Being Me: The Story of My Anxiety and God’s Love

“My biggest fear is that you will eventually see me the way I see myself. - Anonymous

I have no idea who that quote is by, but it resounds with me on a very deep level. As a young man who battles with anxiety and how I’m viewed by others, having someone see me the way I see myself scares the crap out of me.
I keep a small circle of close friends. I open up completely to few and don’t generally hang out in big groups of people very often. This is partially my personality but it’s more than that. To be vulnerable, to be known fully, is something only a very small handful of people have ever experienced from me.

I first realised I had anxiety at the start of 2015 when I walked into a lecture theatre filled with 200 people who I had never met, and all of a sudden, my chest clamped up and I felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Since that day, I have have felt that way more times than I can count. As much as I hate it, my anxiety has shaped who I am. I cannot know who I would be without it. It is a struggle that has changed me to my very core.

But in all my anxiety, one truth rings clear above all of this: that I am loved and known by the Creator and Sustainer of all things because I have been washed by the blood of the Son and have the Spirit of the Father dwelling within me.
Psalm 62:5-7 reads:
For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence,
for my hope is from him.
He only is my rock and my salvation,
my fortress; I shall not be shaken.
On God rests my salvation and my glory;
my mighty rock, my refuge is God.

The thing about my anxiety is that it can be only for a few minutes or it can last up to a few months. But the truth of God’s love doesn’t change. The objective truth of God’s love for me is what has held me while I have wept. The objective truth of God’s love is who He is.

I have three tattoos. The first is a cross on my wrist I did myself. The second says "The Moon is Round” (the story is in a previous post). And the third says “Because He Loved First”.
All that I am, all that I will ever be is because God loves me.
In these past few weeks, I have made some very stupid, ungodly decisions. As a result, I have temporarily stepped down from leadership at youth group until such a time that I have sorted these things out. I know that none of the events that have occured will ever change the fact that God has saved me. It is my prayer that He is using these events to shape me to be more like His Son so that I can glorify Him with my whole life.

My spirit testifies along side Paul’s the words of Romans 8:31-39:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written,
“For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.