When I watch my daughter struggle I feel like my heart is being ripped out of my chest. No parent likes to see their child hurting and, knowing there is nothing I can do to ease her mind, leaves me feeling helpless. I can’t stop her pain. I can’t keep her stomach from aching or her mind from worrying. All of these things are outside of my control.
My daughter suffers from anxiety. She is seven years old and fear has impacted her life for as long she can remember. She does not know what it is like to live without severe anxieties. She has never experienced the freedom of not worrying constantly, at least for a portion of any given day. She worries about many things including fires, tornadoes, floods, and the death of one of her pets, but the biggest fear she faces is separation from her father and me.
This anxiety is all-consuming and it means that, at the age when so many other children are going off and starting to do things on their own, my daughter can’t walk upstairs or downstairs in our home without someone accompanying her. It means that she often calls out to see where we are located in our home so she knows we are near. It means that she fears having us separated from her because, if we leave the house, something may happen to us and we will never come back to her. It means that she often does not want to leave our home. It means that she misses out on so many things.
I cannot express how difficult it is to watch her struggle. As she gets older she is able to explain what she is feeling and I am thankful for that. She now understands that when her stomach hurts it is the anxiety causing the pain. She knows that some of her thoughts are irrational but that doesn’t mean she can control them.
My daughter’s anxieties take many different forms. Sometimes she is sad and cries a lot. Other times she is hyper and can’t calm down. Often she becomes very angry, even aggressive. When this first started happening my husband and I were unsure where the anger was coming from, but now that we have realized it is rooted in fear, it makes so much more sense. More often than not, my daughter’s anger is directed toward me.
Over time, and with some digging, we realized that I am the target of her anger because I am the one who leaves the house every day to go to work. I am the one that she worries about the most. As a pastor, my husband often works from home, but I am a teacher so I leave every day to go to work. Both my husband and I have a part in homeschooling our daughter, but she has made it very clear that she would prefer to have me home with her every day. While I would love to be home with her, that is not an option in our family right now.
Our daughter’s anxieties have impacted our lives and the lives of the people in the two churches where we serve. Simple things like shaking hands and clapping bother her. When she was younger things like this could be ignored as the whims of a toddler but, at this point, when she tries to stop us from clapping it is very obvious and often demands an explanation. When we try to tell someone why we can’t shake hands or clap, my daughter becomes very uncomfortable and defensive. She recognizes her behaviour is different and she does not want to be singled out for her differences.
Often, to onlookers, I feel like it seems our daughter is spoiled and runs the show. The reality is, her anxieties do impact the ways in which my husband and I fill our roles in the church. When she was smaller I had to always be with her so I would be with the kids, for example, rather than cleaning up after a church supper. Some people understood why I wasn’t helping, others may not have understood my actions. At times, I simply did not attend church functions because I knew I could not fill my expected role and meet the needs of my child at the same time. Overall, some of the people in our congregations recognize that our daughter is different and they appreciate her for the amazing young lady that she is while others have literally met my husband’s explanation of why he might need to rearrange a meeting time until I am home with our daughter with, “Well, that’s your problem, isn’t it?”
1 Peter 5:7 encourages us to cast all of our anxieties on Him, because He cares for us. Mornings are hard in our home but, even in the chaos of anxiety, we want to encourage our daughter to turn to prayer, to place her worries and burdens in the hands of God. When our daughter was younger, we prayed for her but now that she is older we pray together and, when her fear is overwhelming, she has started to ask us to lift her up in prayer. I am so thankful that she recognizes that she can hand her worries and fears over to the God of all creation with the expectation and knowledge that He cares for her.
Philippians 4:6, 7 says: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
I won’t lie. I worry about my daughter and I wonder how her anxieties will continue to impact her life when she is older. I don’t have any answers. I only have hope. I place my hope in the Lord and I know that as my daughter grows in her relationship with God she will learn to rely on Him and experience peace even in the midst of her fear.
Marcy, my heart breaks for your daily battle to keep your mind fixed on Christ as you walk alongside your daughter. I pray that she is encouraged every time she turns to God for strength and that you encouraged that God entrusted her to you and your husband, knowing exactly what your daughter would need in parents. Keep pressing into Him.
On another note- My husband and I grew up in Chatham!
Thank you for sharing that. It is hard to be vulnerable regarding our kids and their needs! No matter the issue, this was and perhaps is the biggest challenge- allowing God’s timetable in His dealings with my kids!