I feel like God is calling me to come off my anxiety meds. This is a big deal for me, but I have peace about it. I would never tell anyone to just stop taking something the doctor prescribed and trust the Lord because I know from personal experience that is way easier said than done. This is something I entered cautiously and am now exiting cautiously.
I’ve dealt with anxiety and depression in various forms most of my life. Before I ever started on the meds I knew I needed help, but I felt guilty for thinking I needed some sort of medication. I’ve always been taught to lean on the Lord for everything and to trust in Him. I’ve been taught about the power of our words, how life and death are in the power of the tongue etc. but I was stuck. For the longest I felt like I wasn’t good enough, my faith wasn’t strong enough, that I just wasn’t doing a “good job” at being a believer.
A couple of years ago it got to the point where I cried ALL. THE. TIME. and had panic attacks in between. I’ve never cried so much in my entire life as I did in 2017. What’s crazy is that it wasn’t even a bad year. It was a great year. I became close to some of my best friends and went on a ton of adventures. I seriously had a blast that year. At the same time, I was dealing with the fear of old stuff coming up again. I was constantly afraid that something was going to happen, and I was going to lose all these friends I had made. I thought I would have to leave my church because it seemed like something bad happened at every church I had ever been to. I didn’t think I would ever be truly accepted even though my friends were constantly doing and saying things contrary to that. My emotions were up and down all the time. There were several instances where I was excessively crying, and I didn’t even know why. I didn’t know who I was anymore or what was wrong with me. I talked to my pastor about it one day because I felt so screwed up and I knew it was a faith battle, but I felt like I didn’t even have it in me to fight. I didn’t want to be so medicated that I turned into someone else or just didn’t feel anything at all. I wanted to feel, I just didn’t want to feel everything at the same time multiplied by 1000. My pastor told me I shouldn’t feel guilty for taking medicine. Sometimes people need help getting through a season. God has gifted people to become doctors for a reason. The goal of course is not to be on the medicine for the rest of your life but sometimes we do need medical help. I don’t think I’ve had a pastor tell me that before. I’ve also never had a pastor that has openly talked about his own past struggles with anxiety. He gets it. You have no idea what a relief it was for my pastor to understand where I was coming from.
During that time, I was having physical issues as well and thought, is this more of a physical problem? I finally went to the doctor and made a list of every single thing that bothered me, physically and emotionally. My doctor was great and did a full work up on me. I went to an OBGYN, had all kinds of bloodwork done, thyroid ultrasound, and a few other things. I started on Metformin because my blood sugar was out of whack and Paxil for anxiety. Things started to balance out a little. I lost some weight. Things were getting better. Fast forward a year, the Paxil didn’t seem to be helping anymore so my doctor switched me to Lexapro. Around that same time, I started going to therapy because I felt like I was going nowhere in life, or at least not fast enough. I was trying to live up to these expectations I had for myself plus live up to what society says I’m supposed to be. According to the world as we know it, considering I’m 30, I should have my career figured out, have my own place, be married, and have 1.5 kids. FYI, I haven’t done any of those things yet. So in other words, I’m a complete and total failure by the world’s standards. That was hard to deal with. Even though I had started back to school to get a better paying job to where I could get out on my own, I was still at least 4 years away from doing that. ANYWAY, so I was going to therapy, trying to find the meds that worked for me, trying to please the world, my family, and myself based on these screwed up standards, and then the Lord stepped in. “Come away with Me, just you and Me. You don’t have to and I’m not going to make you. I’ll still love you and use you, but this is My best for you.” Picture Jesus stretching out His hand to you wanting to go on a walk just the two of you. That’s what I saw. That’s what I heard. I felt wanted. I’ve struggled with feeling unwanted for so long and to have that revelation is exactly what I needed. His love. His peace.
Fast forward to the present, I’m T- minus 6 weeks away from a 10-day training camp where I meet my squad mates and 14 weeks away from living in 11 other countries for a year. I’m still nervous but I still have peace too. And now I feel like the Lord is calling me to a deeper place of trust in Him, getting off the meds. I knew I wouldn’t be on medicine forever but for awhile I didn’t want to start the journey of getting off them either. I could breath. I could think. I thought, “Let’s just hang out here for a while, we’re fine. Everybody’s fine.” The thing is, it’s not God’s perfect will for us to stay medicated just to function normally. He wants us to be more than just fine. I understand there are circumstances where it is in the best interest of everyone involved that someone stay on medication but I’m saying as far as the majority goes, we shouldn’t rely on it. For a lot of us, myself included, we need learn to think about what we’re thinking about. We need learn to recognize when something is reality and when it is anxiety trying to creep in. In my case I needed help for a season, so I could just get to the point where I could fight. I am now at that place and it’s ok.
