Sunday, March 23, 2025 started out normally for me. I went to the gym and had a strong shoulder workout.
Cindy and I got ready for church and had an uneventful drive to church. She always needs to be there early for Altar Guild duties, and both of us needed to sneak in a short choir practice before the Litany started at 9:30. The four of us were slated to sing the Psalm for that day.
I was scheduled to read the Old Testament lesson from Deuteronomy. It was quite long, but I had time to read through it, and remind myself how I should pronounce “Massah” and look for other potential tongue-twisters.
After the Collect for the Day
I made my way to the front to read. It started out fine. The lighting was good. I remembered my resolution to stop making eye contact with individual parishioners, and to read dispassionately, in a non-performative way.
But near the end of the first paragraph, my voice started quavering, my heart rate picked up, and I was not sure if I could keep on standing. Pretty soon, my speech was too affected to go on. I was having an anxiety attack. I used to get them very frequently, but they had mostly subsided for the last 5 years or so.
This one was spiraling fast, and so I finally had to stop and say: “I apologize, but I’m having an anxiety attack and can’t go on … could someone read the rest of this?”
Blessedly, the Rector leapt up and took the page from my hands and finished the reading. After I had returned to my pew, Cindy had me take a drink from her water bottle, which seemed to help the anxiety. In fact, the passage from Deuteronomy was so long that I felt mostly recovered by the time it ended. But now it was time to go forward to sing the Psalm. I decided I could do it.
I followed our choir director over to where we stand to sing, and everything was fine for a while. My voice worked. I kept up effortlessly with the chances and changes of the Anglican Chant. I could sing the notes, I could read the words, and … for a while … I could not stand. Suddenly, I couldn’t stand, and got down on one knee to finish out the chanted Psalm. Later I thought: “That’s okay — nobody can really fault you for kneeling in an Anglican church!”
The rest of the day got better; I felt more normal, and was able to stay a long time in our after-service social hour. But since then, I’ve had high blood pressure readings, and so I will visit my Primary Care Physician tomorrow afternoon, to see what he has to say. Of your charity, please pray for my physical health.
It’s funny how this kind of humiliation, this experience of being brought low, changes what things you hear, even among words that you’ve heard said hundreds of times before. When the priest said, “preserve your body and soul unto everlasting life” it was as if I hadn’t really heard the word “body” in that sentence for a long time. But I heard it loud and clear on the 3rd Sunday in Lent!
I often go about my daily tasks as if I could do things in my own strength. I wondered if my sudden weakness (in front of all my dearest friends!) was a warning about this. Maybe God wasn’t pleased with my attempt at trying to project strength when I took and posted that early morning gym selfie?
I have always pretty much disliked this passage:
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. - 2 Corinthians 12:10
I prefer strength to weakness. I almost wrote a long essay about this. About how weakness is just “death writ small.” I imagine that (being 66 years old) I shall experience a lot more of these times when God brings me low.
Here is an appropriate song for you to listen to, as we contemplate together our weakness before God: