Separation Anxiety

During my first few years as a teacher, I dreaded leaving my kids with a substitute.

Not that they were all that well-behaved with me, but every time I came back from a conference or from being sick, I always discovered a pile of discipline referrals and stories about my students doing crazy things.

Why were you singing?

Why were you on the floor?

What?  Why?

Later, I would call the craziness that happened when I wasn’t in the classroom—separation anxiety.

I experienced my own separation anxiety today when I had to leave my one cat, Rumble, at the vet first thing this morning and then wait the entire day to hear back on how he was doing.

When I got home from dropping him off, my other cat, Little Girl, greeted me at the door.  She never greets me at the door.

It was then that I realized that Little Girl had never been apart from Rumble before for longer than an hour.

She was glued to me the entire day.

And honestly, I welcomed it.

I could not get settled today.  I kept waiting to hear back from the vet.  I was so anxious to get Rumble home.  This was a hundred times worse than dropping your car off to be worked on.

I tried to distract myself by putting some furniture together.  I worked on prep for my art show in April.  I went to the Wetlands, of course, but could not settle. 

Every car on the road seemed to be going ten miles under the speed limit and, at least half the cars didn’t seem to know where they were going and didn’t seem to particularly care that they were wandering about aimless.

I gunned the engine at the Wetlands and skipped over several large potholes to get around one creeping, snowbird. 

Not even the sight of a pair of sleeping heron babies could relax me.

The truth is … I get restless a lot.

I think it’s often spiritual separation anxiety.

I think it’s why I have to walk first thing in the morning, to make sure that I’m connecting right away with God before my day has even started.

It’s definitely why I go to the Wetlands, why I walk the labyrinth, why I walk the grounds at Hope.

I’m looking for that connection to God.

I’m trying to find Him, trying to feel that Presence.

Because, really, it would be impossible to get through the day without Him.

There are no substitutes for God.

Right now, as I’m writing this, I’m admitting, and not without a little embarrassment, that I had a rough day without Rumble.  I need that cat.  He brings me quite a bit of unconditional love and joy.*

But the most important admission that we all need to make is this: 

Our daily restlessness, the nagging sense of disquietness, that anxiety, that feeling that something is missing, that something is not quite right in the world—that the root of all this is our spiritual separation from God.

It is our soul reaching out, starving and famished for nourishment that only God can provide.

We live in a constant state of separation anxiety that only time with God can heal.

* Rumble is currently home safe and sound.