your typical midnight panic attack

I get scared a lot. Not by rustling noises or creepy strangers, but by the fact that way too often I become aware of the fact that I’m floating. I’m going about my day, doing exactly what I need to do to earn a paycheck, to pay the bills, to buy the groceries, so I can have some fun and then start all over. I get so panicked in my heart and head that I want to scream, I think I’m screaming. Bloody murder in fact. In all honestly it feels like I am completely and totally freaking out in my mind and my body is sitting there like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cukoos Nest. Numb. What happens is that I simultaneously realize that I have tons and tons of thoughts running through my head.
Should we have a baby, should I work more on that book I started writing last summer, don’t I have 3 books I’m reading right now that I can’t seem to finish, I should be at the gym. I’m not getting any younger. Why don’t we have more friends? Why don’t I want to spend more quality time with the ones that I have? I panic like this until I shut down and do nothing, and then it starts all over later.

What is it about doubt that has me wide awake in the middle of the night sitting at my dining room table with tears where sleep should be? I have the dimmer turned down so there is just a hush of light cast over me, like Sinatra on a barstool at the Sands singin’ One More For The Road. The soft glow of the yellow bulb enlightens me but begs me to forget that there is more to this room, which isn’t hard to do right now as I don’t need much convincing to imagine myself alone with nothing to anchor me. If you have never fully given doubt the respect that it deserves, please do, take it seriously. Not even nine hours ago I was filled with confidence in my writings, I knew what I was aiming for and I had a good start to get there. But now, just those few hours later I can’t bring myself to go to sleep because I’m afraid I’m not qualified to do that. What a deadly venom that doubt and uncertainty can be to a writer, to everyone really.

So I sit here, and I try to write these feelings down because I know that everything is subject matter, that any and everything can have a lesson buried under its skin. Even writing about feeling worthless as a writer has its redemptive quality. I can’t help but think about what my friend said when she described the calling to write as being an obedience issue. I believe that. God has lit a flame in my chest and no matter how much I might fight against myself to extinguish it, it burns, it burns brighter with every bucket of water I dowse on it. But it doesn’t burn like a normal flame, it flickers in odd colors, in greens and blues, dashing sideways instead of up as it knows it should. That’s what my writing feels like. When I finally stop fighting the urge to write and do it, it never looks or acts like I expect it to. but I write anyway. I write and I hope while already knowing that God is here, happy that I listened for once and was obedient. In a funny twist of fate, as I looked at the light bulb and debated which tropical color to use as its adjective Chris Martin began playing a solo version of his band Coldplays’ hit “Yellow.” Just another love letter in the lunchbox from God telling me that He’s here, He loves me, and He’s not leaving.