I spent the morning walking around Lynx Lake, trying to reconnect with the world around me and detox from yesterday's ordeal with the non-stop panic attacks. It's shocking just how much fear I live with in my body! These panic attacks are all about the fear, a fear gone wild, a level of fear that is completely out of control and unmanageable, like a wild fire burning everything in its path and filling the air with toxic fumes.Can I find beauty amidst all of that out of control fear?
God is amazing; everything at that lake was created by God, the one creator. So what if God created me exactly the way that I am, even though that predisposes me to having panic attacks? What if I'm supposed to be this way? What if God created me this way? I watched everything at that lake today as an interconnected whole, that everything had its purpose, and everything was created exactly as God intended it to be.
What if God created me exactly the way that I am, even if that means that I have panic attacks?
If this is how God created me, then the fear is not something outside of me, it's a part of me, it IS me. I fight the fear. I resent the fear. I am disempowered by the fear. But that's because the fear feels completely out of control, but what if that's only because I am fighting it and resenting it?
Something happened today that I can't explain. It's as if by connecting in spirit with all things created by the same creator of me, that God was able to show me that everything was created just as its supposed to be, even if I can't understand why. I'm not the only person who was created with panic attacks, so maybe it's not that I'm damaged and broken. . . .maybe I'm exactly the way that God created me to be, and I need to find the beauty in the middle of all of that fear.
I think there is a hidden beauty in the middle of the fear. . . .which also means that there is a beauty about me in the way that God created me to be, a beauty that I disown by being afraid of all of that fear.
This is such a different way for me to think about the panic attacks, but I feel like I need to sit with the fear in a new way, like looking at those three-dimensional pictures where all you see is this chaotic patterning of color and shape, but then when you look through it this unexpected picture sort of pops out at you.
I never thought I'd say this, but I want to find the beauty in the fear. . . .because I just know that when I do, I will no longer be afraid of the fear. . . .