Anxiety

To my dear friends who journey with anxiety – November 2017

Unsettled, I feel. Un-grounded.

Unsure,

Life: a whirlwind. Change,

change, so much of it.

Remembering who I used to be.

It feels, like, a blur.

Rain falling down, washing away chalk on the asphalt,

warmed up by a summer glaze.

Clean slate, you say, new chalk, you say,

But what about the comforting drawings of the past,

well-known, cherished and colourful,

Should we just do away with them?

Remembering the ground before the rain,

Tempted to indwell my own memory.

Going back to the old self, embracing passions,

routines and friendships,

For the sake of discarding,

all, all that we have become.

Preferring simplicity, and naïveté, over

illumination and the deep complexities of life,

that hit like hail on Australia Day.

Unsettled, I feel. Un-grounded.

Unsure,

Life: a whirlwind. Change,

change, so much of it.

Remembering who I used to be,

It feels, like, a blur.

When faced with the journey ahead, and

the journey past, I cannot help but

catastrophize my own reality.

Restless, my spirit is left to sigh,

O the days of innocence, O the days of peaceful mind,

washed away by the warm summer rain,

making room for days of experience, leaving me

with crippling knots to detangle,

as my mind wrestles with fear of the outcomes,

fear of failure, of desertion.

Trapped in a cage of thoughts, I ask for it to be enlarged,

so that the countless wounds that had trodden my path,

the overgrown weeds of distrust and my old friend loneliness

would be joined by hope, faith and love.

When scattered, helplessly lost in a maze of reckless thoughts,

hope touches my shoulder, pointing me to the destination.

When angst fills my heart, and life is uncontrollable,

Faith whispers in my ear, trust, o trust my dear.

When alone in the endless sea of my imagination,

hiding for fear of being found out,

love reaches out, and embraces me, saying:

you are enough, for I am enough

Learning to live in this space that was enlarged,

grounded in deeper realities,

fixing my eyes on what’s ahead,

Choosing to feed the newcomers in my cage

Because of Him who is the way

Unsettled, I feel. Un-grounded.

Unsure, learning to be

journeying, trusting and content.

Life: a whirlwind. Life: a small breeze.

Change, change, so much of it.

Remembering who I used to be,

Being reminded in whom I stand,

It feels, like, a blur. A blur,

Lit by Him, day by day.