Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
God loves me
A gallery of moments I felt God’s love wash over me, behind every picture untold stories.
I can’t sleep. I toss and turn in my bed, replaying certain scenes I’ve lived through—so mundane, so ordinary. If you could overhear, you’d be both bored at the nothingness of it all, but surprised at how much space they took in my head.
But to me, those scenes—the ones that replayed everything from micro interactions to catch-up conversations with my coworkers, even passing formalities with strangers—hid much more behind them. They were clues for what’s to come, or signals of danger. I just needed to decipher between the glances, the tweaked smiles, the broken sentences or too-long pauses so I could find the signs. The earlier I caught on, the better prepared I could be for the downfall—anything but being caught off guard.
Did I respond correctly? Did my reply reveal enough? Was I cheerful enough? Was I diplomatic enough? Are they going to sabotage me? Did my hello come off arrogant? Will my words be twisted and come back to bite me? I second-guessed every word that came out of my mouth, constantly reprimanding myself for not having the “perfect” replies. Perfect as in bulletproof. Incorruptible. There was always a better way to communicate, a way that would protect me. That’s what I would tell myself.
My alarm rings, and I listen to it dragging me back to face the horrors all over again… to accumulate more worries. I listen to it with dread, fear, and numbness all simultaneously. It’s the first time the alarm rings, but it feels like I never went to sleep. The sound is a loop in my mind, so native, as if it hadn’t turned off since I got in bed. It lived in me, a permanent background noise.
I will myself out of bed. Another day, another battle. I go to work—minimal interactions, that’s my solution. The less I interact, the fewer chances of subjecting myself to unnecessary risk. Avoid people at all costs.
My car rides to and from work are 30 minutes each. Those 30 minutes are valuable time where I can diagnose, strategize, and properly prepare.
But I never felt prepared. I never moved away from the edge. I teetered on it. The more time I devoted to protecting myself, the more unsafe I felt. I didn’t know what I was preparing for.
Everyone looked like a possible suspect of my demise—or are they an accessory to it? Or Am I the one doing the sabotaging? Am I going to make a huge mistake and get fired? Am I going to say the wrong thing and spark a series of microaggressions against me? Am I surrounded by secret haters who look for crumbs to incriminate me?
Sometimes my fears were so extreme. Is someone I love going to die? Why hasn’t she answered the phone—is she in a car accident? Is my dad okay? Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night with a brewing terror, an alarm spreading through my veins. Gasping for air, I’d jolt out of bed and quietly make my way down the stairs, tiptoeing into my dad’s room. He sleeps with the door open. I’d come close, check if he’s breathing. Then I would return back. Okay, he’s breathing. The relief so fleeting did I even feel it? Wait—was he breathing or did my eyes lie to me? Was it my desperation that saw his chest rise and fall?
Sometimes my thoughts were so far-fetched they must be real, for my imagination couldn’t be this wild. Am I going to be kidnapped? Am I going to be cornered after one of my late lectures and ____? Do we have enough security? Is he following me to my car? Is my phone tapped?
My mind, body, and soul were in fight or flight mode 24/7. My heart would not stop racing—it felt like an endless stream of horses thundering, and my chest was the arena. Every one of their loaded feet slammed against my chest, the weight crushing into me.
When can I stop?
Stop running, stop thinking, stop worrying.
I was so frustrated with myself, but I didn’t know how to turn it off. My anger with myself made it worse—the insufferable grip on my thoughts would not loosen. It would dig its nails in even deeper, dragging me down every time I tried to resist.
That’s what my anxiety looked like.
Anxiety takes different forms for everyone. That was mine. Such an unruly beast. The more you attempted to slaughter it, the stronger it got. It was hard to be around me. Even I found it excruciating to be in my own skin. I wanted to rip it off and slip out of it. I was fright in human form. I was so fidgety, so irritable. I kept voicing the worst-case scenarios on a loop like a radio you can’t turn off. I would burst into flames so routinely and nothing could calm me. Touch me—and burn.
System failure.
I was just so, so, so worried all the time. I felt so unsafe. I tried to find refuge in the eyes of people who loved me. I tried to self-soothe. I tried to hide. I tried to face my fears. Nothing helped. No one could understand or protect me.
Until…
I found God.
It all stopped. My shelter was the feeling when my head touched the ground in my prayer. My unloading dock—my anxiety unpacking itself. I felt so much lighter when I lifted my head, as if I unburdened all worries, all that weight, on the mat just as my forehead lost contact with the ground as I sat up. Instantly missing the contact.
What made me feel better wasn’t reciting generic prayers that circulate without truly understanding the words. My soothing came from talking to God without formalities. I talked to Him the way I talk to me—the same unfiltered, unmasked way I talked to myself.
I found safety in God’s strength. There’s no force mightier, stronger, more absolute.
How can I be afraid?
I found refuge in God’s love for me. I really feel (and I hope I always continue to feel this way) that God loves me.
It reshaped the way I thought. It put out all the fires in my mind and soul. It doused me with acceptance and gratitude.
It was no longer fight or flight mode for me—it was happily exist and only good things will come.
Things don’t happen to me. They happen for me. Even bad things are just blessings in disguise. Be patient.
With God, there is nothing you can’t overcome. The God of miracles. The God that can change your entire existence in the blink of an eye.
The future is in God’s hands—is there anywhere safer than that?
God does not give you more than you can handle. In other words, things will always work out in the end.
You’re safe.
When I started approaching life with the mentality that God loves me, I was able to silence all the noise, slaughter the beasts in my head. Liberate my mind—overthrowing the colonizer (my anxiety). I’m no longer afraid. And when I am, I can easily tame that fear.
It’s simply the reminder that:
God loves me.
