When Something Needs to Break

Sarah Shaw
7 days ago
6 min read

What up readers? This week we're chatting relationships.

They’re precious and infuriating. Delightful and painful. And to level the playing field, here’s a simple truth:

All meaningful relationships will involve moments of panic.

Every. Single. One.

When panic strikes, we tend to either ignore it or act fast (aka: bail) and ask questions later.

And to be clear, we’re not advocating for delusional loyalty or ghosting. As is typical when choosing between two bad options, there’s a third. But it requires digging deeper into what panic actually means.

In the wise words of The Clash, let’s ask:

"Should I stay or should I go now?"

The answer may not be as simple as you think.

Here's the Thesis

When we feel panic in a relationship, our default assumption is that the relationship must be what breaks.

Duh. Right? No?

*Insert additional sound effects of confusion.

And by “relationships,” we mean more than romance. Panic shows up across this whole list:

Romantic relationships
Family
Friends
Classmates / Teammates
Mentors
Mentees (or people you’re discipling/mentoring)
Coworkers
Community
Church
Volunteer / Service organizations
And yes… your relationship with God

God designed us for a lot of different kinds of relational connection. So it makes sense that panic would pop up across the board.

But what do you do with panic when it rears its anxious head?

Now we're getting to the good stuff.

Housekeeping tip: For the rest of this post, pick one relationship you’ve felt panic about recently. Don’t try to retroactively sort your whole life. You’ll spin out fast. (Ask me how I know.)

Where Does Panic Come From?

Before we define what panic means, let’s get its origin story. It’s not super complicated.

Typically, panic is induced by:

Pain
Disconnection
Uncertainty

...However...

Panic can also come from an overwhelming wave of hope, joy, and anticipation.

Things don’t have to be going off the rails for you to panic. You can panic at a party. A good party. Simply because it’s unfamiliar.

Recognizing that panic can come from good things as well as toxic things shifts the perspective.

We could accurately call panic a siren.

Which brings us to tornadoes. (Because I’m shamelessly fascinated by them, and we were all just in Oklahoma City. So there.)

What Does Panic Mean?

When a tornado siren goes off, it means something very specific:

There’s a tornado somewhere.

Significant rotation is present.

Potential threat.

Time to take shelter.

It doesn’t mean it’s on the ground, but the conditions are real enough to pay attention. Unless you want to live the Dorothy life. Seems like a pass, especially after watching Wicked. I dunno what to believe anymore.

This brings us back to panic—specifically what it means.

Uninvestigated panic does not mean anything.

It doesn’t tell you what is wrong.

It simply tells you something is wrong.

It’s like receiving a coded message. Coded messages must be decoded. Otherwise, they’re just gibberish.

And when you panic in a relationship, your body might be reacting to something now…or remembering something unresolved from 2011. (Random example. Painfully real.)

This is why, when panic hits, you have to slow yourself down.

Breathe.

Recognize the alarm.

And before you break the relationship, decipher what your panic is signaling.

***A Quick But Crucial Safety Note:

Before we go any further: some panic isn’t mysterious at all. Some panic is protective.

If your body is panicking because someone is:

emotionally or verbally abusing you
manipulating or gaslighting you
isolating you
violating your boundaries
controlling your choices
threatening you
causing physical harm or fear of harm

…that’s not a “decode this later” situation. That’s your God-designed internal alarm identifying flaming red flags.

Not all discomfort is growth.

Not all panic is trauma-memory.

Sometimes panic is clarity.

With that in mind, the panic we’re decoding here is yellow-flag territory, not red.

How to Decode the Panic Siren

Recall our opening idea:

All meaningful relationships will involve moments of panic.

Panic is a signal that something needs to break.

The question is: what?

What if, in the middle of our discomfort, instead of asking God:

“Should I stay or should I go?”

…we asked him a different question?

“Does this relationship need to break, or does the way I’ve been operating within it need to break?”

Sometimes it’s not the other person that’s the only issue.

Sometimes the way you are showing up is contributing to the problem.

We’re can all end up stuck in patterns where we're:

Telling half-truths
Hoping people will read our minds
Holding unrealistic or unspoken expectations
Not wanting to cause conflict
Avoiding hard conversations

And the list goes on.

Dysfunction in relationships will always produce pain, but sometimes that pain is an invitation into:

A new way of communicating
A new way of asking questions
A new way of healing something you didn’t even know was wounded

What if the relationship didn’t cause the wound, but it revealed it?

And what if God could be up to something very intentional with the person that he sent your way?

Here's Your Game Plan

We gave the first step away before with the siren metaphor, but genuinely:

01/ Recognize Panic Is a Vague Alarm, Not a Specific Message

You’re unlikely to think clearly while actively panicking. Unless it’s a genuine emergency, pause. Get yourself somewhere your mind can process.

I personally go on river walks, write while listening to a favorite playlist, or wander the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. It’s a whole system at this point.

02/ Bring God and Other People Into the Process

God is necessary all the time.

People are deeply helpful most of the time as long as they're available, wise, and healthy.

When decoding panic, multiple perspectives matter.

Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety. - Proverbs 11:14 (ESV)

When we make snap decisions from our body’s signals—without decoding them—we can sabotage something God brought into our lives.

We just don’t imagine he would bring something good that also makes us uncomfortable.

03/ Differentiate Between Painful and Dysfunctional

Scripture is full of people following God and experiencing painful circumstances while doing it. Jesus himself sweat blood. And died. Never mind everything in between.

Healing can be incredibly painful.

Pain and dysfunction can overlap, yes.

But that’s exactly why we investigate.

Let’s be real: plenty of dysfunctional (cough, sinful) things have felt very comfortable in the moment.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. - Proverbs 14:12 (ESV)

When we equate pain with dysfunction, we risk numbing out sin while tossing out the uncomfortable ways God is trying to grow us.

04/ Remember God Often Answers Prayers in Unexpected Ways

Yahweh is not Santa Claus.

Your prayers are not Amazon wish lists.

He sees you.

He hears you.

He knows you better than you know yourself.

That means His answers can surprise you.

…And sometimes offend you.

You asked for a significant other.

And he brought you someone.

They’re just…not “simple.”

You asked for a job.

And he brought you a job.

It came with stress, irritating coworkers, and tedious tasks.

You asked for a friend.

And he brought you a friend.

They came with quirks, baggage, and emotional complexity.

You asked for a church.

And he brought you a church.

Full of imperfect, limited, messy people.

And you panicked.

(I did too.)

05/ Ask Yourself the Harder Question

I spent a lot of the last summer panicking.

This post is coming to you from a heavy dose of personal experience. I’ve been through so many messy relationships that I thought I’d gotten pretty good at knowing when to stay and when to bail.

But this past summer was next level.

There was a moment on a river prayer walk where I finally asked God whether I needed to quit a relationship entirely.

And he answered with the question I posed earlier in the post:

"Does the relationship need to break, or does the way you've been operating within it need to break?"

It pulled me up short.

It’s the same question I’d pose to you.

(Also here in illustrated form. For all the artsy folks.)

Closing Thoughts

The truth is: God sends us the people we need, not necessarily the people we want.

We live in a time where we equate goodness with comfort. And our autopilot approach to relationships rarely accounts for what God might be trying to shape—or reshape—within us through a person we didn’t expect.

We get so caught up in not receiving what we wanted that we ditch what God intended to bring as blessing.

It's true:

All meaningful relationships will involve moments of panic.

But sometimes the things we’re most tempted to run from are the very things God is using to heal us.

P.s. Why on Earth Did This Post Wind Up Under Creativity?

Haha. Fair question. Simple answer.

Allowing God to bring unexpected people, with unexpected challenges, requires creativity. It requires improvisation. It requires trusting that the story is still being written.

We forget that he’s creative with the relationships we’re panicking about.

We forget he sees the big, eternal picture.

We forget he’s forming us into the person he imagined from the beginning.

Creative projects rarely make sense if you walk in at a random step.

And unless we zoom out and rest in our Creator’s hands, allowing him to form and reform us, we will fight the very things meant to bring us life.

So yes, it's tagged under creativity. Unapologetically.