This past year has been one of transition for me {and one of busyness and chaos…thus the lack of writing}. While different from my move back to the states, this season has the same themes…. transition, moving, grief, changing jobs, changing roles, changing family dynamics, feeling alone, feeling overwhelmed, feeling as if I was living a life I had not really signed up for, feeling like I was drowning in fear. So…I feel like some of what I’ve been living can apply to our discussion of life in re-entry after living overseas.
It’s been over a year since the major events that led to this season, and while there is a sense of a new normal and the initial living in triage mode has subsided, I find myself many days still swimming in fear. Although I’ve never been the athletic girl, if I have to go to the gym I will choose swimming as my choice of workouts. I don’t mind swimming… I actually like it. But swimming in fear is not the fun sort of swimming. Swimming in fear feels more like being in the deep end treading water for a never ending period of time. It’s the feeling like you can’t breath….like it might consume you…like you just want a break somehow…like watching hours of Netflix seems like a really great way to avoid dealing with real life…because with real life you just don’t know where to begin tackling the overwhelming chaos and work to be done.
The strange thing is that while I’ve had the occasional day that the fear feels as if it might eat me alive {the all consuming anxiety kind of fear}, most days, it’s more subtle. In fact I don’t even notice it’s fear that’s the issue. It’s the low grade fear that sits just under the surface. The kind that lets you feel like you are a highly functioning adult, and yet it’s there affecting who you are and what you do. The kind that sucks your energy without you even realizing what’s happened. The fear that manifests in those nagging little internal voices that are always talking to you…and yet life is busy enough you either tell yourself you are ignoring them or find yourself listening without even realizing they were speaking.
The voices of inadequacy…
- “I have no idea what I’m doing…
- “What if I mess this up…
- “What if I do life “wrong”…
- “What if I made a mistake…
- ‘What if I make a decision that will negatively affect others…
- “What if I don’t manage well what’s been entrusted to me…
The voices of fear of the unknown…
- “What if it’s like this forever…
- “What if life is this hard for a while…
- “What if life never stops hurting this much…
The voices of fear of rejection…
- What if people don’t like me anymore…
- What if people don’t like the way I’m trying to lead…
- What if my family conflict can’t be overcome…
- What if this feeling of loneliness in a new role lasts forever…
The voices of fear about life’s uncertainties…
- What if something happens to other people who are close to me…
- What if sickness comes into our life again in a new way…
- What if I don’t know what the best choices are to make…and I just have to make a choice….will I later be sorry I chose that direction?
As a new sense of normal has come in these last few months, I still find myself on some days listening to these quiet voices inside my head. Many days the voices are not shouting…rather they are whispering in such a way that if I’m not focusing to hear them they can affect me without me even noticing they are there.
For the last several months, I’ve been asking myself…
Is there life after fear?
Will there be a season of life again where I don’t feel like I’m treading through the unknown an a daily basis and am battling these low grade irrational fears at every turn? Will there be a day when I can figure out again how to trust God in the midst of the unknown or has that ship sailed forever? Someone told me yesterday…you will never really figure out how to fully trust God and yet live authentically in the real world. I can’t decide if that is a voice of wisdom from age and experience or whether or not that is a another voice I should not head.
What is it about these seasons of transition and grief that make the fear battle stronger?
Maybe it’s because in these seasons often times…
We’ve lost our safety net.
We’ve lost our sense of self.
We’ve lost our confidence in the future.
We’ve lost our innocence.
We’ve lost our childlike faith….we feel as if we have to a do a lot more adulting than we signed up for.
We’ve lost our trust…that God is really doing the best for us.
We’ve lost our sense of wonder and adventure.
We feel like we’ll be in this place forever.
We feel like we’re living in a state of exhaustion.
So…maybe the first point of all this is to say: There are reasons why the battle against fear is stronger in these seasons! We can take comfort in that knowing that we are human, and what we are experiencing is not totally unnatural or unexpected. We can also take comfort in the fact that this season too will pass…and perhaps we will find the struggle less acute in the next season.
But what are we to do in the meantime? How do we choose to move forward in the midst of the current season?
I think a common thread through my struggles wrestling with fear both in my season of reentry and in this current season hinges on the word TRUST!
I am struggling to TRUST…
I am struggling to TRUST that God is not holding out on me. That this story He is writing in my life is the best one.
I am struggling to TRUST that pain while it hurts a great deal has a purpose.
I am struggling to TRUST that I am not responsible for making everyone in my life happy.
I am struggling to TRUST that things will work out for the best…
A few years ago a lady who lived overseas for many many years said to me…
….”I have decided that if I believe these four things and filter my life through them then I can make it through anything in life.”
Her four statements were:
God is.
God is good.
God is working.
God is working for me.
And so I find that my battle against fear is a daily battle, but it really becomes a battle to remind myself of these things in ways that are most helpful every day. Because if I can believe these things…not just on a surface level but on an emotional level…than it is so much easier to TRUST…and the fear becomes irrelevant.
My spiritual director used to say… “Do what helps.”
So I find myself in a place where intentionally choosing to do anything and everything that helps to make these above statements more real to me on a daily basis.
Some days that means singing songs that help…from old hymns like Day by Day to the new praise songs like No Longer a Slave to Fear.
Some months that means doing the same Week 1 of “Love: A Guide for Prayer” by Jacqueline Syrup Bergan and Sister Marie Schwan over and over again.
Some days it means intentionally deleting the apps off my phone that create more anxiety about things at my job that I can’t control.
Some weeks it means getting up and going to church…even when I really don’t want to go. My church likes to say they want to be a place where “it’s OK not to have it all together.” Some weeks that means telling myself when I’m not feeling it and I will be late…that it’s OK to go ahead and go and show up late.
Some months it has meant taking a retreat day away to a monastery to just be.
Some days it means choosing to live into the invitation of God for relationship…and not allow my cynicism to win.
Some weeks it means journaling, and being real about life and grief and how things are going.
Some months it means calling up your therapist and saying, OK, new season of chaos in life…maybe we should meet a couple times so we can talk about new coping skills for this season.
Some days it means reading books that are life giving… Henri Nowen. Sensible Shoes, and others…
Some weeks it means intentionally choosing to live in community….so we can experience the love of God through others.
Some months it means remembering back to the ways God has shown up in the past…and brought freedom from fear in other seasons.
Some days it means starting each day saying “God is here with me today” as Dallas Willard likes to talk about.
Some weeks it means being realistic about how overwhelming new roles and responsibilities can feel in life and reminding myself that this season too will pass.
Some months it means honoring my story and trusting that the story God is writing for me is the best thing for me!
It may be that I may never fully find life after fear, but today I read another encouraging quote…
“What we need to fear, then, is only the absence of God in our lives. To the one who has this kind of fear, Jesus says, you are unconditionally accepted.” {sorry, I don’t know who this is by}
Authors Note: This article has been in my drafts folder for a year or so because at the time I was in a season of wrestling, but as we bring this blog to a close I thought I would publish it here for others who might find themselves in a season of wrestling as well.
