a pandemic of anxiety

Anxiety has come to live with me in the past month. 

I am used to being able to analyze and articulate what’s brewing emotionally, and I have a decent set of responses to address whatever is going on. I don’t mean avoidance techniques (well, I have those, too), but ways to dig in, get curious, and ride it out. 

My faith plays a huge role in that. Turning to familiar reminders of God’s love and faithfulness bring peace. Singing familiar hymns (“Love That Will Not Let Me Go” is a particular favorite) and praying help me feel rooted and ready to find perspective.

Losing my physical self in activity - through yoga, hiking, or running - helps me open up my heart to hear what God may be saying.

Getting out into creation helps me remember my smallness in a good way. Problems that loom large tend to lose their stature when I can hear ocean waves crashing or gaze on tiny rooftops from a mountain peak. 

I am fortunate to have wonderfully supportive family and friends to process any number of these anxieties and stresses with. 

I have shelves full of books with wisdom - ancient, as well as from new old souls - that guide me through questions and concerns. 

I am accustomed to experiencing anxiety, greeting it, asking it where it came from, picking it up and juggling it around a bit with some combination of the above techniques, and being able to set it down and leave it behind. 

Not so for the past month or so. 

Ever since I realized the small headlines about a frighteningly contagious virus overseas were becoming a horizon we were inevitably headed toward, anxiety has become my companion. 

I have tried everything I know, and it hasn’t worked. 

So on top of the persistent presence of anxiety, I am struggling a bit with guilt and feelings of failure - as a Christian, shouldn't I experience more peace about all of this unknown? 

Shouldn’t my faith equip me to handle this better? 

Can faith and anxiety be companions within my own soul? 

Of course.

Indeed, this is something I’ve often assured others of. I’ve long believed the presence of anxiety is not evidence of a lack of faith or of a somehow faulty faith - laughable, really, all of our faith is faulty. 

No. Anxiety is something our faith may equip us to endure, but faith does not necessarily destroy the experience of anxiety itself. 

Anxiety doesn’t have to have a good reason to be a real experience, but this ambient anxiety many of us are experiencing is rooted in an incredibly valid fear. 

Each day the dark clouds move a bit closer, and we keep watching and waiting. 

Is it here yet? 

In my state, my county, my community, my family?

Every exponential graph suggests it’s near. 

We know that our efforts to social distance and flatten the curve are meant to slow everything down so that our healthcare system can keep up. And I do mean system even though that sounds sterile - 

it’s to give time for equipment like ventilators to be used by many more patients, 

it’s to give time so more masks and gloves can be made available. 

And of course, the crucial part of that system is the amazing humans who need rest - physical and emotional - and who need time to learn more and more about this novel enemy.

Slowing it down is crucial, and good. And it might mean that the stormcloud on the horizon loses some of its fervor before it arrives. 

Maybe. It’s worth the effort, that maybe is worth every effort.

And also, it prolongs the amount of time that anxiety is my guest. 

I am learning that this anxiety is here to stay and won’t pack up and leave until “coronavirus” leaves every headline and hospital. 

The struggle now is to alleviate the impact the anxiety has on me, my loved ones, and my habits - as in, I don’t want to let anxiety to become a habit.

The energy I give my anxiety can feel very productive, which is a short-term relief in this new world of learning how to work from home. The shift to new work space has brought with it endless questions about work expectations and has terribly upset any sense of competence and certainty. Every task feels new and takes at least seven times longer to accomplish than before, and I find that even after I spend more time devoted to work, I’m completed very little. 

And if I’m being really honest, another old tool I used to bring to battle against anxiety was completed to do lists - oh, hello feelings of inadequacy, look what I’ve accomplished today! 

With my professional identity faltering, I’m even more susceptible when anxiety whispers false promises of feeling productive after it has stolen my energy. 

Realizing that anxiety is my new companion, I remembered “the Guest House” from Rumi:

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

These beautiful, wise words remind me that I don’t have control over who shows up in my house. 

But I can control what I do with their presence.

I can greet anxiety at the door each morning, even laughing. 

I think that’s ok. 

I feel a bit guilty for it when I think of the suffering worldwide, but I think those who are in the midst of suffering might want the rest of us to go on laughing. 

Maybe those who can’t laugh today need us to laugh for them. 

Laugh, or sing, or dance - whatever shows our joy that another day has arrived.

Another day has arrived and brought with it house guests, some who I’m glad for, and others who I never want to see again. 

But I’m a Southern woman and we’re nothing if not hospitable, and I have to wonder how hospitality might change my anxiety. I wonder if it’s something like heaping hot coals on the head of my enemy if I ask anxiety sweetly how long they want to stay, and are they here for coffee or mimosas or both? 

I cannot control the presence of anxiety and that realization was giving me even more frustration, anger and fear. 

But I can think about my anxiety as something that is here for now and will leave later - not a permanent part of me, but a thing I’m experiencing for now. 

I can say: hello, good morning anxiety, I see that you have once again brought me reminders of how to pray: for the recovery of the sick, for the strength and protection of the many essential workers, for the protection of my loved ones. 

I see that you are here to remind me to call my grandmothers and friends - you are here to remind me we all need to connect, in whatever ways we can right now, and while I might think I am reaching out to them, what I need is to hear their voice. 

I see that you are here to remind me that there is really something terrible looming out there, something I personally cannot control. But I can control my behavior: 

I can stay home. I can encourage others to do the same. 

I can limit my interaction with the news and choose good sources and share those good sources and refuse to participate in fear-mongering. 

I can stare this situation in the face, recognize that much of it is beyond my grasp, both in terms of controlling it and also understanding it. 

I can recognize its presence and then say: ok. Here you are. I do not welcome you but I wonder what I might learn while you insist on sticking around. 

There are folks who will have better advice than me. This isn’t advice, this is confession. This is me choosing to write through my anxiety because writing is a habit that helps ground me and give me perspective. 

This is me saying I feel it too, a lot of us are feeling it. 

The fear of the unknown is awful.

I’m beginning to believe the fear of the nearly known is worse - we’ve seen what has happened elsewhere. We’ve seen what happens to others. We are sure that we’re next. 

It’s a strange uncertainty because we can be certain things will get worse, we just don’t know when.

But, we are unified in our uncertainty and while that is uncomfortable, today I am grateful for the unity.

The presence of anxiety is not indicative of failure of faith or emotional intelligence or any other such nonsense. 

The presence of anxiety is a reminder that we are merely human, trying to handle something that we have never handled before. 

We are finite and mortal and all too aware of that in the face of pandemic. 

May we at least, at the very least, be gentle and gracious and kind to ourselves and one another no matter what houseguests show up each morning. 

May we try to open the door laughing. 

And if we can’t bring ourselves to laugh, may we strain our ears for our neighbor’s laughter. 

And if the laughter of another can’t be heard, may we call someone and joyfully remember together that though isolated, we are not alone.