Reaching Out- a Personal Story
By Cara Croft
Have you ever had an anxiety attack? Moments of your heart pounding so hard you wonder if it is going to jump through your chest. Moments your chest feels so tight it is impossible to take a deep breath. Moments of insane thoughts that feel inescapable. Moments where you know you want to escape but you are not sure exactly what you are trying to get away from, all you know is you HAVE to get away. That was my morning yesterday. At one point, I ended up in a building sitting on the stairs, frozen. I could not go up the stairs, I could not go down the stairs. I just sat there, trying to breathe, trying to figure out what was going on. Yet the more I tried to take a deep breath, the harder my heart pounded, and the more scattered my thoughts became. It was not pretty. In fact, I felt really embarrassed and ashamed to find myself in that place.
It had been a hard week. It had been a week of caring for people who are suffering. It had been a week of helping my teenagers deal with living in a really broken world. It had been a week of facing people I care about breaking down physically, mentally and emotionally. It had been a week where the needs of everyone around me exceeded my own strength and ability. It had been a week of trying to be strong for everyone else and forgetting that I have my own limitations. Sitting on those steps I contemplated dark thoughts, ways of escape. That was when I knew I needed help.
Some people may read this with a hundred scriptures to give me that I should have been meditating on. Some people will read this and question my beliefs, my prayer life, my faith. Sure, it is true, my faith is weak. “Lord I believe, help my unbelief”. That is my cry, but it is not new to me (Mark 9:24). I had prayed all week. I had groaned and cried to God all week. I had spent time trying to convince the doubting part of myself that God was truly for me, not against me. Saturday it all crumbled. So, I sought the help of a friend. Someone who knows me, knows my story, knows my suffering. I was directed back to God, but only after a validation of my pain. I was reminded the punishment I once had to endure was not from the hands of a loving God but from the hands of sinful people. Jesus stepped in my place to receive my punishment and I no longer have to live in fear that God is after me to punish me. My friend did not tell me anything new about God I did not already know. Just a gentle reminder of what is true. My friend helped me untangle knots that had wound so tightly around my chest. My friend gave me a safe space to grieve the suffering I had been trying to carry all week. As I sat no longer on the steps but in a safe chair, my body finally began to calm down. But the calmer my body became the harder I cried. I cried until there was finally a stillness to my body that I had not experienced for weeks.
I share this for a few reasons. First, if this resonates with something you have experienced, you are not alone! There are many of us who battle depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues. We cannot live in a broken world and watch the suffering of so many without it impacting us. And this world is full of suffering, it is all around us, it is inside of us, it is unescapable. Second, I share this for those of you trying to help others who have these experiences. So often we want to give a solution, an answer, a scripture to fix what appears to be a lack of faith. Certainly, I needed to be reminded of what was true, my friend did that. But I could never have heard it in the state I was in. What I needed was a calming presence. A person who was not as anxious as I was about what I was experiencing. The time my friend took was the reminder: I was seen, I was valuable, and I was worth sitting with until we could find the stable ground of God’s presence together. It was not fast work, but it was life altering for me.
Finally, I share this as a reminder that we cannot do this life alone. There are times and moments when we have to share the weight of what is happening. There are times when we can no longer talk ourselves down from the ledge we are standing on. Those moments we must do the brave work of reaching out for help. I was terrified to reach out to my friend, and that is not an exaggeration. Yet, it was the best decision I made yesterday. Please seek help, you are worth it!