Like Mama, Like Son: Facing Anxiety Together
Editor’s Note: The following article details one author’s experience with anxiety in motherhood. While we believe the gospel provides hope to women suffering from anxiety (and other mental health issues), we recognize the sensitivity and nuance required in discussing these topics. This article is not meant to replace professional medical help. We encourage anyone who is experiencing symptoms of anxiety to seek help from a counselor, medical doctor, or other skilled professionals in your local community.
“I just want to be normal. I don’t want this to be my struggle.”
A dam of tears released as I spoke to my therapist.
My intense fear of throwing up never felt normal. For most moms, I suspect, vomiting is a part of life; you just get your family through it. For me, battling this phobia, especially as a mom, is like hiding under a bed looking at the boots of an intruder, waiting to be pulled from safety.
What if I throw this meal up later?
He touched that doorknob; what if norovirus is on there?
What if my kids wake up sick in the night?
What if I do?
A war zone of intrusive thoughts, graphic images, and fear-filled memories consumes my mind. Stories of vomiting pop into my brain at any given moment. Most days, I can force them aside by keeping busy. Other days, the threat feels imminent, and I can spiral into hopelessness in a matter of seconds.
No, this isn’t normal.
//
As I sat in the waiting room, I tried to shift my son’s attention from the swirl of activity around us to the goldfish in the aquarium. I wonder what kind of germs are on that fish tank. I grimaced. Brushing the thought aside, I said, “Hey, buddy, look at those fish. Aren't they cool?”
His eyes, wide with alarm, remained glued to the nurses’ station. His little limbs trembled between my arms. At less than a year old, his body held the quiet fury of terror.
As my son grew, the pediatrician declared, "This kind of fear is normal at this age." But I knew what I saw in our daily life was more than developmentally appropriate shyness. I was there through the hyperventilating cries when loved ones came over. It was me who held him in my lap as he sobbed at every play date. I was the one who watched as he jumped off slides to get away from other children. What I perceived in my firstborn wasn’t just a healthy sense of stranger anxiety.
My son was different.
//
“This can’t be normal. Why is he so scared of everyone?” I begged for an answer my husband couldn’t give.
“It’s not normal,” he said, somehow cool, calm, and collected. “We just have to help him through it.”
“I wish he’d let go of the control he doesn’t have.” Irony floated in the air as my own words penetrated my heart.
My son is different, just like me. Battling anxiety may make us feel abnormal, but all of us live in a post-Genesis world, and there is nothing abnormal about struggling under the effects of the fall. No one is unscathed by sin’s curse; we all feel suffering’s hot breath on our necks. Life is full of thorns.[1]
//
“Just breathe like me.” I took a deep breath and slowly let it out. I watched as air caught in my son’s throat and heard his stomach churning as a panic attack took over his three-year-old frame.
I used to believe anxiety was always rooted in sin, but my little boy exposed my error. Fear presses upon him, trying to smother his joy, telling him he isn’t safe. Like so many of us, he wrestles with a broken mind and body—the consequence of living in a fallen world, awaiting redemption.
Anxiety, that old beast, now hovers over my son, and I feel helpless. I can’t take it away; I can only beg Jesus to. But I’ve also begged him to take my fear away—yet it still haunts me.
Like Asaph, I stretch my arms out to God and my soul refuses comfort.[2] God holds my eyelids open; I can’t seem to settle.[3] I search my mind to recall his faithfulness.[4] I remember, “Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen” (Ps. 77:19).
//
We’re afraid of what we can’t control. I, sickness and germs; he, the unpredictability of people. Together, we’re learning. Hand-in-hand, we walk into church each Sunday. He sits on his daddy’s lap, snuggling in close when he gets nervous. I drop his baby brother off at the nursery in faith, viewing every toy as a threat but placing him in the hands of the nursery worker anyway. I sit back down and smile at my son who is like me in so many ways.
I’m in awe of his perseverance. He can’t name what’s happening to him when he’s anxious, but he keeps going and growing.
“I wanna go to a class, Mommy.”
Surprised, I look into his crystal blue eyes and say, “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he declares, his smile like a newly opened sunflower.
We venture toward the children’s wing as anxious thoughts pester my mind: If he goes to a class, he’ll probably catch a stomach virus. His hand grips my own, and I glance down just as his smile melts into overwhelm. “Why don’t we just look at the room? We’ll do this together,” I offer.
He doesn’t know, but I’m fighting every urge to walk back to the sanctuary. We persevere toward the door. “I don’t want to see the room!” I pick him up as tears roll down his cheeks. Before us, a shaggy-haired boy hugs his father and runs into the room excitedly. We step in, too. My son nervously looks around at the children playing and the teacher offers him a car. “I don’t want to. I wanna go with Mommy and Daddy.” “You can stay with me. I just wanted to show you the room,” I respond, thanking the teacher as we leave.
“You were so brave going in there, buddy.” We take our seats in the sanctuary next to my husband, and I shake my head with a slight smile. I breathe my own sigh of relief. Baby steps.
These struggles—his and mine—aren’t how it was meant to be. This world is marred by sin, with all its not-okays and broken meant-to-bes. But we don’t walk through the brokenness alone. We may not see his footsteps, but Jesus is near.
Trusting God doesn’t mean all our fears immediately fall from our backs. Often, trusting him looks like crying and clinging, wrestling and lamenting. It’s running to him in the midst of our fears and believing that when we can’t run, he will come to us; he will carry us.[5] I’m learning to trust God with the not-okay things my children face, too. I’m fighting to believe that he will hold both mama and child when our fears feel like they’re winning. After all, fear has already lost:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). Redemption is coming. My soul knows this, but we’re still in the “not yet.” We walk under the clouds, still waiting for Christ to return among them.
I ask him—wrestling with him, grasping for unknowns while gripping his garment—“Where are you, Lord?”
“Surely I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20).
[1] Genesis 3:17-18; 2 Corinthians 12:7–10
[2] Psalm 77:2
[3] Psalm 77:2–4
[4] Psalm 77:10–12
[5] Isaiah 40:11
