I love the topic of anxiety and reading about it and writing about it. Please, don’t confuse it with mere worry – although of course worrying is part of it. While simplistic, situational anxiety is the reason we use seat belts, the chronically anxious are strapped in, car or no car.

Anxiety is a killer – it kills joy, ambition, truth, and vision. When people are anxious they cannot see, think, hear, or communicate with any reliable sense of accuracy.

Anxiety can lead people down rabbit trials in search of reducing their anxieties only find it spiked by new and unexpected sources.

Anxiety let loose makes victims of as many people in the circle of influence as possible. It’s contagious.

Chronic anxiety is not usually reduced by making different choices or decisions but by understanding and negotiating loyalties – visible and invisible.

While freeze, flight, and fight are often the response to chronic anxiety; distorted protecting and fused caring are both its product too.

So, what may the chronically anxious do?

Connect as deeply and appropriately as possible with family, take time to search for the source, and find a small community of supportive friends who are unafraid to set their boundaries and join you in a journey of growth.    

The Mercury / Friday

For 14 years I have worked at an Episcopal school in Indianapolis.

I wanted this job because it meant that my children could attend a school I could otherwise not afford. And, it’s so close to our home we can hear the bell from our kitchen.

Both sons have completed the entire journey, one from grade 1, the other from when he was 3.

For 50-plus years St. Richard’s Episcopal School has served the greater Indianapolis area by providing a very diverse (from its inception) population of children a fine classic education.

This includes chapel on a very regular basis.

I love chapel and a highlight has always been the regular celebration of Eucharist. For 14 years when it came time for the “passing of the peace” I made a beeline for each of my sons, embraced them, shook hands, or did whatever their developmental stage would permit. I always found it moving. It would ease, even obliterate whatever morning domestic tensions we may have known over forgotten homework, lost books, or who didn’t take the trash out.

Yesterday was the first Eucharist celebration for this school year.

My younger is in high school and the older is at university.

When it came to passing the peace I didn’t know whether to sigh with relief or cry – so I did a little of both, one a little more than the other.