Terrors of the Night

My husband & I have made numerous choices over the past couple years that we believe were positive and God-inspired. We undertook them with noble motivations to help others and contribute positively to our church and workplaces. Naively, we thought these choices would be easy to walk out and that we would live in a bubble of blissful existence as we followed our convictions.

We were completely unprepared for the challenges we began to face almost immediately. Our household income dropped, while our workloads increased. My fitness level lowered due to the new demands on my life despite all efforts to keep it a priority. My husband's sense of worth diminished as he felt the loss of income power & prestige that he had enjoyed in his previous career. We had less emotional energy left at the end of the day for our family & social life. Conflicts developed in all our relationships as we struggled to adjust. Sadly, our time and desire to pursue God became less and less even though we knew that this was key to our success.

Almost immediately I began having panic attacks in the middle of the night. I would mentally rehearse all the tasks I had for the next day and try to figure out how I would learn and do all that was necessary. I didn't want to fail. I didn't want to gain weight or be unhealthy. I didn't want to lose our hopes and dreams for our future. I would worry over my children's well-being and my marriage. It was a repetitive spiraling of negative thoughts that woke me out of sleep and kept me suspended in a succession of nightmares and anxiety.

I was alarmed at what I thought was simply a reaction to stress and did what I could to alleviate it. I stopped having caffeine and began focusing on just about every healthful behaviour I could manage. Why wasn't my anxiety going away? If we were in God's will, why did we feel like we had destroyed our lives? Why were we so unhappy? Maybe we had made a mistake or maybe we weren't the right caliber of people for the jobs we had undertaken.

My fears and despair followed me into the daytime too. I voiced my concerns and often had extreme emotional reactions to what was going on around me. I got angry & yelled at those around me. I cried. I retreated into depression. I longed for the peace I had experienced in the two years before our whole life had changed.

The odd thing is that I cannot say we have suffered in any tangible way or had any tragedy strike us. Many individuals are without jobs or are living out truly negative situations. Most people look at Shawn & I as having the perfect life and would want to trade places. We would remind ourselves that we had many things to be grateful for and that life was indeed getting better, but nothing was penetrating this sense of impending doom and the increasing desire to run away.

What I realize now is that we had stepped into a spiritual battle that we were ill-prepared for. We had not disciplined our thoughts, words, attitudes, and actions to a place where we could recognize and fend off the evil influence that sought to destroy us. Like the characters in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy we were being poisoned by lies and we were losing hold of the truth.

I believe that there is a devil that wants to kill, steal and destroy all that is good. I believe he actively targets those that present the biggest threat to him. I believe that it is our job to recognize his attacks and to resist them. I had been calling out to God for help as I suffered these terrors during the night and faced difficult emotions in the day and I knew that if I hung on and didn't let go, help would come.

It did.