Turning from Anxiety to Trust

Like most people, I’ve had my fair share of anxiety. For instance, I have gone through a season of social anxiety due to some legitimate rejections I’ve faced leading to some illegitimate fears of future rejections. I have had anxiety from being so far from family at times, and anxiety over my pregnancies. Sometimes it has been anxiety over just general day to day problems like whether I am being the mom my kids deserve or wondering how I’ll meet a deadline. Sometimes the worry was warranted, sometimes it was an overreaction, but all of it paled in comparison to the anxiety I felt when Ada was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

Initially, there was a brief period right after diagnosis in which I kind of gave myself a pep talk. I was sure we could do it… if I just organized the cupboard to accommodate her supplies, menu planned weeks ahead, and took meticulous notes on how every food affected her blood sugar, I was sure I would have life with diabetes in the mix feeling close to normal life in no time.

But what you can’t plan for, what nobody can explain to you unless you have lived it, is what it feels like the moment you do a finger stick on your baby and the glucometer reads 42, 56 or just LOW. The first several times, you panic (but try not to let it show,) make the child sit, drink a juice, and wait, all the while wondering if she will pass out or seize.

In those early days, it happened often. Ada’s insulin dosage coming out of the hospital was far too aggressive, and we had to scale it back several times before the problem abated. In the interim, we felt like we could potentially be a heartbeat away from an emergency situation at any given time. And the worst part was always at night, when she wasn’t awake to notice the symptoms of a low blood sugar. We often did 2am finger checks. Occasionally we wouldn’t because her blood sugar was high enough at bedtime to let her get some much-needed rest. Regardless, every morning, I would go to her room and check on her first, praying she was okay, and when my anxiety was really high, praying she was alive.

Just like any previous season of anxiety in my life, Philippians 4:6, would come to mind:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

But unlike other times, I questioned how. How could I let go of my anxiety when it is my child’s life on the line? Sometimes, I felt like my inner voice would just be screaming, how, HOW do I do that? How do I live that scripture out in this situation?

Then one day, about a month after diagnosis, we got this beautiful package in the mail with a three-month supply of the Dexcom g6, a continuous glucose monitor. It has a tiny wire inserted under the skin that measures Ada’s blood sugar and reports it to her phone which in turn shares the data with her daddy’s phone and mine. Not only does it report her blood sugar every five minutes, but it also shows a graph indicating whether it is going up or down. It alarms if her blood sugar is too high or low, or if there is a significant rise or fall. There is no other adjective I could use to describe it better than life-changing. It lessened our anxiety so much, knowing the alarms would wake us if she dipped too low during the night. That little piece of technology gave me the freedom to sleep through the night for the first time in several weeks.

As we started out with the Dexcom, not knowing how far the Bluetooth signal would reach, we began with the receiver and phone in Ada’s room with her. Aaron and I were following her trend on our phones as we watched a movie one night, watching her blood glucose trickle down until we finally decided she needed some juice. What I found when I went in Ada’s room was nothing short of heartbreaking. While my anxiety was finally easing, it turned out that Ada’s anxiety was not. I found her sitting up in bed at 10 pm with the light from her phone illuminating her sweet face. She explained that she knew she was going to need juice soon, so she had been watching her phone waiting for the inevitable, worrying instead of sleeping.

I gave her the juice and then we had a little talk. I told her, “You don’t have to watch your phone. Mommy and daddy are always watching it, or have our phone right next to us while we sleep. We want you to rest knowing we won’t let anything happen to you.” I gave her a hug and stepped out of the room when I felt deep in my soul what God was telling me. He said, “this is exactly how I feel about you.”

What a beautiful thing. You see, the Dexcom gives me the ability to see past trends and almost predict the future, but it is flawed, and sometimes fails. But God knows the past and the future all the time, and he never fails. Just like my reassurance to Ada, he is watching all the time and caring for us because he loves us, because we are his children.

To be honest, I still have moments of worry when Ada is sick or when we have had to “drive blind” without the Dexcom for a while. There have even been times when the Dexcom failed overnight and I have flown out of bed not knowing what her blood sugar was for the past several hours while I slept. But that conversation with Ada was pivotal, and I worry much less knowing that God loves her more than I ever could. If I sleep through alarms or the Dexcom fails, God neither slept nor failed, and I rest in that.

I now understand Philippians 4:6 from a parent’s perspective. A loving Daddy/God says to us, “Rest. Trust in me. Your problems are not too big for me. I’m always taking care of you.” And I do trust him, because unlike this parent, God has never failed his children, and he’s not about to start now.