peace

Up and down. Inside out. Turbulent.

That has been my month—personally and professionally. For reasons I'm not really willing to write about just yet. Suffice to say that October has been a bit on the wacky side.

When things got ugly for me two years ago, the main way I was affected was anxiety. I have always been a worrier. But that summer and fall, my anxiety skyrocketed. My mind and body could not settle down. Every freckle was melanoma waiting to kill me. And then I couldn't breathe, so I probably had lung cancer on top of it. And, did I just feel dizzy? Oh, God. A brain tumor too! With a heart attack and probably a tornado falling on my house as well, for good measure.

These thoughts are, now, somewhat amusing. Mainly because I don't have them every day anymore. Snippets of anxiety still find me, but it is nothing compared to the day in and day out panic I felt during those months in 2010.

In October of that year, I started taking anti-anxiety medication. We don't tend to talk much about mental health as a society. As a result, the bad patches seems pretty damn bleak. Our problems seem so individualized, so personal, so isolated. We go it alone, with assurances of prayers and thoughts from friends and family. If we're lucky (and I was), there are people to talk to, but said people aren't in our heads rooting out the ugly. We get to do that all on our own.

In 2011, I went off my medication for fifteen weeks. It was time, I thought. Only after May passed (a month full of anniversaries and birthdays of dead people) did I realize that maybe I wasn't quite ready. So on again I went. And stayed. Because when something keeps us healthy, it's best we stick with it.

Sixteen weeks ago, I went off my medication again. I was forgetting to take it, which seemed like a good sign that maybe my mind and body and heart were ready to be med free. So far, so good. I admit, earlier this month I strongly considered it again. But the causes for my anxiety have been logical and there are end points for the crazy. And, I'm able to talk myself out of the circle of hell that is anxiety.

It's possible that this post is leaning toward the overshare category. But I think it helps (a) when we don't hide the fact that we have mental health issues and (b) to set up the point of this post. Which is peace.

When I was in the worst of my anxiety problems, the thing I missed most was peace—that sense that things were going to be okay, that ability to sit still and listen to myself and God. Recently someone asked me if, after my uncle died, I was ever angry with God. There's no good way for me to answer that question without sounding saccharine, but no, I wasn't. I knew God was sitting with me in silence, because that was all I could take at the moment. I was a humming ball of nerves, but God was very much present in that time.

Peace, however, was not present. Peace evaporated.

Oddly enough, one of the most anxiety-inducing places for me was the liturgy. I was convinced that I would pass out during Mass. No reason. I just knew it would happen. (It didn't.) Before the new translation of the Roman Missal (the prayers used during Mass) was implemented a year ago, during the Our Father the priest used to say, "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety."

As someone with anxiety issues, that line stuck with me. Especially when one of the priests at the abbey presided, who was fond of saying, "protect us in our anxiety." I liked that. We aren't freed from anxiety; nor should we be. When ordered rightly, anxiety can be a helpful thing. But when anxiety had taken over my reactions to everything, I needed to hear that I could be protected in my anxiety; being protect from anxiety hadn't worked.

With the new translation of the Roman Missal, that line has been changed. It now reads, "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress." It's not quite the same, but what struck me on Sunday as the presider recited these words was "grant peace in our days."

I've always thought that was a sweeping, Miss America kind of statement. "What do you hope for?" "World peace!" Well, who doesn't?

But this week, these words I've heard countless times fell differently on my ears. "Grant peace in our days." Here. This day. Grant peace. It might not be the resounding peace we should all be striving to create in this war-torn, violence-filled, life-negating world. It's not magic peace. Maybe we are granted the peace that gets us from one moment to the next, the peace that helps us see that what seems big and scary isn't all that big or all that scary.

It's the little peace we experience that helps us to build an overwhelming peace in which war, violence, and death—not to mention anxiety—hold no power.