What is Separation Anxiety?

I put “separation anxiety” in every context and thought about scriptures that it would apply to then typed it in the Google search, basically it is a fear of being separated from ones that you love by distance, illness or death. That is only a thumbnail of all I have read and was feeling like I was on overload, so I decided not to explore it further and just opened my Bible to find one of my “comfort” scriptures. What did I see? I’ll tell you in a minute.

Moses was raised in the house of the Pharaoh as a son, but when events revealed his true heritage, the fact that he was a Jew, he ended up being sent into a far country all alone and I’m very sure he felt very separated from all he had known. Something wonderful happened to him out in that desert, God gave him a wife then anointed him and commissioned him to lead his people out of Egypt to the Promised Land. When Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold as a slave, I’m sure that as he walked off into the distant desert he was looking back at his brothers who had betrayed him and felt a great separation from his beloved father, Jacob. Some years later he became their savior by supplying food to keep them from starvation. Losing my dad was the most devastating loss I have ever felt, and that includes divorce. I have felt separation from loved friends, because we moved often as a minister’s family, from people who I loved and worked with in the church that left and went to other places, family that became estranged for reasons beyond my control, and finally, and more importantly to me I was separated from parts of my ministry that I loved. It is the feeling of separation and, for me, rejection. I wouldn’t say that out loud but I do feel that you are bleeding and dying, wishing someone could see what you are going through, even as you are reading this, looking for help from some source outside yourself.

Think of the disciples separating themselves from Jesus in the Garden as the soldiers came to arrest Him. That must have been terrible because they loved Him, but were afraid to be identified with Him out of fear for their own lives. The greatest separation of all from the beginning of time until now, would have to be the separation that Jesus felt as He hung on the cross bearing our sins. Matthew 15:34 “At three o’clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” I cannot bear to think of how dreadful that was for Him. He gave His life out of obedience to the Father who turned His back on Him because of the sin He bore for us.

Father’s abandon wives and children, Mother’s leave husbands and the babies they carried in their womb, bosses turn on employees that have sacrificed to help raise a company, friends may shun you, and you may feel abandoned by all the people who you have loved, so let me now share the verse I told you about earlier, it means everything to me:

Romans 8:37-39 “So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? The One who died for us, who was raised to life for us! He is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.”

If you are feeling loss and separation, read and re-read that scripture and if that doesn’t do it for you, I don’t know what will! It’s God’s perfect love that makes you whole again!