I escaped the anxiety epidemic, I thought. Until this year.

I didn’t admit depression. Until last year. Only after taking antidepressants did I know the truth of my years of depression.

It’s late September, and anxiety adds itself to my truth. Anxiety feels different than depression, which for me exhibits as heaviness, intense overwhelm, and anger. Instead, a growing undercurrent of angst and tension in my thoughts and feelings came as a surprise—anxiety. I feel resentful about being “the only one who cleans around here,” nervous about irritating my friends, and more grouchy than usual because the kids “never listen to me”—anxiety.

I can’t blame a change in circumstances; life carries on as usual. I have to own an internal landscape of crankiness. In my journal I write, “I’m anxious but somehow I’m not letting it rise up. I’m not connecting well with myself or others. I don’t know what to do with this inner Rubik’s Cube of mental and emotional colors. There is no ‘lining up,’ just a lot of turning and twisting and muttering. I don’t feel depressed or exhausted, just a buzz of not-okay-ness, and fretting about what other people are thinking or doing.”

When my inner world gets uncomfortable, I settle for the companionship of fear. When I settle for fear, I choose to think instead of feeling. If I think rather than feel, I’ll have an an acceptable answer for most questions. If I think rather than feel, I tell myself, I reduce the risk of rejection; I avoid confronting what I don’t understand about myself; I cannot get stuck in feelings. If I think rather than feel, I will be dependable, and that, my friends, is very important.

I fear transience of warm feelings, and permanence of cold feelings.

I fear loss of control. Not measuring up. Disappointing someone. Sigh. Doesn’t that essentially mean I live afraid of life? No wonder I feel anxious. I can’t stop the world and get off.

Now that I know I’m anxious, what’s next? There are too many options: medication or meditation, solitary confinement (okay, that’s more of a wish than a real option), exercise, more coffee or less coffee, structure or flexibility.

I’ve been through this enough times to know fixing is not the loving response. But what is? Does love sit in the feelings? Maybe the loving response is reception—not the kind with cake and punch, but the kind that’s about welcome. Could receiving feelings be different than sitting in feelings? More like open hands and less like sackcloth and ashes?

When I think about setting the emotional tone in myself and in our home, I think of zen peacefulness—wouldn’t it be lovely if I were un-ruffleable?

But love is not only the ocean’s vast calm. It also knows the waves of anger, fear, and bitterness. Is it a ship? A lighthouse? A squawking seagull? What form does love take in the steady pounding of reality?

Perhaps love is the pain of not being in control.

I know well the pain of trying to control, and the aftermath of disconnection when I succeed in control. I am less familiar with the pain of releasing control. This pain is the pain of God’s very existence; the pain of having children who have a choice.

I want to control my children. I really, really want to control them. Also, I don’t want to control them. I know it’s not love, and desperately I want to love them.

I want to feel the raw pain of love rather than the grasping anxiety of control. I want my discomfort to be worthwhile. Let me trade in an obsession with control for the wildness of not being in control. Here my soul will meet with God, inside the terrifying invitation to feel. I will feel the risks of rejection, unknowing, and transience. They accompany my choice to love, and indicate that I have chosen to feel. God is here. Let control crash and burn. Loving is enough.

Also, I will medicate, and meditate, and drink more or less caffeine.

Shout out to my friend KL for the Rubik’s Cube analogy, and to Julia Cameron for the invitation to name fears that compel me to think instead of feeling.