By: Deanna Drogan

I must start this blog post by repenting. God planted this idea in my heart over a year ago and in usual Deanna fashion I have selfishly procrastinated until a convicting moment in the shower (those happen to me often) where I felt the tug to just start somewhere.

The funny thing about anxiety is that when you are in it, you do not want to talk about it because you do not want ANYONE to find out you are struggling with it. Isn’t that just like the enemy to make one of our best solutions one of our biggest fears?

The one person in my life who knows the ins and outs of my struggle with anxiety is my mom. In fact, she probably knows more than she wants to know. I remember having a conversation with her one day about how some of the best relief I have had from bouts of anxiety have been from talking to some one else who also knows this to be a struggle for them. Then we got onto the subject of Alcoholics Anonymous and how maybe I was onto something. Perhaps similar to how an addict can find a some form of relief from talking with others who share similar struggles, people battling anxiety also benefit from this.

Perhaps this might even be…Biblical?

Something that the Lord has been teaching me lately is that a great way to combat a stronghold in your life is to figure out a way to glorify Him through it. Think about it. If we are going to walk through pain, why not find a way to take advantage of it and use it for good? If the enemy’s strategy is to target you with a specific struggle, and then you begin to use that very struggle to proclaim the name of Jesus, the enemy would be absolutely stupid to continue to target you with that struggle.

I first started struggling with anxiety in middle school. I saw no way out, no way forward, and worst of all, no purpose to the struggle whatsoever. Not until 6 years later when I found myself on a stage talking to a room of middle school and high school girls about how God brought me out of it. There is purpose in your pain. Perhaps you were made to talk about it. Don’t allow your pain to be worthless.

When I walk through seasons of darkness and hardship, I tend to become so focused on my problem that I forget to shift my focus onto thinking about what God is teaching me and how He wants to use me through it.

About two and a half years ago I moved to the Washington, D.C. area from Charlotte, NC for my dream job. After graduating college I wanted to do many different things. I wanted to write, do communications, do ministry, do politics (crazy right?) –and little did I know that in my two years of living back at home in Charlotte after graduation that God was preparing a job opportunity that would check all of those boxes. When the opportunity arose I knew without a doubt through many bizarre details, spoken words, and confirmations (makes for a whole other blog post) that this was where He was leading me. So with that, I willingly moved to the area also known as “the swamp” and to my surprise ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.

The movies always really glamorize life in your 20s–living in a big city, grabbing taxi and heading to a press conference in stilettos after stopping by that posh bakery for a latte on-the-go. Not going to lie, I have experienced actual moments like these which has led to mounds of imposter syndrome often. Maybe not the stilettos part actually, I tend to lean more towards a block heel. I am so grateful for the experiences God has given me.

What I didn’t expect heading into this season was all of the unknown that would come along with it. Post-graduation is something that no one prepares you for. The fact that we spend more time in school learning more about the pythagorean theorem rather than learning how to actually live and function as an adult is something that I think needs to be addressed. All our lives we have known what is next. After elementary school comes three years of middle school, and after middle school comes four years of high school, and after high school comes four years of college, and then BAM, you’re on your own figuring out the rest– good luck!

I don’t do so well with transition. In fact when I went through my first bad season of anxiety it was right after transitioning out of my comfortable elementary bubble where I considered myself to be one of the most popular gals on the playground at recess and into a large middle school where I hardly saw my friends throughout the day and one of my best friends was the school nurse. Satan always knows when to strike, typically it is when we are vulnerable and for me seasons of transition tend to be vulnerable times.

When I moved to D.C., I didn’t know that anxiety would creep back into my life in full force. Throughout college, it was up and down and when I moved back home after graduating it was once in a blue moon. But when I moved to D.C., a time of big transition in so many ways, the devil knew it was a great opportunity to take an incredible opportunity and important season of life, and see how he could find ways to sabotage it and mess with my head. He has not been fully successful. While being one of the hardest seasons of my life, it has also simultaneously been one of the most incredible seasons.

This is uncomfortable for me to write, but if it is worth someone finding even just a glimmer of hope and comfort in knowing that they are not alone, it is more than worth it. Within the first couple of months of me moving here, I had a bad panic attack in a public setting. I am sure that it was so much worse in my head than it actually was to the people around me, but it stuck with me and led to much embarrassment, anger with myself, and worst of all, the fear that it would happen again. This has led to a whole challenging season of mental gymnastics. Essentially it is almost like I have a fear of fear. Sounds ridiculous right? But when you are in it, it feels nearly impossible to reason with the anxious thoughts.

I have pleaded with the Lord to take this away or to show me the steps on how to get out of this horrible mental pattern so that I can freely do the things that I love to do without having to deal with this fear. I have times of relief, but then I find it comes back again and because of that, I have to believe that the Lord has some kind of significant purpose in it. If He wanted to, He could snap His fingers and take this battle away, but if there is anything I know about God, its that there is always a lesson and more times than not, our reason for pain might not even be so much about us, but about someone else.

Revelation 12:11 says “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.”

We were not meant to keep our stories locked away in the closet. Isolation only fuels our struggles. I often wonder how many people would be free of certain battles if they only knew that the person next to them was struggling with the same or a similar thing. Another one of my favorite verses is 1 Corinthians 10:13 ” No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” Specifically I love that common to mankind part. Satan LOVES to make us think that out of the 8 billion people in the world that you are the ONLY one dealing with your battle.

I am not really sure where God will take this blog, but I believe that it’s time to stop wasting this season of anxiety and actually use it to glorify God. That’s why we are here anyways rights? Counter to what the world tells us, our lives are not about our own happiness and comfort all the time. If anything, Jesus is the ultimate picture of that. He came to the Earth knowing that His ultimate purpose would lead to great amounts of suffering. Suffering that would lead to our freedom and to His Father’s glory.

Eventually I would love to create some kind of community for people battling anxiety to have a platform or space to talk about it with each other. I am still not exactly sure what that will look like, but for now I want to write about the things that God has been teaching me through this season with the intention of hopefully bringing encouragement to someone facing something similar. They are things that I might not have learned had I not been walking through this. A big lesson has been learning just how important quiet time is and how much all my life, I have relied on people or other things to maintain my relationship with God.

I want you to know that whatever you are walking through, whether it is anxiety or something else God sees you and He loves you. He is teaching you things that you might not even be able to see yet. Have you considered the different ways you could use your hardship to glorify Him and potentially bring hope to someone else? A pastor I follow on Instagram, Shane Pruitt, posted a graphic recently that said “Often, your most effective ministry will be birthed out of your deepest suffering.” Something that often drives me absolutely crazy is when someone who has not even come close to experiencing something that you are experiencing tries to give you advice about it. I am sure many do it with such good intentions. But more times than not, the answer to battling anxiety is not to “just try and relax.” I wish it was that easy! I am not saying that God cannot use people who haven’t experienced your struggle to pour into you and to offer you amazing Godly insight/wisdom. BUT how much more impactful is it to hear from someone who HAS walked in your shoes and knows what it is like to see the other side?

There is so much more I want to say, but I am realizing that this is going very long and I need to have more content in order to keep this consistent. So with that I give you, the FearLESS blog.