[NOTE: This article was originally posted July 12, 2013. Since then it has been updated and published as part of the Introduction to the 31-day devotional, Anxiety: Knowing God’s Peace.]
Six years ago, I could not have written this book. I was a prisoner. Anxiety crippled me and held me captive. Satan took advantage of an extended season of depression I was going through that had been triggered by the impact of a myriad of difficulties in our church and family. Mounting pressure from every direction, along with my own angry response to it, collided to create a swirling storm of fear. I had experienced anxiety before, but never like this. I couldn’t go on. Some days, I didn’t even want to.
Twice I went to the emergency room showing symptoms of a heart attack. After my second trip to the ER, my physician sent me to a cardiologist to get blood work and a stress test. The tests determined that I hadn’t had an actual heart attack (the kind that causes permanent damage to the heart muscle) but a stress-induced heart problem that causes only short-term harm.
The Mayo Clinic calls it broken heart syndrome —a temporary heart condition
To continue...read the full-length post originally published on this site.
