emergency” safety net! But it was all in my sub conscious, because honestly it didn’t register that I was still relying on them! This is why we have the best helper, the Holy Spirit! My heart is in the process of restoration, it is hard, it is making me truly deal with my traumas and I am receiving healing! It is difficult but remember the things that are best for us tend to be. What I was reminded of was faith = action! We can’t claim to believe in God and his promise for us, but we still hold on to fears, we let these fears control us, letting these fears cause us to doubt our Father who doesn’t lie! Now we start to second guess and start trusting in our own feelings, rather than the Word of God! Remember in my previous post I mentioned how our feelings were not facts and how we can’t always trust our hearts, as the bible refers to our hearts as deceitful! Remember faith is acting like God is telling the truth, so take a moment, do a heart check, and ask yourself these important questions, do you live like you believe God is telling the truth? Do your feet move in sync with your faith? This walk with God is impossible without true faith! Our Father is reliable! Our Father is faithful! Our Father is trustworthy! And most of all our Father LOVES us! So whatever you are holding on to, let it go today! It will be the best thing you ever do!
MY CONVICTIONS 