Last Friday evening a new Messenger chat popped up entitled "St Teresa's Clergy" and it was our bishop messaging me and another parishioner who was initiated into minor orders when we last met for a service. His Excellency wanted to include us both in the liturgy on Sunday.
Now despite technically being in minor orders, I hadn't served in that role for years. So long ago in fact we had a different bishop at that point.
Back in the day I was the lay leader of the Narthex (A local study group under the direction of a lay or clerical leader) that eventually became our parish. One of the major reasons I step away from my role as narthex leader was the massive anxiety I experienced when carrying out an liturgical role. If I knew I was giving our church's main lay liturgy, for the week running up to it I would not sleep properly and would have multiple panic attacks. It was so bad I even came up with a name for it, "Liturgical Anxiety Syndrome (LAS)".
So when I received the message from our bishop last week my LAS came back with a vengeance, even though I would not be leading the service.
Sunday came around, we get the altar set up, we are all ready to go and I am shitting myself. There were even some new people in the congregation to add to the pressure.
We always start things with a period of silence to centre ourselves in the space. While I was sat that in silence panicking I tried to think of standard prayers to St Dymphna but couldn't recollect how to phrase it. What did pop into my meme-rotted brain was this Tumblr meme:
So I silently prayed "Oh, St Dymphna we're really in it now". And you know what, it really took the edge off. Not to say that my LAS completely went away but it was manageable. Though when I was lighting the candles at the start of liturgy my hands were shaking so much the lighter I was using was rattling against the glass candle holders.
In the end I got through the liturgy without dropping dead. It was actually a lovely service for the feast of St Brigid and no one seemed to notice how anxious I was.
Our next service is Palm Sunday. Thankfully I'm too stressed about having to move house soon to be anxious about that yet.
