Today's Checklist in Hand

I thought about making the to do list last night, and then decided that since I pray "Give us this day our daily bread", I should probably take things one day at a time in both worrying about what I will get as blessings and what I should do. I made the to-do list up after I woke up.

I have now applied to thirteen jobs and have one job interview on Thursday for a part time position. I am hoping that this will amount to something as I am worried that Tim's hours might get cut at any time. Then again, give us this day our daily bread, his hours were not cut *this* week and he is at work currently. I need to try my best to keep things to one day at a time, as hard as that really is.

My anxiety level is up but I am happy to say under control enough that it doesn't need medicine, yet. I am hoping that it stays that way all day. If not, I have to remember that it isn't a failure on my part but merely one of the tools in the tool box God gave me to help me deal with this particular situation as well as my disorder in general.

I am thinking about riding my bike around for exercise. At my previous employer, I would take regular walks with the kids and hardly sat around. I am hoping that some physical exercise outside of the apartment will help my mood. I have already decided that no matter how messy the house is, the windows will be opened daily for as much natural light as I can get. I might feel like life is dark and dank right now, but I don't need my house to fit my mood. God will provide as He has so far and will continue to do so.

The birds are checking on me on a regular basis. I think they can tell when I am all anxious as well. One or two of them check up on me on a fairly regular basis if there is not already one on my computer or on my shoulder. I often wonder how they know these things and then I remember that God uses them too, even if they aren't cognitively doing it. Yet another way that God gives me my daily bread- even if I don't have people calling and checking on me, the birds do and that makes me feel less lonely as well.

Well, one job application down for today already so now the housework and recreation things await. God will provide my daily bread today as well. This I know because He has promised it.

Didn't Check off All the Items

I think the idea of a checklist was a great idea! Unfortunately, I got a little behind when I had to take some anti-anxiety meds to help me make it through the day. I think part of it is that I am more of a target for my own anxiety when I am alone and I can't keep my hubby home to keep my mind off of things. I'll work off of a checklist tomorrow again and keep my original goal of weaning myself off of the anti-anxiety meds. It's not that they are bad for me, it's just that I don't want to go around with cotton on my brain if I don't have to. I would rather be me with no cotton.

I do keep looking forward every day. Perhaps Tim will get a full time call and the push for me getting a job to keep our finances above water won't be such a push like it is now. Perhaps something that I don't even expect will come out of the woodwork. It's not like God reveals His surprises to me- it ruins the gift! :) Anyhow, I think I'll take my sleep medicine and call it a night. Tomorrow's goals include another job application, some housework, and who knows what else. I'll worry about the rest tomorrow.

Today I prayed, "Give us this day our daily bread," and God provided my daily bread. The Lord is a God who fulfills His promises and on Him I lay my cares. He will provide again tomorrow because He promised to do so. I will be at peace, even if my disorder in my sinful flesh won't allow it, I will be in my new self.

Organization for an Anxious Day

Things are not what they should be for me right now. Yeah, there are some good things happening, but there is a very major problem in my life that I will not post on a public forum such as this. Needless to say, it has caused me more anxiety than I care to handle. I am back on my anti-anxiety and sleep medications as well as the regular SSRI. I don't want to be, though. I hate taking them and worse, I hate the fact that I have to take them at all. I seem to be beating myself up over the fact that I could backslide so easily. However, I am not without recourse. I may not be able to control outside circumstances, but I can control some.

I have decided I am going to make myself a "To Do" list today of both things I have to accomplish and things that I want to accomplish. This way I keep organized and don't fret over what I should be doing. These are my goals for today, and God willing, I will complete them and then not feel so horribly out of control for today (with a secondary goal of getting off the anti-anxiety and going down to just the sleep medicine). Wish me luck! I'll let you know how it goes!

Should I Be Afraid?

I have an anxiety disorder. It's something I have lived with my entire life. It's something that I will probably deal with until the day I die. It's part of who I am and I know it's not normal, but I consider it rather normal for my life. I am plagued by fears that most people could brush off without thinking about it, but I can't seem to. I have learned to live with that and accept it. However, I have learned that not everyone is as comfortable with this as I am.

People seem to be scared of the idea of a mental disorder. I am not sure if they are afraid that I will completely lose control and be unable to handle things in life or if they are just afraid of seeing a bit of themselves in me. The unknown is very frightening, especially when it comes to something so dark and mysterious. Afterall, with something like diabetes or cancer, we at least know what causes it and why it happens, and that seems to make it easier for some people to deal with those diseases. Mine isn't so cut and dry. The experts aren't completely sure what causes my problems, nor is it clear why it affects some people and not others.

However, I can assure you that there is nothing to be afraid of with my anxiety. First of all, it's not contagious. You can't catch it from being around me. It's not deadly. I won't fall over dead one day from a panic attack. In fact, I have found that the worst of situations don't even merit an anxiety attack for me- I seem to wait until things are fine before I fall apart. You may not understand it, but I can assure you that I am not all that different from anyone else. I have the same fears and worries, stress and tension, just for whatever reason, my body doesn't handle it quite the way that it should. There are many like me, some diagnosed and some not, who are out there. You have seen them and interacted with them though you might not have known it. It could be your sister, brother, father, mother, best friend, school teacher, or cashier at the grocery store. It doesn't affect just one type of person or race, it's across the board.

Should you be afraid of someone with a mental disorder? Nope. There's nothing to fear. Instead, love, understand, and care for the person. Help if you can and take your cues from them on how to help.

The Evils of Medication

In a perfect world, we would never need anti-anxiety and depression medication. We would be perfectly happy with everything that we were given and every situation that we face. There would be no shame associated with needing the medication nor would there be a feeling of failure if you have to take it. It simply wouldn't exist. Until we reach eternity, that just simply isn't the case. Here in this sinful, fallen world, we need medicine sometimes to help us through our lives. Sometimes things get so overwhelming that assistance is needed.

I always find it ironic that most people are willing to take pain relievers when they have a headache or antacids when they have indigestion, but they are scared to take their anti-anxiety or depression medication when they need it. I haven't been able to decide if it is a fear of the medicine because it's strong enough to need a prescription or if it is a fear of what it stands for. So what does it stand for?

I am a sinner. I am a failure. I cannot control myself on my own, I need something to stabilize me. That is a crippling thing to think that it stands for! It makes one out to be nothing; someone who cannot function without help. It makes it so that we are not self-sufficient and that is something that we do not want to be. On top of it, what will others think of us? Will they think that we are crazy and that we should be avoided? Will I be shunned in society?

Unfortunately, if this is what admitting the disorder and taking the medication entails, many people want nothing of it. They would rather suffer in their own personal hells alone than admit to the problem, and in that they have a prison of their own making, spiritually and socially.

Socially, if you don't have something to stabilize you and you really need it, people are going to shun and avoid you. If you cannot control your temper, your depression, your incessant worry, and the like, people are going to steer clear of you because they don't want to deal with such negativity! They are dealing with enough on their own!!! They don't want to carry your burdens because they are overflowing onto their lives. They will try for a while, but eventually, they just won't be able to keep up with their stuff and yours. Untreated disorders bring exactly what some see medication as bringing: detachment from others. If cognitive behaviour therapy and other natural means control your disease, congrats! For those that it doesn't work for, remember that untreated is so much worse than treated!

Spiritually speaking, it's an even bigger mess. This idea that we can do it on our own without any help can spill over into our life with God as well. After all, if you think you can beat your disorder on your own, you might very well start to think that you can beat your sin on your own, too. All of the diseases on earth have one common root: sin. This root means that no matter how much we try to prolong or improve life, the wages of sin is death and that means disease as well, including depression and anxiety. It has many varieties, but the cause is all the same and we know that we cannot defeat sin on our own. If we could, there would be no need for Christ. Christ, who felt everything we felt, including anxiety that caused Him to sweat His blood, was perfect in keeping all the Commandments so that He was given as a perfect sacrifice for the redemption of His people. He did it all for us because we couldn't. Sometimes that's how God works with medication, too. When we are in our depths and cannot help ourselves, God works through means- a tablet or capsule- to alleviate the disorder within it. Spiritually, He gives His body and blood in with and under the bread and wine in Holy Communion as the medicine of immortality, and the medication for our disorders as the specific and temporary balm for our brand of sin.

Do I think medication is evil? Not when you really need it, so don't fear it. Instead, respect it and give glory to God that you have been given a gift by Him to help you work through your disorder.

Stiff Upper Lip

Sometimes the mask is just hard to maintain. It's hard to pretend like everything is okay when you want to cry your eyes out. It's hard to look at the world and smile when on the inside you are a writhing mess. You want to cry out to the world the pain that you feel inside only to know that they either won't care or will turn a deaf ear. Sometimes these moments last for hours and sometimes for days. Sometimes the silence of your own pain is as deafening as a concert at Summerfest. Either way, it is hard to be at home feeling the hurt and the rejection and then walk outside and smile to the rest of the world acting as if there is nothing to care about. It's hard to have the anxiety of a dreaded upcoming moment masked by the proper way to behave in public, that is, act like nothing is the matter. Wouldn't it be easier if we could just fall apart sometimes and let people know how we really feel without the bumpers of society? That sort of raw emotion is especially hard to process when it is a mix of anxiety and anger.

However, as Christians, it is important that we do just that. It is important that we bumper our raw emotions because we don't know how others might take it. In helping rid ourselves of hurt we don't want to hurt others. That is sin. It's not that simple, though, and often we fail. There are times that our emotional outbursts do hurt others and in our expression of raw emotions, we don't always say what we mean. In those times, it is Jesus' forgiveness that covers our failures, our sins. We ask the forgiveness of Christ and others in those moments and work to do better next time.

I haven't had one of those moments recently, but I fear that I will tomorrow. Pray for me that I keep myself in check but also do what needs to be done.

What to Do When You Can't Do Anything Else

I'm an easy one to peg in a tough situation. I am the worrier. I worry about everything. From how people are going to react to the logistics of what the outcome of the situation might be, I worry. I worry about things that never cross most people's minds. Let there be no doubt about this. This type of worry is a sin. What's worse, there seems to be nothing I can do about it. Oh, I can read the self-help books. I can get stubborn and decide it's not going to bother me. I can dig my heels in and use every technique I have learned to help myself get through it. However, when all of these are said and done, they are merely coping strategies. They are things to ease me out of the tangled mess I get myself into internally each time I worry about what is happening in the world around me. The truth is, the moment I worry and take the situation out of God's hands and try to do something about it, even by just worrying about it, I have sinned. It has become second nature to me to do so in every stressful situation. Scratch that, it was first nature to begin with according to my old Adam. I was born this way- blind, dead, and an enemy of God. My worry may be how that particular reality manifests itself, but it is a sin. The wages of sin is death, the Lord says (Romans 6:23).

That seems very accurate for my worry, too. When I get the old anxiety motor revving, I feel rather dead inside. I want to do something to fix that feeling too, but I can't. Again, I can work to overcome it eventually, but at its core when it first starts, I am powerless. It's just there. It's sickening and hard and I can't just wave my hand and make it go away.

That's the start of the blessing about this disease, however. If I could wave my hand and make it go away, I might get cocky about it. I might just think that if I can cure myself of this anxiety, I might be able to do other things, like cure myself of sin. After all, my particular brand of sin, namely anxiety and worry, is still just as sinful as other things that people struggle with in their lives. So, by not being able to cure myself at the root, like I would like to, I have to rely on something outside of myself to make me right inside.

So, off I go to the hospital I go, where I receive the medicine to cure my ailing flesh. It is a weekly thing for me and I cannot even really take credit for going, for if He hadn't called me to be His own, I think I would still be trying to cure my anxiety apart from Him through some other means. The hospital is the Church, where I receive forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. The medicine is the Medicine of Immortality, namely Christ's body and blood, given to me in, with, and under the bread and wine in Holy Communion. I was called by Him in my baptism, where He marked me as His own through ordinary water and the Word of God.

Where I drown in the weight of my sin, including anxiety, God plucks me from the murky waters and crowns me as a princess in His kingdom. He works through things like self- help books, psychologists, medicine, and His pastors to give me a glimpse of what has already happened to me that I cannot fully see yet. The anxiety has already been overcome. I have been made whole again already by Christ's death on the cross. I know it is true and that I will have an anxiety free body and life in heaven because Christ rose from the dead and I, too, shall rise again, and with all the saints, live sin free, anxiety free, and worry free in heaven with my God forever.