Panic Attack--Pt. 2

See part 1 of this story here.

Sensing my distress, my confused children each rendered me some service—a pillow, a glass of water, soft music. Oppressed by my own unreasonable fears, I escaped the worried glances of my family’s seven sets of eyes and slipped out the door into the hazy Texas afternoon.

While indoors my ten-volt system seemed to be operating on two hundred, outside the load seemed to diminish to somewhere around fifty volts—still an overload, but more bearable. I walked with jerky, unnatural steps, distancing myself from the house and its perceived threats. I began to mutter, “Lord, help me. Why is this happening? Lord, I need you. Please set me free from this prison.” Then breaking into song, I uttered any praise or hymn that surfaced. Grace, our AWF Collie cowered as if I had kicked her. My weak song trailing off, I pleaded, “Oh God, help me!” First I whined and then shouted, “Help me! I need you!”

Desperation sent me (or was it God’s big hand in the middle of my back?) to seek out my bewildered husband again. The scales had tipped. The conviction to confess sin now muscled away my fear of being vulnerable. I must have resembled the unstable core of a nuclear reactor as I spilled out the big things that I thought were important to our relationship. I answered his disappointed questions and asked forgiveness. In the process I laid down my own anger, finally willing to call my pride by its true name, sin. I stopped blaming others and admitted that I had killed Christ—my sin.

As I began to identify my ugly, harmful sin, the fog in my brain lifted a little. What is happening? If I stood in a particular spot near the window and lifted my eyes to the patchy grey sky, the electric overload ebbed to a welcome low after my confession. The relief lasted for only brief intermittent periods at first, but each grasp of sanity refreshed me like a needed summer rain.