Social Anxiety and the God who Held Mary
Our van turned into the dirt parking lot of our church. The steeple towered above us as we settled into a parking space between two other vehicles. All the while, my stomach wrenched inside me and threatened to vomit my breakfast onto the floor. Tremors shook me. I gripped the armrests and closed my eyes.
“I can’t do this,” I cried.
My husband reached over and held my hand. “We can go home. It’s up to you.” My heart raced in my chest as I looked up at the people trickling in through the open glass doors of our church. More tears tumbled from my cheeks onto my jeans.
In that moment, my theology warred against my angst: My love for the local church versus my social anxiety.
Over the years, I’ve struggled through intense bouts of social anxiety. These seasons seem to attack me out of nowhere; months will go by where it takes every bit of willpower I possess to leave the house or have guests come to ours. What makes these seasons so hard is looking back and knowing how easy it used to be to leave the house and having no idea when or if that normalcy will ever return.
God must have rows of my bottled tears by now—tears that I shed over my anxiety where I begged him to take it all away. Yet the anxiety remains. I don’t understand why, and in those moments of looking at my life and wondering why God’s hand has not lifted the anxiety from me, doubt has snaked around my heart. Where is God’s love? Why has he abandoned me? Hyperventilating in the van, gagging in the bathroom, pacing in the basement, sobbing in my bedroom—each time I begged God for relief, and he said no. Each time I fought and pressed on, trying to keep myself from drowning in the whirlpool of anxiety.
That day in the van, I didn’t have any fight left in me. As the anxiety swirled in my body and mind, I felt as though I was caught in the bathtub drain, and I didn’t have the breath or strength to keep swimming against its currents.
Months have gone by since that morning at church, and my social anxiety still had a death grip on me. I had fought back, pushed through, and used every tool therapy had given me. But still it raged; still it threatened to drown me. And with each outing, I felt like its grip was growing ever stronger.
* * *
Leading into Thanksgiving here in Canada, I tried to keep any thoughts of holiday expectations out of my mind. Every time a reminder slipped in, like light streaming between moving curtains, my stomach flipped and my heart stuttered. How would I do it? How would I gather with family and eat a meal with them without dissolving into a quivering puddle of tears? I pulled the curtains tighter together to shut out the light.
The days ticked by and I found myself sitting in the van driving to my in-laws’ house. I fidgeted with my shirt. I listened to the music. I took deep breaths. We turned into the driveway and marched up the walkway to the house.
Inside my in-laws’ home, I was aware of only the smallest flicker of anxiety. I chatted with my family and watched our children play. We ate, and I helped clean up from the meal. The little ones dug in the sandbox and explored the backyard. An uncle chased and tickled my oldest son. Inexplicably, the anxiety kept its distance from me this time, and my smiles and laughter weren’t fake or strained.
* * *
At first glance, as I reflect on these two scenarios, I’m tempted to remember one as an example of God’s faithfulness and the other as abandonment. For some reason, God roused himself to help me during the Thanksgiving meal, but in the van in the church parking lot he shoved me aside. How are we supposed to make sense of these instances when our prayers go unanswered and no life ring is tossed to us in our greatest need?
Mary, the mother of Jesus, received the greatest answer not just to her prayers, but the prayers of her entire people: The Messiah was finally coming. Mary felt such joy when Gabriel announced that she would bear the long-awaited, serpent-crushing Savior that she burst into song. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” she sang, “for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name” (Luke 1:46–49). She deeply felt the favor of God.
But we know the sword that would one day pierce her own soul (Luke 2:35). A little over thirty years later, she crumbled at the foot of the cross in John’s arms as she beheld her firstborn son hang bloody and beaten on the Roman cross. Yet in her grief, her dying Savior did not forget her: “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (John 19:26–27). And we know that Jesus took care of her in an even greater way than this: By his death and resurrection, her sins—and the sins of all his people—were covered by his sacrifice.
Jesus didn’t look at Mary with heartless stoicism. He didn’t tell her to get over it because he is sovereign. Instead, he beheld his mother in her inevitable suffering and still sought to comfort her in her grief. All the while, he bore the sins of his people upon his beaten back.
That day in the van to church, I slammed my fists on the dashboard and demanded God to show his love to me. How could he claim to love me and allow anxiety to cripple me? In making these demands, however, I forgot that my Savior had already put his great love on display for me: In coming to earth as a tiny babe to live the perfect life I could not—in the same broken world I now tread—and to die the sinner’s death I deserved. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). His love for me remained, I needed only to lift my eyes to the cross on the steeple of our church or step inside that building to partake of communion to be reminded of it.
Knowing the great suffering of our Savior on our behalf, we can trust that his love for us will never falter. Why would God abandon us in our earthly suffering, when he gave the greatest sacrifice to draw us near to him? If his love went so far as to die on the cross so our sins could be forgiven, we can trust that he is good and ever-present in our anxiety too. When we were haters of holiness and lovers of sin, he died for us (Rom. 5:8). Paul declared that his love surpasses our knowledge (Eph. 3:19). Even when we lack understanding, we can trust the love of this Savior to go with us even into the whirlpool of anxiety.
I thought that Thanksgiving meal was the only place where I saw God’s faithfulness. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. They are both accounts of God’s steadfast love holding me fast. In one story, he drew near to me in my sorrow and comforted me as I grieved my fractured mind. In the other story, he relieved my anxiety so I could enjoy the restful visit with my family that I had longed for. God remained my constant, unchanging, faithful Savior through both circumstances.
I could give you a few practical steps for battling social anxiety this holiday season—like deep breathing exercises or engaging your senses. But I’ll leave that to the professionals, and instead encourage you to seek therapy and find the individual techniques and strategies that best work for you. What I do want to do is encourage you to see all situations through the lens of God’s unrelenting love—not just when relief comes, but in the pounding waves of anxiety. Just as he held Mary both in his announcement to her of Jesus’s birth and when she wept at the foot of his cross, so he tenderly holds you too.
I won’t promise you that God will wipe out your anxiety and that with enough faith and prayer you’ll navigate the upcoming Christmas celebrations with unhindered peace. But I can promise that his love will hold you and carry you amidst whatever fires you must pass through to sit at the table.
Lara d’Entremont is a wife and mom to three from Nova Scotia, Canada. Lara is a writer and learner at heart—always trying to find time to scribble down some words or read a book. Her desire in writing is to help women develop solid theology they can put into practice—in the mundane, the rugged terrain, and joyful moments. You can find more of her writing at laradentremont.com.