Few people in my life understand the importance of Whisper Creek. It is more than a blog. In many ways, it is not even a real place.
It is where I turn off the crazy world and listen only to the natural world. It is where I sit barefoot in the grass surrounded by my animals and my God and watch my world go by.
At Whisper Creek, I wonder more about what the little bug walking across the dirt is thinking, than about how I am going to pay the bills. I can laugh as the dogs romp and giggle at the little noises my guinea pigs make as they graze on the grass surrounding me.
I close my eyes and hear the birds sing and the wind caress the willow tree. And I hear the water as it tickles the stones in the creek that flows in my mind.
And as wonderful as that sounds, it pales until you hear the necessity behind it.
Since I was a small child, my life has been ruled by panic attacks. Growing up, nearly every morning I woke up afraid. As much as I loved to learn, leaving the safety of my home and being in a crowd was overwhelmingly terrifying for me. Academically I excelled, socially I struggled. What seemed to come so naturally for everyone else, was a victory, if I accomplished it. Engaging in conversation, staying after school for an activity, being a part of a group....it was all too much.
When I finally went off to college, I was amazed. I intentionally chose a college at least an hour away from home so I would be forced to get away from my safety net. I met and married an awesome guy who was also a minister. He did everything he could to help me with the anxiety, but being a pastors wife brought social challenges too much for me to handle. The many dinners in restaurants during which I felt trapped in a crowd sent me to the bathroom violently sick and I learned to associate eating in a social setting with fear and nausea. I spent many years of our marriage unable to leave the house at all. Walking to the mailbox was frightening.
After our divorce, I did something no one expected me to do. I left home. I went 2000 miles away from home in fact. I thought if I could start over in a place where people did not know my past...did not know that anxiety follows me everywhere I go, then I could overcome. And I did...for a while.
Suddenly, I was able to go places, to see new things. My biggest victory was in being able to go into restaurants without panicking. I was able to have my own business, to travel, to go into homes and meet new people. I was able to shine and be the person I wanted to be.
But it was too easy. The ball must drop sometimes I suppose. I was back in Tennessee a little over a year when the first panic attack in many years hit me. I was over an hour from home with no medication to stop that panic, no place to hide. I had just left a restaurant and sat in the back seat of a friends car ready to throw up. The fear in me was indescribable. Up until that point my longest lasting panic attack was three hours, this one lasted six.
Over the years I have learned to use my imagination to take me someplace to find peace long enough to bring me out of this terror. That night, I found no peace for many hours. My instinct is to get into the smallest, darkest, quietest place I can get and curl up in a ball and wait it out. One of the most difficult parts of the panic is that all of your senses are overwhelmed. Every noise hurts, every touch hurts, every image hurts, every smell makes you deathly sick. Any sense that is triggered also triggers intense fear that you feel in every nerve fiber in your body. You can't breathe, but you can hear your heart beat. Some people are afraid they will die. I beg to die.
People have asked me what I am afraid of. It would be easy for me if it was something out there, something tangible that I could point to. If I could see it, I could fight it. I could avoid it. I could make peace with it. But it is something inside me. Where it comes from, I don't know. What caused it, I don't know. But it is a part of me. Except for a brief few years, I do not know me without it. Perhaps it is a fear of being afraid. If but for one moment, I could let you see how intense the fear is, you would understand. It is a fear of knowing that there is a great likelihood that at some moment, you will be faced with it again.
Up until the night of my six hours of terror, I had forgotten what it felt like to be on the verge of panic at any moment. Now I have difficulty remembering what it is like to feel normal and to be normal. I forget what it feels like to feel safe.
But I don't give up. I have chosen a job that puts me in on of the most social places in town. A place where I must interact with customers and be in the public that terrifies me so. Most people who know me now, have had little clue that this is an issue for me. Its hard for them to believe that a social phobia controls me as it does. Its because my momma didn't raise a quitter.
It was my brother, who himself has dealt with similar issues that encouraged my imagination to conquer my fears. It started out with a purple hippo who would poop on whatever made me afraid and the thought of it would make me laugh, and I could get control of myself. That was his idea and a grand one it was.
It has now evolved to Whisper Creek. The great thing about feeling such intense fear is that when you feel peace, you REALLY feel it. You embrace it. You cuddle with it. Your laughter feels so free, your moment so special. And you understand, and I mean REALLY understand grace. The grace to have even a moment of peace makes you so incredibly grateful.
I am not angry that this is my thorn, this is my burden. I will ruin my life if I focus on that. I am thankful for the imagination to go to Whisper Creek anytime I want to. I am thankful that FINALLY I can meet my God there. I still say very little to him, and he to me, but we are together. There is nothing like sitting by a stream and looking for frogs and fish with your Lord. Or pointing out an insect and thinking, "Gee, God, how did you come up with that?"
And in those moments, I am renewed and strong enough to go back to real life.
That, my friends, is the importance of Whisper Creek.
And you are welcome here.
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