The Virus of Anxiety

It was 4:30am. 

I believe I was in the hospital parking garage, although I’m a little foggy on the details. That particular week, I was kind of foggy all week, to be honest. I wasn’t fully ill, but it seemed like I couldn’t quite conquer some lurking physical malady, which in turn was leaking into my soul.

“Jesus,” I said in despair, “I have to tell you that I don’t even want to do the right thing today.” 

I felt like I should make things clear.

I didn’t want to walk into the hospital. I didn’t want to say “Good Morning” to the  other nurses.  I didn’t want to face my coworkers.  I didn’t want to be nice to my patients.  I didn’t want to answer my phone. I didn’t want to deal with painful drama from the day before.

I would have given anything to be buried in my microbiology textbook on my carpet in my living room, basking in the comfortable study of bacteria and viruses. Even the dank smell of fungi growing nearby in a cardboard box could not have diminished my delight. 

Oh for my E. coli instead of this day!

Not that I thought Jesus could relate, just that He should be aware of the situation, that a certain 34-year-old nurse in Elkhart Indiana did not want to do His will on this particular day.  My stomach was tight, my shoulders tense, my heart sick. 

Instantly, the answer came. The words were barely to the roof of my car when I thought of Jesus in Gethsemane, saying to His Father, “I really don’t want to do this.”

Oh! I thought. 

I had forgotten that there was a time that Jesus didn’t want to move forward either. He can relate.

…But I will do it if that’s what you want… not my will, Jesus went on. 

Gathering courage, I walked down the long cement walkway through the two sets of sliding doors up the G elevator and down the long hallway to where I let myself into the locker room by punching my code into the keypad.

I had actually managed to arrive to work in good time, and I still felt restless so I stepped away to a private room for a few brief words of prayer, again. I felt wiped out and drained and almost as if I couldn’t pray despite the reassurance that Jesus Christ had felt everything I was feeling only so much more. Sometimes when I get in just such a tight spot I text my sisters or friends and asked them to pray for me. But it was 4:30! I couldn’t do that!

Everyone was asleep. (Well, most people.)

No one was awake then, either, in Gethsemane. Had I really thought that Jesus could not relate? What a comfort to know that on both of my points of concern that morning, he could.
Then I remembered something else. Jesus Christ was never afraid. He did not want to proceed in Gethsemane, and he was very sorrowful, but I cannot pick up on a trace of fear. 

I was afraid. I was afraid of the drama from the day before. I was anxious because I didn’t know what to do next. That tight stomach and shoulders, that crippling incapacitation, that sick heart…. fear! 

Jesus was never afraid, I told myself, and that was the courage I needed to walk back to work. 

After my on-duty days were over, I returned to my textbook and my petri dishes and relocated my fungi into a warmer room.  (All harmless by the way, including the E. coli and Staph.)

I transported drops of live Staphylococcus and E. coli culture into various mediums, running the mouths of the test tubes through the flame of a tea light in my homemade laboratory also known as my kitchen table.  I shelved the test tubes and petri dishes in my 22°C incubator also known as the cupboard beside my refrigerator. I tweezed small discs of antibiotic onto the staph bacteria to measure their effectiveness against it. I wrote up lab reports and took my exam.

In the comfortable world of microbes, my mind reverted to some of the struggles I had faced that week. I asked God to part the confusion and point out to me my flaws. 

And again, almost instantly, I heard the answer. Fear. Anxiety. 

OK, I told myself, let me look that up. I turned to my trusty Thompson chain reference Bible, which is a delightful way to find verses on certain topics. 

I found that there was only one entry for the word anxiety and it was this:

Anxiety, Forbidden.

The scripture accompanying the heading confirmed that this psychological state was in fact forbidden by Jesus Christ, as if it were a bacteria or virus. 

A virus is so small! We inhale them or pick them up when we touch a door knob, and we never know. The virus invades and sets up shop in our healthy cells. 

A virus needs to invade the cells, because it is powerless to reproduce on its own. So it burrows its needlelike head through the wall of a healthy cell, and uses the resources inside the cell for its own purposes, often destroying the cell in the process.

As the virus grows and multiplies by taking over the healthy cells, the host may fall ill. Perhaps their stomach churns or they spike a high fever, or their organs begin to fail and they are incapacitated. In 1918, a flu virus (not to be confused with the common stomach flu) killed 8% of the young adults then alive (millions), most in a few months’ time as it whipped around the globe, targeting 20 and 30-year-olds. [Anderson, Rodney. (2006) Outbreak: Cases in real-world microbiology, page 68.]

If we’re lucky, someone finds a vaccine, a shot of a similar harmless substance that will train the body what to do if the real thing comes. These are so effective in many cases that when the real virus comes, the host won’t even know that they’ve been invaded. Their own body has been trained to fight back before the virus gains a foot hold or starts an epidemic. Instead of having its resources used for the virus, the body is using its  resources to protect itself. Enlightened by the vaccine, the body’s defenses say, “Never fear, I’ve got this. I’ve seen this before!”

But some viruses are smart, and they learn to build defenses against the body’s defenses. So, in the case of the deadly influenzas, the best science can do is prepare a flu vaccine to protect from the most recent bad viruses, hoping that they haven’t changed much since then. 

That incapacitation, that tight stomach,  that failure of crucial internal resources…. these things are familiar to me from my bouts with anxiety. And usually, I don’t know quite what is going on until I fall ill. 

I’ve heard that Satan, like a virus, has no original ideas, only ways to distort and steal what’s already there. Anxiety can’t reproduce in us without invading our own health. It’s weak on its own, but malicious and smart, and it demands the use of our resources. 

What is the vaccine for anxiety? I kept pacing around my homemade laboratory asking God more questions throughout the day. 

Just trust me, the answer seemed to be.

Trust. And by trust? 

Relax. Don’t try to figure life out, because you can’t. Don’t try to be in control, because you’re not. 

“Do you mean,” I asked God, “that you really know everything that’s going on? And you know what to do? And so I don’t have to worry about it?”

(I can’t believe the childish prayers I hear coming out of my mouth these days! But, like the difference between hearing about a viral epidemic like Ebola and actually being part of it, I find my faith much smaller than I may have estimated when it was not the only thing holding me up.)

Relaxing, trusting, giving up my perceived control, these things sting like a needle breaking through skin, like a sore arm. 

But I know what will happen when the next insult comes my way. My trust in God will equip my own personal resources to fight for me, instead of being used against me. God will become my defense and say, “Never fear. I’ve got this. I’ve seen this before!” 

The viruses of sin do mutate and change, getting smarter and smarter. But unlike science, God is always one step ahead, not behind.  He truly has seen it all before.

Anxiety is an epidemic, and we are not big enough for it. I am not smart enough, strong enough, or heathy enough to fight off its malice.  

But God is. He knows exactly what I’ll need when the insult comes. 

Even in that lonely parking garage, despite my anxious fears, when I asked, He answered.

Instantly.

Lord, increase my faith! 
Below… this is turning into my verse for 2017, I think! 

Give me the love that leads the way,

*The faith that nothing can dismay,*

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire.

Let me not sink to be a clod.

Make me thy fuel, flame of God! 

—-Amy Carmichael