Trust Fall
how I grappled with thoughts of Death
This article is part of the Claritas fall 2023 issue, Stages. Read the full print release here.
BY: ANJELINA GONZALEZ
Existential Crisis, Experiential Christ
“You are as real as anyone, and your doubts make you more real, not less.”
― John Green, Turtles All the Way Down [1]
High-functioning anxiety has been my companion for longer than I can possibly remember. When I was small, I suffered from separation anxiety from my parents, especially my mother. I anxiously waited for the 2012 apocalypse, trembled in the dark of night, suffered from nightmares filled with gratuitous violence and death, and wept grievously when my mother explained that in this world we die.
It was the fall of seventh grade when I, still anxious, realized how suffocating it was to be alive. Though I had come to personally know Christ at the end of sixth grade, I had become overwhelmed with existence. Humans were these over-critical and mocking creatures that all seemed to understand each other. I stood in a glass box a million feet away. I continued to suffer from nightmares. By the fall of eighth grade, I had fallen into great despair, and hoped to escape life by an imminent, painless death. Through it all, I felt like God was silent. I prayed for months for a change in my circumstances, until one night I read Psalm 13, which changed everything:
1 “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,
4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
my heart rejoices in your salvation.
6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
for he has been good to me.” [2]
I sat on the floor of my room, shrouded in darkness except for the illumination of my digital Bible’s light. Even in the night, it felt as if the sun had flipped the switch and made it daylight. For the first time, I felt connected to the Word of Christ. I was stuck like the poet David, king of Israel, wrestling with sorrow. But unlike David, I had yet to understand the meaning of rejoicing in salvation or trusting in God’s unfailing love. Regardless, I was inspired to believe in God’s goodness as I laid my feelings and circumstances down.
This Indubitable Death
The following fall, I embarked upon my freshman year of high school with new vigor, determined to become unquestionably happy. For most of that first fall, I was good at it. As I approached my senior year, the happiness I strived for felt like real joy. Everything I seemed to lack in middle school had come to be mine: I was well-liked within my grade, peers often looked to me for guidance, and I spent my days hanging out with my newfound group of friends. But by my senior fall, like a mirrored reflection of my past, I was isolated once again.
The girl group I had befriended had become blackened at its core. They gossiped about each other, threatened others, and took out their frustrations on anyone that could be an emotional punching bag, including me. By Halloween, my “friends” were nothing more than an identifying name between people I knew and those I didn’t. So, when I fell seriously ill, few noticed my excessive absence.
During my first few days in bed, I wasn’t fearful. Fevers were not typically so serious and I had been sick several times before, I told myself. Yet in the blink of an eye (more specifically, a 30-second TikTok video), I found myself trapped in a moment of crippling anxiety similar to that of my middle school past.
On a Friday night in late October, three days into my absence, a video not-so-aligned with my algorithm appeared on my screen: “Your body knows how to die,” it said. You shouldn’t watch this, I thought. “It knows when it is dying,” the video continued. You know how long you’ve been avoiding the things that make you anxious. “And its function is to shut you down.”
But it was too late: what I had heard could not be undone. In a haste, I attempted to beat my mind to sleep, hoping to escape a possible spiral with a good night’s rest. Morning came and went, but the thought of death did not budge: its darkness crept to the deepest crevices of my mind. After a week with a 104.5 degree fever, my fear broke free from its dam, and my emotions re-emerged as drowning floodwaters. Only this time, I did not hope to die; I was terrified of it. A mere stumble into the depths of Tik-Tok was now a great fall.
When I returned to school after a month of back-and-forth absence, I had suffered three consecutive blows of illness—the worst being mono, over five trips to the emergency room, and an increasing number of reasons to fear my seemingly imminent death. When I tried to run to God, rather religion, I did not find comfort. And subsequently, I re-questioned God’s entire existence.
Only, I was unsatisfied too by everything else from which I sought guidance and comfort. The mentors I confided in chided me for my silliness when I asked for prayer or their thoughts on grappling with this paradoxical box of existence. How can I live if I am to die, I asked, but how can I die if I want to live? My friends also joked about my developed obsession with my mortality “She can’t actually be serious,” they murmured. To them, we were at the peak of our youth, invincible and shielded purely by our age. What reason was there for fear?
Which brings me to my warning for this generation: is it not foolish to delude ourselves into believing we are immortal? Many live as if death does not exist; but this is a terrifying way to live because death does. We seem far too keen on ignoring death, despite its ever-present existence in our day-to-day sorrows.
Palliative care doctor Sunita Puri puts it like this: “We see little deaths all around us. We see the changing of the seasons, we see the trees and their leaves that change.” [3] We kill animals and plants for food, we annihilate bugs out of annoyance and fear, and we marvel at the depths of space and the deaths of stars. Sometimes, I wonder if we stopped to ponder the falling of the leaves, would we grapple with the reality of our own imminent ends?
The year passes, seasons change, and it is in October of my freshman fall at Cornell when I notice a shift within myself. I am older, a year closer to my end. The anxious flood waters of last fall subside, and I cross the mudded path 1,174 miles from my Florida home. I am completely alone, still terrified to die, but I have found myself refined. My fear is bathed with light, patched with careful needle work, and plucked from the hay in which it hides.
My first season at Cornell has been cathartic. Maybe it is the terrain. Cornell is quite literally a “city upon a hill.'' But more significantly, here I’ve felt God’s hand outstretched, beckoning me forward.
In all honesty, I am not sure when or how it all fell into place, but I awoke one day and all my anxious thoughts were quiet. Healing may not be linear, and it definitely is not instant, so we often don’t notice when our scabs become scars. Despite this, I believe the challenges and choices I have confronted since coming to Cornell have ripened my withered faith for a harvest of peace that surpasses all understanding.
The Abundance of Autumn
As a socially anxious person, the attempt to return to church after quarantine was overwhelming, and for the past three years I slowly drifted away into isolation. Yet, as scary as it was, I pushed myself to go back to church, consistently and in person. At first it was unbearable, but with discipline it became not. I found myself in love with the faith of a congregation, and in turn I felt the first flicker of God’s fire. Importantly, my conscious choice to return to church, provided me with hope amidst my anxiety and taught me important lessons.
To those in a situation similar to mine: it can be easy to avoid what makes us uncomfortable, but Proverbs 18:1 warns that choosing isolation “breaks out against all sound judgment.” [4] The Church is the home for Christians, solace and comfort for every being and sinner. In times of trial, we shouldn’t shy away from the Church, for it can keep us grounded.
In the same vein, upon arriving at Cornell, I joined other Christian clubs on campus, and got involved in an all-girls Community Group with Cru, a Christian ministry on campus. During one Bible study we studied 1 Corinthians 12, in which I found encouragement from one of my sisters in Christ, who “suffers” with my suffering and “rejoices” in my honor. [5] I learned we should let the groups who truly love and care for one another be the living example of the body of Christ, and feast in it.
Also, I decided to stop doubting God's provision for my life. I decided to die daily. No more will I live in fear, obsessively counting days of incubation for each and every possible exposure to an unlikely illness. I do not wish to hide in my own little corner like a vapid Cinderella. Instead, I want to live boldly. Now, I laugh a bit louder, my feelings are more earnest, even as I make a lot of mistakes. Life is living through immaturity and growing into my oversized shoes each day. It is the dying of our old selves, and the renewing of souls. When we surrender to God, He transforms us from a pile of clay into an intricate piece of priceless art.
A great fall—my constant stumbling and struggle with anxiety—is now a new Autumn. I’m able to stand in a new abundance of hope and no longer grieve death. But this Autumn—my discovery of the transformative power of hope in Christ—may have come sooner if my mentors and friends from home had sat with me in my illness and grief. So, Church, Christian, Cornellian, do not leave your brothers and sisters to grieve on their own. Meet them in their suffering, be a LIGHT and walk them out of it. Remind them that tribulations and trials strengthen our faith, that the tests they may face will keep them on the path to eternal life [6]. Let us find Autumn.
P.S. I did not forget about those who are still in the midst of struggle.
I hope you find the answer to your cry. In the meantime, let the opening quote of this article serve as a reminder that it is okay to wrestle with your faith, there’s a beautiful rawness to that too.
I watch the leaves mature, withered, fallen like the end of an age.
[1] Green, John. Turtles All the Way Down. New York City: Dutton Books, 2017
[2] Psalm 13 (NIV)
[3] Death Land episode #2 with Leah Green. The Guardian, 2019.
[4] Proverbs 18:1 (NIV)
[5] 1 Corinthians 12 (NIV)
[6] 2 Corinthians 4:17(NIV)