I know better than to ask an expert on anxiety and depression to be a guest on our show.
Naturally, just days before my interview with Michelle Lazurek, my computer crashed. I mean dead. So, there I lay. In bed in the middle of the night. Wide awake. Totally stressed, anxious, panicky, pushing back depression and helplessness.
What did I do? I laughed.
Then, I started to pray. Praying always puts me right to sleep. Long before I make it through all eight grandkids.
Michelle Lazurek shares how victory comes out of surrender.Anxiety? Panic over nonessentials? Yep, this is not my first rodeo.
The next morning I checked my stock of yellow legal pads, just in case. But of course, my computer issues melted away.
How Panic and Anxiety Feel
“(Panic is) that constant feeling of fear. That comes in waves,” describes Michelle, “If you can’t get it under control, they (the waves of anxiety) happen more rapidly in succession. To the point where I was feeling like that all day long. And so I couldn’t stop it.”
A pastor’s wife is the last person on earth you’d expect to experience anxiety, panic, and depression. Aren’t pastor’s wives in their own class of spiritual perfection?
“It’s hard for me because I’m a pastor’s wife. My struggles are out there for everyone to see,” Michele shares. “Not only was I struggling with my mental health but they had to tell the church. The leaders had to know.”
In fact, their whole congregation had to know, too, because Michelle needed to take a retreat, an extended leave of absence.
“When you’re not in church for 3 or 4 weeks, people start to ask questions. So we had to tell the church what was going on.”
In this episode, Michelle Lazurek talks about her experience with anxiety, depression, and panic. I also ask her to share insight into how controlling moms pass debilitating perfectionism down to their children. Find more episodes of Fireside Talk Radio.
I Surrender All (Sort of)
Twenty years ago at a rehearsal, the worship team at Michelle’s church all chuckled when their guitar player toyed with a favorite old hymn, I Surrender All. But he changed the words. I Surrender Some.
“We say we surrender all, but we really mean I surrender some,” she laughs.
“I surrender all. But not my marriage. Or my finances. My kids. Or those other areas of our lives that we really don’t want God to really have control over,” she says.
Seriously, we all say we want God to be in charge, but we really hold back a bit. Or maybe a lot.
“Because what if He gives us an outcome that we don’t like. So we sing the hymn but we don’t always mean everything. It’s just the stuff we want to give up,” she adds.
Surrender With Benefits
Michelle felt God nudging her to write about surrender a few years ago. But she wasn’t convinced she knew enough about the topic to do it justice.
She’s an accomplished author with a dozen books to her credit. A self-diagnosed perfectionist, she was used to having her life under control. Her control. READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Cathy Krafve, host of Fireside Talk Radio and author of The Well: The Art of Drawing Out Authentic Conversations and Marriage Conversation: From Coexisting to Cherished. We welcome your stories, ideas, and questions at CathyKrafve.com.
