Anxious Anticipation

Finding My Breath Again

Excitement can be a good thing.  Anticipation can be awesome. Expectancy can feel exhilerating.  

Those three words: excitement, anticipation and expectancy can also incite a feeling of being out of control or dread.  A swirl of emotion that in its most intense moment can feel like a tornado sucking you up into a tunnel cloud.

Recently I experienced the two sides of excitement.  My family was accompanying me to the Amy Grant/Michael W. Smith Christmas concert.  The trip to Minneapolis was full of chatter, the car pumped out a “best of” Christmas playlist and to top it all off on the way we saw the most incredible sun set.  It felt like God himself sent a beacon to guide us to the arena.

We shared a wonderful dinner in a restaurant that was decked for the Holidays.  Low lighting and twinkling white lights provided the perfect ambient setting for our …

Once at the arena which seats 19,000 on a good night, we were first met by a lot of empty seats.  This seemed odd and made the dome feel hallow and bare.  Our family prides ourselves with being early so we chalked it up to the Polnaszek 15 and began the ascent to our seats.  Now, I must pause in the story to share that the reason we were all attending was because when my husband had gone on-line to get tickets he had discovered the venue was almost sold out and only nose bleed seats were left.  The normally $100 seats we would purchase were no longer available and $30 seats were left in its place.  We did the quick math realizing that for the same price as our normal evening (which we can only afford every 2 to 3 years) we could take the entire family.  This for me was a dream come true.  To have the chance to introduce my girls to my hero’s music at Christmas time was literally a page out of my “best of” playbook.

So, with great anticipation we climbed the stairs.  The One girl in front and the other behind we chattered as we climbed and climbed and climbed - reading the row letters as they passed below our feet.  When we turned in to the row where our seats were to be found, I was gripped with the most overwhelming sense of fear that I had had for a long time.  I sat in my seat, gripped the arm rests, pressing my eyes closed as tight as they would go.  My girls grabbed on either side of me.  Everyone realized that the anticipation had now changed to dread.  I began to sob.  These cries were not quiet or unassuming, they were loud followed by large gasps of air.  My heart felt like it would pound out of my chest.  My body felt light and heavy all at the same time.  My brain while not able to think about much kept looping the same thought:  “You are never going to leave this seat.  You are going to die in this seat.”  My body was literally contorted so my head faced the back wall and I gripped my arm rest trying to elevate the feeling of falling down, down down to the arena floor hundreds of feet away.

The happiest night of my life had turned into a nightmare.  My husband gently suggested that we go find our way back to the hallway where I could walk and catch my breath.  I remember saying between sobs:  “I don’t know how to get down.  I can’t move.”  And I couldn’t move.  The thought of turning my head to see the height at which I was perches was terrifying.  My incredible family literally formed a human shield like they did in the movie 300 with the human phalanx and guided me back down the stairs.  As I walked down eyes plastered shut led by my husbands voice I could hear hushed sympathy by other concert goers.  

Once safely down in the hallway a kind usher asked how he could help.  That is when my daughter and her boyfriend quickly hustled back to give me a special accommodation ticket.  It was in this moment that I had to accept the fact that I would not return to my old seat and that my new seat was only for me and my husband.  The dream of watching my girls faces as they watched Amy Grant for the first time was over.  We would be separated by many rows and hundreds of people.  

In my new seat, which had the right amount of pitch to allow me to sit, breath and open my eyes I felt so tired I could have slept for a week.  I felt embarresed and humbled knowing that there was no way I could return to the old seat.  Once he knew I was OK and my brain had re-entered this stratosphere he said:  “You know, I thought about your fear of heights when I bought the tickets but it had been so long since you had an incident.”  As we sat and reminisced we both realized that I had not had a panic attack for ten years.  My last out of body experience due to height had been during the Pike’s Peak debacle.  

As I began this story I wrote that excitment, anticipation and exhilaration can be good and bad.  I felt both within moments of each other.  Unfortunately my excitement turned to anxiety,  my anticipation turned to dread and my exhilaration turned to fright.  Anxiety can be both good and bad.  There is something wonderful about a “take your breath away” experience.  And there is something awful about being so out of control you can not breath.

During the concert Amy Grant sang one of her famous Christmas ballads:  Breath of Heaven.  In the middle of the song all the feelings of the evening came tumbling out as tears.  Breath was the one thing I had lost in the moment of terror in my seat.  And breath is the very thing that brought order out of chaos during creation.  It was with a word that everything came into being.  And it was a breath from Heaven that God delivered the greatest most generous most life changing gift the world had ever known.  In Jesus breath came life.  It is through His breath we breathe now.  

“Breath of Heaven.  Light in the darkness.  Come over us with holiness.  Breath of Heaven.”