Freedom From Anxiety: Autumn's Faith Journey- Part 5
Hi friends! Today is part 5 of Autumn’s faith journey. It is a glimpse into how the past can haunt us, even at times when we are seeking the Lord. As we continue to read her story, I believe it provides a rich foundation for us to understand how much God will redeem in her life. Enjoy!
After that day at church, I avoided Logan for a few days. Eventually we began hanging out again. I started doing the same old habits with Logan that I had done in my past relationship with Adam. I would buy Logan things to show my love. I would take him out, buy him food, and never let him pay for anything. This time around I was more torn because money had become my security. I was working hard to increase how much I had. When I saw my savings account drop thousands of dollars, I was anxious that I was falling into old patterns. Regardless, I still wanted to buy him stuff to make him feel loved.
During that time I became religious and legalistic in how I approached my faith. I had to read my Bible every day even though I didn’t understand it. Logan and I would spend the day doing devotionals, reading the Bible, and then listening to worship music. I began sacrificing all my time, my money, and my family again. I was never home. I believed I had to be with him to show him that I loved him. I worried that if I wasn’t around him then I might lose him.
Soon the accusations that Adam would use over me became my accusations to Logan. Even when I did it, I wondered what was wrong with me. How I could be so broken? What happened to me that my mind couldn’t be normal? It made me very anxious. Every bad memory I had with Adam was showing up. Part of the reason was because the links to my past had not been broken. The past was not my past.
Although I had not talked to Adam in a long time, his mom was still in contact with me. She would text me to see what was going on. I had so much guilt that I did not restore Adam that I would also check in to see how he was doing. Fixing someone had become part of my self-worth. The fact that Adam was not well made me feel even more broken. Everything was still so raw, and it created anxiety in my relationship with Logan. I would torment myself thinking, “I didn’t help Adam. I didn’t fix him and now I’m sitting here with another man. If I am so broken, then why am I dating someone?”
Every time I talked to Adam’s mom it would give me panic attacks. One day, Logan and I were sitting out in the church parking lot after service. I was hyperventilating and crying in the car. It happened again. Adam’s mom had texted me but this time she said, “Hey what’s going on with you and Adam? I haven’t seen you around lately.” I replied, “I can’t do this anymore.” I believed she would understand; however, she responded, “What do you mean? You’re not going to marry him?”
I did not understand how she would even have the concept that I would marry him. I had not even seen him in months. Every time, his mom kept trying to pull me back in. She knew that Adam and I never had a healthy relationship. I had essentially been a caretaker for him. Her messages made me feel so bad. I would panic and think, “I didn’t help him. I didn’t fix him. Who am I to abandon him?” I wondered how I could be a Christian if I could not love her son as Jesus loved me. I did not love him romantically, but I wondered why couldn’t I have loved Adam enough to fix him?
The messages would continue. Adam’s mom reached out again to tell me that even though I was not with him they still loved me, saw me as a daughter, and still wanted me in their life. She sent me a long text of emotions and feelings about how she was hurt, not by me leaving, but because of what she did to me. I had a panic attack.
Logan was with me when I received the text and he spoke the hard truth into my life. He reminded me that they were not healthy for me. I needed to move forward without them. I resisted at first because for some unknown reason I felt I owed them something; however, with Logan’s support I wrote out a message to send to both Adam’s mom and his sister Brooke. I started crying and hyperventilating when I got to the point where I would have to send the message. What would they think of me? My identity was being rocked. I did not know how to process everything. I finally sent the message. Those were a rough few days, but the ties had finally been cut.
It was during this time that the Lord was using Logan to plant seeds of identity into me. He would read scripture over me, pray for me, and do devotionals about anxiety. The Lord used him as a vessel to speak truth into me. One day Logan encouraged me to attend a young adult’s disciple group that he went to at the church. The first night we ever went there together I had a panic attack in the car. He was already friends with everyone, and I felt pressure being his new girlfriend. I was anxious and told him, “I’m going to go stay in the corner. I’m not talking to anyone.”
That day Tonya, the disciple group leader, wanted everyone to break into a group of two or three and pray out loud over people. I had never said a prayer out loud in my life. The panic was creeping up again. I asked Logan if we could please leave, but he didn’t know how to react since he did not realize how deep the panic was. He tried to reassure me and said, “You’re fine. It’s okay, calm down.” I replied, “No bro, I’m not fine. I think I’m about to pass out.”
Luckily when they put us in groups I was with Logan and another guy, which made me somewhat comfortable. I was sweating and shaking while I was praying. In the midst of the anxiety I wondered, “Lord, what is happening right now? I thought I was free from this. It’s been a while since I’ve panicked like this. Why am I having it again?”
As I continued meeting Logan’s friends, I knew I came off as standoffish. I didn’t feel comfortable because I didn’t know how to talk to people without having a panic attack. I would pinch my arm, to the point of bruising myself, or dig my nails into his arm to try to cope. As a result, we would hang out with each other and not with his friends. This caused tension where his friends began to question why I was more important than they were. They were hurt because they had known him for years. Knowing this only fed into this cycle of my anxiety.
I began to believe that Logan’s friends had a bad image of who I was. As a result, anytime I saw them I would mentally hope that they would not say anything to us or come up to us. If I saw them, I was so scared that I would often pull Logan to walk the other way. I could only imagine what they thought. I assumed they believed I was controlling and not allowing him to hang out with them. Little did they know that I would have liked to get to know them, but I did not know how to handle my social anxiety.
That’s where some of my faith got rocked. I wondered, “If God’s not changing anything, did I actually surrender?” I was so confused to the point that I would ask Logan almost weekly how I would know for sure that I gave my life to Christ.
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