The sky is falling

Sometimes I wonder how or why my children have certain personality traits. All three of our girls are far more frilly and squeal-ly than I can recall ever being. I can’t trace their love for dance or their flair for the dramatic back to my side of the family tree. Likewise, my easygoing husband can’t link himself to their energy or intensity. But there are other times when he or I see something in their personalities that we have to take full responsibility for, like it or not. And watching them when some form of anxiety reveals itself is like looking directly into a mirror.

Our middle child is our most chronic worrier and has been since a very young age. One summer when she was only four, she grew concerned that her younger, more free-spirited sister was going to eat the “poison berries,” as she called them, on the holly bush that lines our driveway. Granted, with a toddler who enjoyed putting foreign objects in her mouth, it was a valid concern. But when we were outside our tiny preschooler would often obsess about the matter. She would even tell me hours later, “I just wish we could cut down that holly tree.”

Her concerns are different these days as are the things that worry the other two girls. But it always pains me when any one of them frets deeply and needlessly about matters outside of their control. I truly hate that anxiety is—at least in part—hereditary.

I have an old picture that serves as a reminder of my own tendencies to fret. Not surprisingly, I was Chicken Little in a school play in kindergarten several decades ago.

I think it can be argued that I looked as much like a lion as a chicken, but that’s beside the point. If you’re familiar with the story at all you’ll remember that Chicken Little gets hit in the head by an acorn falling off a tree and is convinced from there on out that, “The sky is falling!”

Essentially, Chicken Little is hysterical over her mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Sadly, it could probably be said that I was typecast for this role at the tender age of six. And in more ways than I’d like to admit, I’m just as likely to make a pretty convincing Chicken Little some thirty-five years later. I just don’t have a costume to show for it.

I don’t like like being known as high-strung and/or anxious. But it’s part of who I am and how I am. And apparently, it’s partly who and how my girls are knitted together as well.

BUT—and this is a big turning point in how I think about this topic—as of very recently, I have new perspective on this part of them and me and maybe you, too, if you can relate.

I listened to a sermon last week (via this podcast) that frames anxiety as a blessing rather than a curse. As he was wrapping up a 6-week long series on anxiety, Doug Banister suggests that God uses anxious people for the benefit of us all.

Wait. What? This might serve some purpose? How?

He tells a story about a study where gorilla researchers wanted to see how anxiety affected the chimpanzee population. As part of the study the researchers removed those they had determined to be the most anxious chimpanzees from their habitat. Soon after they did so, they were alarmed to discover that the rest of the chimpanzees died. It turns out, the whole group needed those anxious chimpanzees to warn them of dangers and help keep them safe.

The point of sharing that tragic story, Banister explains, is to encourage those of us who struggle most with anxiety to view it as a gift from God and an opportunity to serve others. He mentions how so many of our artists struggle with deep insecurities and chronic anxieties. Yet they are able to produce great art not in spite of, but because of their heightened sensitivity to things around them. Much like the anxious chimps, prophets and poets have a way of warning and informing us.

Of course anxiety can be crippling. But as Banister powerfully reminds us, it can also be enabling. It enables us to see and hear and experience the world more acutely. To feel more deeply. As he notes: anxiety makes us more sensitive people. And sensitive people can be a gift to the world.

Interestingly, in Disney’s sci-fi remake of the Chicken Little story, Chicken Little is right about the sky. After more than a year of heartache as his dad and his townspeople ridicule him and question his sanity concerning the “falling sky,” it’s eventually revealed that he isn’t crazy. His keen awareness of what hit him and his resulting hysterics actually end up saving the whole town from an alien invasion.

I like that storyline much better.

If you’re a Chicken Little—or if you happen to be married to one, or parent one, or love one— take heart. It turns out, the world needs a little more sensitivity.