This piece is brought to you on behalf of Michelle Brigid in celebration of her recent confirmation.
I didn’t know the secret meaning of the word “anxious” until I was older—seventeen, maybe, or eighteen. I knew that I felt different, that I worried a lot, that I was fearful. But I just thought I was strange, and generally kept to myself about it. When, on occasion, I would talk to a close friend or a church small group leader about what I didn’t know was anxiety, I was met with varying responses, from “That sounds so hard,” to, “It sounds like you haven’t prayed about this enough.” Somehow, I had enough common sense and confidence not to listen to the voices that told me this was my fault, that if I just prayed more I would be okay. I stopped listening to those voices pretty early on.
I grew up in a family of five, the oldest of three children, in a home that was a lot of fun and very Christian and moderately liberal. I never had a crisis of faith, and don’t anticipate one coming on. I grew up evangelical, and weirdly enough am exceedingly grateful for that upbringing. I was never told that gay people were going to hell; when our church hosted a leadership conference at which Bill Clinton spoke, abortion protestors came to us. In faith as in life, the world made a sort of fluid sense. We didn’t listen to Christian music, but had (as Mallory has mentioned) approximately five CDs on constant rotation for eighteen years: Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel, Jim Brickman, Dan Fogelberg, and the soundtrack from The Mission. Hearing any song from any of those CDs will instantly transport me back to the glass-topped table in our Illinois family room.
Words were our currency and language; an Ortberg without a love of reading was as unthinkable as an Illinois winter with temperate weather. So, when I had what I now know was a panic attack, I wrote to myself in a journal I kept behind the stereo on my nightstand: “I thought I was dying. My breath stopped and my fingers went numb. I didn’t know what to do next.”
“Next” was the most pressing question that I could not answer, and even after blocking certain voices out, I couldn’t help but feel that something in me was deficient. And sometimes, for some people, that’s what faith does best—makes you feel deficient. If faith is the kind of endeavor that demands perfection, all you ever see is where you fall short.
I want what has been to always be. “Faith in God is, finally, faith in change,” Christian Wiman wrote. And he’s right, he’s right, I know he’s right. This anxiety that has nested in my body for so long, though, tells me otherwise. My anxiety makes me a stranger to myself, a weary traveler paying admission to rest in my own mind.
There is a painting I have always loved, a famous painting by Andrew Wyeth, called Christina’s World . It is, as most of Wyeth’s paintings are, an ordinary moment made transcendent by the story behind it. The woman in the painting —Christina—was actually one of Wyeth’s neighbors in Maine. She is shown, at the bottom of the painting, sitting on her right hip and leg, feet trailing her torso, body twisted toward a house at the end of a long driveway. Her arms support her—right arm at the side of her body, left arm straight ahead of her in a gesture of half-reaching, half-crawling. We only see the back of her head—black hair tied back in a bun, loose pieces escaping near her right temple—while her face is turned toward the house in the distance. She is going home, but she is not there yet.
Christina had polio. She could not walk, but daily took herself on crawling tours of the grounds on which she lived. Through his kitchen window, Wyeth saw Christina on one of her outings and was moved to paint this woman who, felled by a degenerative muscular disorder, eschewed the confinement of a wheelchair and became again like a child, crawling where she needed to go.
Wyeth saw in Christina that her disability made her different, somehow, but not in the way most people would conceive. Her polio made her, if not beautiful, at least interesting—and what she did with it, her crawling and scraping to and from her home, was the most interesting thing of all.
The lines are not parallel here—Christina’s polio and my anxiety. I am not more interesting because I am anxious, although my response to anxiety may be of interest to some. I am not more beautiful or whimsical, not the Manic Pixie Dream Girl determined to make every moment shine spectacularly. But I am someone who is caught between where I am and my home. I understand that feeling, that longing, with great clarity. And the way home, for me, is the way with God.
If I think of anxiety as this entity separate from myself, a curse from a God who would test me, I become this divided person who is constantly trying to walk half of herself out the door. And sometimes I do this; I look down at red nailbeds and wayward cuticles and wonder who has been biting my nails. I turn on NPR in the car and, arriving at my destination, wonder who has been listening to the radio while my mind has been racing. And my anxiety is not now at the level it has always been; thanks in large part to therapy and medication and time and maybe prayer. But she is still there, this mirror image of myself in which left is right and the world is known yet strange-tasting. This is where, in my anxiety, I recognize my own need to become whole.
I don’t want to play more internal games of tug-of-war. I think that anxiety is one of the things I will wrestle with all my life long, and am not in a rush to get rid of it. When I’ll let it, anxiety can be a useful thing, pointing to and excavating spots in my soul I wasn’t even aware existed. When I listen to it, I’ll see that it’s trying to tell me something. And on my best days, something in my body will turn the anxiety from straw to gold, and in that process, I know I am on the way with God.
Tags: anxiety, faith, health, laura turner, mental health, ORTBERGS, religion
Beautiful. Thank you.
Wow – I came down to comment because this mirrors my experience so closely (moderately liberal parents, protestant upbringing, etc.) but you’ve actually given me a lot to think about with Christina’s World. I always projected despair onto that painting because I saw Christina caught between, yearning toward something she can’t have. But now with your explanation of her backstory I see freedom and intention in the painting.
My grandmother had a poster of this painting hanging in the bedroom where we kids stayed when we stayed with her. I always thought it was a photo of my mom. Who grew up in a city in CT in the 50s and not on a prairie. Ahhh kid logic.
I love this. I love that you didn’t buy into the “it’s your fault, pray more” stuff that so many church people lay on people who are struggling. And I love the last line. I feel that way about my anxiety too sometimes– we’re the people who foresee the disasters and help prevent them, the detail people that fine tune things and ensure they run smoothly. Sometimes my mind comes up with ridiculous “what ifs” that hurt me and need to go, but other times it’s so useful. Straw into gold for sure.
I agree! Anxiety can be a powerful tool, but it becomes a problem when we are held captive by a massive overestimation of how much we can actually control or change by thinking or worrying. Fortunately, ruminating on the validity of my worries is part of my anxiety spiral, so it can all work itself out at times.
Laura, this is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. Thanks for it.
(Also, “oldest of three children,” does that mean there is ANOTHER ORTBERG whom we have yet to meet?)
Yes. He’s perfect. We [the female Ortbergs and I] were all talking about the Miftords for three hours at dinner, and he quietly muttered “Fuck the Mitfords” under his breath, and it was the greatest thing ever.
This has given me a lot to think about. I wasn’t experiencing depression and anxiety in the same way I am now when I was attending church and giving the whole God thing a try-out–but “you haven’t prayed about this enough” mirrors a lot of non-religious advice people have for those with less-than-perfect mental health. (Even my brain doctor has told me that he thinks I could “try harder.”)
I feel tricky about comparing physical disability to mental health issues; though the two often intersect, I frequently feel like I’m trespassing on something that’s not mine when, for example, I think of my day in terms of spoons. But, of course, I also wouldn’t presume to tell another depressive/anxious person that that space isn’t for them. It can be hard to let yourself into any space when one of the biggest facets of your anxiety is that you’re a bother and an intrusion no matter where you go.
There probably isn’t a point to this.
(Also–I don’t mean to police language when my own understanding is imperfect, and when I obviously know very little about the author, but I’ve seen some disability activists balk at the non-disabled referring to the “confinement” of a wheelchair.)
I hadn’t heard about the use of “confinement” being troubling, but I can certainly understand that. Thanks for pointing it out–I’ll keep that in mind for future reference!
When I found that my anxiety was turning into anger more often than not, and began to manifest as daily physical discomfort, I went to a Christian counselor who suggested that medication was rarely, if ever, an appropriate option. It was suggested that if I understood the sinful roots of my anger, I might be able to overcome it. I left, and haven`t been back. My (also Christian) doctor was more than happy to provide a prescription that has given me some measure of freedom and peace. It was one of the best choices I`ve made for myself.
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Wow. Thank you for this. I have grown up in evangelical churches and attend one in which I am very active. I have always struggeld with anxiety (and have seen how it has destroyed my Mom’s life). I have always felt that without faith and without God I would be so much worse off with it than I already am. It’s nice to know there are others out there like me. In the church, we often mistake mental illness as spiritual illness. They are NOT the same thing.
You guys! This is so fun. I knew some people might relate and others might not, and I’m really sorry for any and all of you who have had bad experiences with religious people being wangs about anxiety and depression and medication. I hope that keeps changing for the better.
Our brother is super funny and every year, on your birthday, he will do a birthday slave dance for you, if you are Mallory or me. Otherwise, you’re out of luck.
I cried a little. Thank you so much. My dad has a lot of trouble reconciling my anxiety with prayer, and is always quoting that Matthew scripture at me, you know? “Do not worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself” or something along those lines? My experience with faith is messy but sometimes that line helps. Often it doesn’t.
Anyway, thank you so so much for this.
Nothing sends me spiraling into a panic attack quite so quickly as hearing Bible verses about not being anxious. I just get so anxious about being anxious when I’m not supposed to be?
This so wonderful, thank you, Laura. I’m Catholic myself, which usually surprises people because I’m not an asshole about it–because IDGAF whether anybody else is Catholic or Christian or religious, whatever, you do you, as long as you’re a nice person. But I suffer from depression, and Catholicism brings me bouts of joy that I need, especially singing Palestrina and Bach and Mozart with the choir I’ve been in half my life. I also find the notion that we’re all sinners oddly comforting; I take it to mean we’re all imperfect, and that means my being imperfect doesn’t make me bad, it just makes me human.
I’m not religious, and yet the last two paragraphs encapsulate so well something that I feel strongly and always find difficult to articulate about life with a chronic illness or disability. (In my case, almost 20 years with autoimmune kidney disease, a more recent neurological disease, and various struggles with anxiety and depression.) It’s exactly what bothers me about the very common metaphor of illness as a Battle to be Fought, personally (though I understand how some people may find that helpful)
“If I think of anxiety as this entity separate from myself, a curse from a God who would test me, I become this divided person who is constantly trying to walk half of herself out the door.” YES YES YES
I went to Christian schools and studied theology for the first few years of college, I’m getting all sorts of emotions/feelings reading this. Beautiful piece, and love the name of your dog!
This was lovely. I’m very happy you’ve found a way to make piece between anxiety and spirituality, but I also read with a sharp little pang of jealousy and a lot of longing for a different life. The Christian family I grew up in was not the least bit liberal, and “trust God more” was the answer for everything. As a person who has struggled with anxiety and depression all my life I found this piece incredibly hard to read because Christianity is like a painful bruise on my heart. Maybe I’m asking for help in this arena — anyone, everyone: how do I learn to make peace with the positive religious experiences of others when it’s such a bitter pill for me?
Honestly, i don’t know. But thank you for sharing, and I’m so sorry for the way Christianity has wounded you.
As someone raised with no religious input whatsoever by parents who left their Catholic and Baptist homes very pointedly behind, I have almost the opposite problem: I want it, but it feels like the gravest betrayal to admit or state that what my parents gave me was insufficient. I gentled my way in by learning to say the rosary with a group online (The Way of the Rose on Facebook) who are 100% inclusive and nonjudgmental toward who’s in and how they do it. You are certainly invited–it’s a good place to work though congealed feels–or send me a DM if you’d like to run ideas with the yang to your yin dilemma. I hope the way gets easier for you.
Oh man, it’s so easy to feel like you’re betraying your parents just by disagreeing with them, or having a different experience of the world. Thanks for sharing your opposite dilemma! I don’t think what I want is to re-enter the world of religion, but I do want to learn how to feel enough peace about it so that I can affirm other people, rather than assuming the word “Christian” always = something terrible.
I don’t necessarily have any wisdom to share, but I wanted to send lots of love and hugs your way. Anxiety can be so isolating and I hope you have people you can lean on through it all. For me growing up there was a big focus on mind-over-matter, which is kind of the WASPy version of “trust God more.” For me at least, that translated into thinking my emotions weren’t appropriate, and anytime I did feel sadness or anger, I was ashamed of feeling that. Then, because emotions were scary, it was that much harder to connect with people and let them support me, which made me sadder, and on and on.
I have struggled with faith and spirituality throughout my 20s/30s. It is always something I’ve had to work at, and I think in large part that has been because I have a hard time accepting what someone else says as canon. I have no problem believing in Christianity, saints, or angels–not to mention psychics, gurus, what-have-you–but the moment someone tries to assemble those things in a way that I have not worked out for myself, I have almost a visceral reaction.
So I read a lot of stuff on my own, talk with my more open-minded friends, pop by church every once in a while, and go get a psychic reading if I want to, and try not to judge myself for not having it all sorted out. I try to take what feels good and right for me from each different thing. Even though it is a complete patchwork that would make St. Augustine roll over in his grave, it’s making me feel kinder, more open, and more present–and that last one has especially helped manage the anxiety.
Sorry for the novel, but like I said, sending so much love and I’m rooting for you, bb!
Oh yeah, my family does “trust God more” AND mind over matter, so, that’s all a big difficult mess. I very much relate to what you’re saying, especially about accepting what others say vs. figuring it out for myself. Thanks for sharing, and love and cheers for you right back!
This part isn’t relevant but I just wanted to say I love your username. Even just reading the words “Aunt Beast” gives me a sense of calm.
I wish I knew how to answer your question, because I wish I had an answer myself. I’m very bitter toward many aspects of a church where my peers did not accept me or support me. I have been dealing with anxiety and depression as well, and I’ve never brought it up at church (mostly because I no longer attend one regularly) but I would be afraid to. I pray about it sometimes, but I don’t know if it helps.
I hope we both find peace somehow. Experiences with Christianity growing up should not leave anyone feeling the way you do, or the way I do.
Aw, thanks! As an anxious person, the idea of a warm, calm, furry Aunt Beast who gathers you up in her arms is so deeply reassuring to me.
I hope we both find peace, too. I hope you find the right people to support you, in church or out.
Ugh, I wish so much I had an answer for this. I wish I had a way of waving a magic wand and replacing all bad religious experiences with good ones, or with nothing. I’m so sorry to hear about how bruising your experience with Christianity was.
All of the advice above is great, and I don’t know that you have to totally let go/get rid of this being a bitter pill, at least at first. Maybe, like for me with my anxiety, what your experiences can do is teach you something for now. If you can sit with your feeling of jealousy or bitterness for five minutes (seriously, put the microwave timer on and when it’s done, you’re done) and ask God or yourself what this feeling might have to teach you, or for you to hear, rather than trying to squelch it–well, that might help. I hope it does. I hope it’s not too weird to say I’ll pray for you. Thanks for reading and being so vulnerable with your comment.
Laauuurraaa… this 5 minute timer thing is a brilliant coping mechanism, or whatever it may be called. I need it 10 years ago. Thanks! Hope all is well with you.
Also, I don’t know how I’m two weeks or so late on finding this piece by you but I’m very grateful. Reminding me of what it is about faith that can actually help with anxiety, which I don’t get any reminders of in Sweden. Thanks for your vulnerability.
This is the most perfect description of anxiety:
“And sometimes I do this; I look down at red nailbeds and wayward cuticles and wonder who has been biting my nails. I turn on NPR in the car and, arriving at my destination, wonder who has been listening to the radio while my mind has been racing.”
There is a certain circle of Christianity that reflexively responds to any problem with “Have you tried praying about it?” Fortunately I grew up in a family where that was not the reflex, but I had friends whose parents could barely listen to any problem without suggesting prayer as the antidote. It was so frustrating, and I can’t imagine what would have happened if any of those friends had had mental health issues.
This riled my brain up like I don’t even know what. It’s so rare to hear change embraced, however thornily, in a Christian context, or even get to think about how the twin engines of faith and doubt can churn us up physically, internally. Anne Sexton’s “awful rowing towards God” feels right at home next to Christina, traversing her property with total commitment and engagement. I, just, yeah. You completely rocked this, and me. Thank you.
Right. God's love is so merciful as to be incomprehensible. I'm v. much of the belief that the only way you could POSSIBLY end up in hell is if you knew for an absolute fact that God existed etc. and still rejected zir. Which is to say, it's pretty lonely down there, oh well. 😀
The one person who said “have you tried praying about it” to me got a very confused look and a “well, if you had epilepsy, you would probably pray about it, yes, but you would also go to the doctor.” Catholocism has helped me through some dark times, though.
The one person who said "have you tried praying about it" to me got a very confused look and a "well, if you had epilepsy, you would probably pray about it, yes, but you would also go to the doctor." Catholocism has helped me through some dark times, though.
I don't have panic attacks, but I do have long stretches of anxiety (a trait that has persisted in our family for generations beyond count). I know that no amount of religiosity on my part can stop the anxiety bouts from coming, but praying and reading stuff by a bunch of 19th-century Christian writers does at least help me endure it / wait it out, and it's actually kind of comforting to know that this is how my similarly-afflicted ancestors dealt with it too.
I gotta say: I have a reprint of an 1890 book which my great-great-great-aunt owned, where I get most of my 19th-century Christian writer fix from. For every day of the year, it has some Bible verse, paired with (1) a related poetry selection, and (2) one or two related prose selections, from prominent Christian authors of that time. It has a terrible-sounding title – Daily Strength for Daily Needs – but holy cow, it is the bees' knees when it comes to comforting the afflicted by saying reasonable things.
I want to include an excerpt, but it was really hard to choose what to pick, because there are so many good ones:
" 'You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke them out by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of others' faults; in every person who comes near you look for what is good and strong: honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it; and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.' -J. Ruskin"
Isn't that great??
Of course, because it's the 19th century, and because it's Christianity, there's some stuff in there that I think is not right: i.e. some hints to the effect of "All bad things that happen to you were devised by God to bring you to Him." But this is the great thing about being a Cafeteria Christian: I can critically assess those things and determine that they are mostly bogus, and continue looking for what is good and strong, honoring that, and rejoicing in it.
I’m so grateful for this discussion as this very topic is one that has been weighing very heavily on my mind as of late. After years of struggling with anxiety, I’m trying to comes to terms with how it affects me and how to deal with it in a healthy manner. Some of the best advice about seeking help I’ve received has come out of my faith community, but then again, so have some of the most hurtful off-hand comments. Knowing that I’m not the only person seeking to reconcile faith with emotional health is an answered prayer in itself.
There are many of us on this path. I just wanted to mention that the term “emotional health” just really resonated with me in your comment. It sounds so much less clinical than “mental health”. Thanks for that.
Hey, I read this and was drawn in from your post about O’Connor. When you mentioned Dan Fogelberg and Illinois, I found it quite odd. I grew up in a Christian home in Illinois and my mom loved Dan Fogelberg and got all of the kids hooked.
I am sorry to hear about your anxiety. I know a number of people that struggle with that and with depression. They have to take medication.
I am still a Christian and my experience with the Holy Spirit through my family (it is not Christianity I experienced; as a body of thought, it is meaningless without the ramifications it has on our lives as humans) was a gift I did not deserve.
I never comment on things like this, but the familiar way in which you spoke (and the mention of Christina’s World, a favorite painting of mine) compelled me to comment.
God bless.