Sunday Gratitude, Prayer Score Card and Anxiety

When I struggle with anxiety and panic, I become a hermit crab.

I withdraw, retreat, and everything from this blog to friends to laundry is left behind. That's what has happened these past few days. I've gone into my shell, trying to keep the battering waves at bay.


I don't think that I've ever faced anything as difficult as coping with the anxiety that has been my near-constant companion for nearly two years, starting when my mother first went on hospice and through her death and the last year of grief.

Oddly enough, twice now, in the middle of a raging panic attack, I was told what a calm person I was. Outwardly, apparently, I do appear serene, but on the inside, my heart is racing, my chest is aching and every muscle fiber twitches with "fight or flight." And yet, by dint of will and practice, I must look as if I am very much in control of myself.  Perhaps that's why I retreat when the pain is too great. It's much easier to be calm when you are hidden under the bedclothes than when you are out in public.

As we enter into Holy Week, I went back to read what I had written last year about Jesus, the Garden of Gethsemane and panic attacks. And as we enter into Holy Week, once again I pray that perhaps with Easter will come healing and restoration and anxiety may become for me, just a memory of a time recorded on a blog. This is the week of miracles, after all.

With that, this Sunday I am grateful for:

1. Trader Joe's Dixie Peach juice that tastes like summer when summer seems far away
2. Daffodils...next to lilacs, my favorite flower
3. The ongoing and joyful restitution of a relationship
4. Bits of blue in an otherwise grey sky
5. Hope...even when I'm feeling like a hermit card

As for the prayer score card,
3Yes
12 No answer
and 1--not sure.  I had prayed for clear direction on a decision and I never got direction, but I had to make a decision.  So not sure if that is a yes, no, or no answer.