Anxiety with Living

By: Becky Ogle

Anxiety.

Anxiety is one of the many things I struggle with in my life.  Over the course of this blog I am going to be as real and revealing with my life.  Obviously, I don’t have to but I believe in order to start healing, this is what I need to do. 

Anxiety can be crippling but mine isn’t or so I tell myself.  What it did for me was create this environment where I would be able to function but I would constantly be worried something would happen to the people around me.  An example would be having a nightmare about something bad happening to my dad and I would want to puke and cry all at once thinking he was going to die that day.  About a month after my third child was born, there was this voice in my head every single day saying “he isn’t going to be with you forever.  He is going to leave this earth early”.  He is 8.5 now and I still have it pop in my head – like literally just happened today.  That is the perfect example of anxiety causing anxiety.  But I was always able to function and by function, I mean hide everything inside my head.   Putting on a “good” front is easy when people are used to your unique demeanor but like you for your inappropriate humor. 

Anxiety also showed itself by taking away my words.  One of the less common side effects that come with anxiety is the loss of normal everyday words.  So I would know what I wanted to say but my ability to come up with them was malfunctioning or I would end up saying the wrong thing and promptly feel like an idiot.  Do you wonder what happens to a person with anxiety that then feels like an idiot when speaking?  Yep, more anxiety and an increasing anger towards having to be a person affected by this illness.  But how do you direct your anger to an illness?  Not a clue.  I will let you know when I figure it out. 

Something you may not know about me is that I am a Nurse Practitioner.  That means I have a Master’s degree and work independently in a clinic seeing patients and diagnosing them.   That isn’t bragging, it is simply factual for backstory purposes.  Want to know what increases anxiety when people are literally relying on you to “make them better” and you can’t get your words out?   Yeah, more anxiety built.  NO ONE wants to see a provider that can’t get out normal words.   It isn’t that I don’t know the words.  It is simply that my brain is firing so fast that it can’t just narrow down to one or two things.  I assure you that my patients are well taken care of and are always my main priority, hands down.   The truth is, losing my words made my anxiety so severe that I dived deeper into the depression that I have struggled with for most of my life.  I believe I am meant to do this and I am very good at what I do but it is easy to start doubting everything you feel to be true when you aren’t turning to God like He wants us to. 

The verse says “Don’t be anxious about anything”.   That is SO much easier said than done but no direction from God is easy.  Naturally believing that He has a plan and is leading you down the right path as long as you listen to Him is not easy but I believe it could be.  Let’s be real, life isn’t easy.  Failure, learning from the failure, and turning to Him will make it easier.  He NEVER promised an easy, painless, and happy life.  But he gave us a manual on how to help.  Free Will changed everything and He knew that.  He is all knowing, after all.  I have heard the phrase “if life only had a manual” – well I am here to tell you that it does.  The first step is reading it.  Can you put together something from IKEA without their manual?  Kuddos to you if you can but I will tell you that you are a rare breed.  If you don’t have a Bible near you, you can Google “scripture for_____” and it will show you the ones pertaining to that topic. 

I am human.  I don’t read the Bible as I should.  I don’t speak to Him as much as I should anymore.  I don’t trust Him in the storm the way I should.  But the one thing I know is that He loves me anyway.  So, as I struggle and fail regularly, I find that this blog is helping me become more aware of my need to read His word and (as the scripture says) give prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, while I present my requests to God. 

Keep believing you are His and that He loves you without measure.   There is no time you can’t turn to Him.