The yard is a sea of dandelions. I haven’t been able to cut the lawn for a few days and the grass has grown tall. The dandelions, too, have grown tall enough to bloom with their bright, sunny yellow flowers.
I’ve been sitting on the front doorstep eating my lunch, watching the neighbour’s honeybees taking advantage of the easy meal. The blossoms look pretty much the same to me, one very much like the next. But the honeybees fly, buzzing gently, just above the flowers pausing briefly, hovering over one before dismissing it and moving on. I don’t see it, but I guess they must be able to sense some difference between them because they only land on a select few gathering the pollen before moving on.
Baby faith
The other day Sweet Baby G was here with her parents; she’s not quite 2 years old. She toddled around the yard picking dandelions. She’d grimace a bit and pull the ‘head’ off one then take the two pieces, one in each little hand, and go running back to where her father was standing saying, “Uh oh! Daddy!” It was clear she thought he could fix the broken flower.
She did that more than once. Enough times, really, to know that Daddy couldn’t fix them, but her faith in him never wavered. What finally gave out was not her faith, but her attention span and Sweet Baby G headed for the fish pond, “Gramma, wahder!” (Grandma, water!”)
I’m not sure I’ve ever had faith like that. The kind of faith that allows me to put the broken pieces of life into God’s hands (or man and mankind’s) with complete trust and leave them there to be ‘fixed’. Fixed isn’t the right word. Maybe ‘cared for’ or even ‘carried’ would be better. Whichever word I use, the result has always been the same – I seem determined to carry my own load and solve my own problems.
A heritage of faith
My devout Granny, who came from a multi-generational line of pastors, focused on biblical passages like the parable of the talents and said things like, “God helps those who help themselves.” I always took that saying to mean that if you could do something about a situation, you’d better do it and not sit around expecting God to do what you were capable of doing yourself.
Granny was a German immigrant who came here after World War 1 with her husband and parents; middle-class, city-born business owners suddenly turned farmers – homesteaders in northern Alberta – with virtually no knowledge of farming or even how to survive a Canadian winter. She was a shining example of faith and determination and capability.
My mother, a strong, capable, and independent woman, has always said she never loses sleep over her worries. She says when she goes to bed at night, she gives her worries to God and he can take care of them while she sleeps, and she means that sincerely. I don’t think she’s ever lost sleep because of worrying. I wish.
I grew up in churches with pastors who taught absolute faith and trust in God; leave your worries at the altar. They taught the act of setting down my troubles at the feet of God just to pick them back up again only showed my lack of faith. For years, I felt like a spiritual failure and my anxiety deepened.
I would stand in line-ups for prayer; prayer to be a better parent, a better wife, a better disciple. And still I would lose sleep at night, worrying over every situation where I felt powerless or like I should be intervening, doing something, anything! I worried to the point of muscle-quivering, gut-clenching misery. I felt like a fraud because the faith I claimed to have, the faith that could supposedly move mountains, was nowhere to be found when I needed it most. Often I wasn’t just packing my own troubles either, I was carrying the load for everyone I cared about. That was a problem, too.
The truth is that I have a special talent for mentally concocting worst-case scenarios. In the still of the night, it is easy for me to take a common, everyday problem and turn it into the ultimate disaster movie in my mind. In the dark, my anxiety has control of the thought train running through imaginary fields of beheaded dandelions, convinced I can find a way to fix them all.
Expansion faith
The turning point for me came during a road-trip conversation. It was a seed that was planted almost 20 years ago – longest germination ever! My husband’s sweet aunt (who has become so much more to me) said, “I no longer need organized religion.”
And I thought, well what other kind is there?
Her statement was the catalyst for a period of self-reflection, discovery, and honestly, expansion. Someday, maybe, probably, I’ll tell you more, but for now I can tell you that even though I no longer participate in an ‘organized religion’, my faith and my God are bigger than ever, and my anxiety is getting smaller and smaller. I know that the road I’m on is the right one for me, but maybe not the right one for you. That’s okay. At least, it’s okay with me.
I am learning that I am only responsible for my own journey and no one else’s. I can let go of things more easily because I have begun to accept that I don’t get to decide who learns which lessons or how they learn them. And I am finally figuring out what I can/should fix and what I can’t/shouldn’t. Because of that, I am beginning to find freedom from the anxiety that has plagued me for so long.
Maybe before dandelion season is over, I’ll show our Sweet Baby G how to take those pretty flowers and make a crown. Perhaps she can learn early on that there are other ways to deal with troubles and maybe even how to make beauty from the weeds.
You can read more about my experience living with anxiety here.
