I was sitting in a hard plastic chair about halfway back in the room. Cold grey cinder block walls surrounded me and seemed to close in. I tried to take a deep breath, but I couldn’t suck in the air.

My chest was heaving and my breaths were shallow. I started to feel dizzy. The tiny life inside of me was tumbling and kicking. “I’ve got to get out of here, NOW!” I thought.

As I stood up I could hear the instructor go on about the parts of a bone from a skeleton: the head, the neck, the shaft, the attachment sites. “Too much, I already know this stuff. I can’t handle this right now.” I repeated over in my head.

I came to a stand and excused myself past three cohort students and walked to the front of the classroom past the instructor to the door, steadying myself with my hand on the end of each grey table.

“Maybe, if I just get out into the hallway…” I had to hold onto the wall to support myself as I walked towards the bathroom. The hallway was quiet and cool, but it felt warmer, more comforting, than the cold grey I had just left.

I put my hand up to cradle my protruding belly. “Three months to go, little one.” I smiled at the thought of welcoming my third child soon. Anything to help take my mind off of the panic welling up in me. I don’t know where it came from.

Panic welled up in me

I kept thinking that since running cold water over my wrists helped with the constant nausea, maybe it would help calm me down. It didn’t.

I don’t know how long I was in the bathroom. I wasn’t feeling any better. My tight chest and shallow breathing made me feel even more dizzy.

“I need help,” I called out weakly. No one could hear me behind the heavy wood door.

Slowly I made my feet move, shuffling them back out into the hallway. “Surely class would have a break soon,” I thought.

I pressed my back against the wall just outside the door and looked to my left down the hall towards the room with my classmates. My legs began to give out so I just let myself slide down to the floor andI sat with them in a V in front of me for support. I was breathing faster now. My fingers were getting tingly, and my lips. I felt cold and hot at the same time.

My eyelids were so heavy, and I just wanted to sleep on the ground. I started to lean to one side. From down the hallway I could hear alarm in someone’s voice. Immediately I was surrounded by concerned friends.

“What happened? Are you OK? Can you hear me?” The questions flew, but I couldn’t answer. So sleepy.

“Stay with me sweetie,” someone said. Someone else called an ambulance and then my husband. “She’s six months pregnant.” I heard from far away.

Crisis. I was in crisis and I didn’t even know why. It came out of nowhere, most likely from stress. I just wanted to reach out and hold onto something and breathe deep. A vacation would’ve been good, but all my worries would have followed me anywhere I chose to go.

You can’t outrun worry

I was in the middle of the last semester of training to become a massage therapist. I was big with pregnancy and tired all the time with a kindergartner and a toddler. We had just got some bad news and everything seemed to crash down all at once.

I was trying to hold everything together; my studies, a normal routine for my boys, being a comfort to my husband through a difficult time. It was too much for one person to do alone. At the time, that’s what I felt, a sense of loneliness. I was with people all the time, but I was lonely.

I was with people all the time, but I was lonely

My mind was working overtime, generating questions I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t ask them out loud. I shoved them down and kept on going, doing what I needed to do. But we aren’t built like that. We weren’t meant to hold everything in. We weren’t formed to carry burdens on our own.

“Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

– Matthew 11:28-30 ESV

Jesus takes our burdens off of our shoulders and puts on a yoke of purpose and perspective.

A Yoke of Purpose and Perspective is light enough to carry

For the next few months the frequency of my panic attacks worsened. In one day I counted eighteen in four hours. I couldn’t identify triggers, it didn’t matter where I was, what I had to eat or who I was with, they just happened. The first one was different though, it was the worst of them all. I couldn’t breathe!

“Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

– 1 Peter 5:7 NIV

Anxiety and worry and panic cuts off our air supply. It chokes out the feeling of support and love. It makes you feel alone. It separates where we were meant to be attached. It cleaves where we were meant to cling. It divides where we were meant to adhere.

Anxiety, Worry, Panic, they cut off your air supply

“That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you.”

– Galatians 5:8 NIV

In the E.R. my closest triangle of support was with me. They held my hand, made light jokes, and comforted me, then they prayed with me. And finally, with the breathe of God invited into a curtained room, I could breathe.

“Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.”

– Philippians 4:6 MSG (emphasis mine)

 

PHOTO CREDIT:  Petals on flickr by ~Aphrodite; Seedlings on flickr by Jutta Schnecke