looking through me

Tag: anxiety

January 4, 2015

Red Rock Canyon

Too many days the walls inched closer and the oxygen level dropped to the point of fuzzy, frustrated thinking. I couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t face another day of throttling the urge to scream. I couldn’t bear the thought of putting in more hours at work only to have it chase me home and point out all the areas I was struggling to hang on.

There was no fight left in me. So I fled.

I made for the hills. Or at least the rocks. The red ones.

Somehow when life felt like a game of bowling with boulders—and I was one of the pins—escaping up to the desert canyons saved me. The quiet, the stillness, the colors, the sound of pebbles crunching underfoot and my own labored breathing reminded me I was alive. I was more than a job. I was more than failed intentions. I was more than a body going through motions and an internal critic screaming, “I don’t belong here.”

Surrounded by the enormity of nature I could gain perspective. Today would soon be yesterday. These rocks would remain. The frustrations threatening to overwhelm me faded in a landscape subsisting on the scarcest traces of water.

Away from the voices—mostly my own—questioning me, doubting me, demanding of me . . . and away from the Sisyphean tasks of teaching, I could breathe. My eyes could rest on beauty. My body could sweat out the stress and draw in new energy. My ears could hear peace and translate it for my soul.

No problems were solved. No epiphanies manifested before me. No circumstances changed. But the stillest of voices spoke through my senses: “In the refuge of the rock you are no more and no less safe than in the midst of your every day. I will never leave you.”

 

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December 21, 2014

Surgery . . . Psalms

I keep landing in Psalms. I think it’s because people keep going into surgery. Cancer surgery. Heart surgery. Orthopedic surgery. Surgery to fix surgery.

I get antsy. Especially if I’m not at the hospital. I’m calmer if I’m sitting in a waiting room; as if my body and mind understand how to be still and patient because the room is labelled. If I’m not there, I’m a jangle of haywire nerves. I pinball from prayer fragments to overwrought “what ifs” and “why hasn’t anyone called/texted/emailed news yet” . . . even before the surgery starts. My nerves have not learned to tell time.

So I turn to the Psalms. I start with the ones I remember my mom reading to me in the hospital after my appendectomy. It’s one of my clearer post-surgery memories. She brought my dusty rose, bonded leather Student Bible and found Psalms 62 and 63 completely highlighted. She assumed they were favorites. I don’t know if she read them once or twenty times. I don’t know what else she read to me. But those I remember.

I start there. My soul murmurs its assent to the familiar words. David’s poetry becomes my plea. Not because it’s true of me but because, oh, how I want it to be.

In the face of uncertainty I need the imagery of an artist to paint pictures of a mighty God over my fear-laced imaginings of worst case scenarios.

As another operation looms for another one I love my Bible is splayed open. Heart-deep in bedrock truth and prayers for mercy my soul rests in the wisdom of One who loves my people—His people—with a love greater than the greatest art can ever capture.

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