I Thought It Was All Over

Have you ever felt so trapped that every part of you wanted to scream? Not a dramatic movie kind of scared. The kind where your whole insides are shaking and there is nowhere to go and no one who can get you out.

I had one of those days. I remember it like it was yesterday.

01Dallas to Los Angeles, May 2014

It was a flight I had done plenty of times before. I liked flying. No big deal.

What I did not know sitting in that seat was that I was about to come completely undone.

This flight landed almost exactly ten years after May 11, 2004. The day I had truly given my life to Jesus. Ten years of showing up and believing God was doing something real in me.

Then somewhere up there at several thousand feet, it hit.

A wave of panic so overwhelming I did not know what to do with it. I felt like I could not breathe. Like the walls of that plane were pressing in from every side. Like I was trapped with nowhere to go. Everything in me wanted to scream. I thought I was losing my mind.

I genuinely thought: this is it. It is all over.

For three hours I sat in that. Sometimes it would ease up slightly. Then it would crash back in hard. Nothing around me felt real. It was like watching my own life from somewhere outside of it. Like I was behind glass.

There is actually a name for that experience. It is called dissociation.

I landed at LAX. Got in a car. Ended up pulled over in a parking lot somewhere, pacing, trying to hold what was left of myself together.

I will be honest with you. In that parking lot, the only escape I could think of was one that was not an option. There was too much to live for. My family. The people counting on me. I knew God had been working on something in me and I could not walk away from that.

The question that would not leave me was why now.

02The Real Storm Was Already Happening Inside

On the outside I had been holding it together. Showing up on stages. Hosting high profile guests. Performing the version of myself that everyone needed me to be. And I believed in what I was doing. My heart was genuinely in it.

But on the inside I was imploding. Stress had been building for a long time. I had been slowly disconnecting from the things that actually mattered. I was carrying weight that was never mine to carry. And I had never stopped long enough to deal with what was actually going on underneath all of it.

The panic did not come out of nowhere. It came from somewhere very specific. It came from the inside of a man who had been running on empty for too long and had not been honest about it.

I was not falling apart because of what I was doing. I was falling apart because of what I had never dealt with.

For months after that flight, the panic attacks kept coming. Multiple times some days. On stages. In meetings. Without warning. I started doing the practical things. Counseling. Exercise. Cutting back on caffeine because I learned the hard way that a coffee on an already lit up nervous system can feel like a trip to the emergency room.

Those things mattered. But the real work was different. It was daily. It was slow. It was choosing to show up and seek God on days when I had nothing left to give. And somehow, one day at a time, by grace I still do not fully understand, I made it through.

03What the Middle Has Taught Me

I wish I could tell you that was the end of it. That I walked through it once and anxiety never showed up again.

That is not my story.

What I have learned is that every time it comes back there is something out of balance. Something I have been avoiding instead of facing. A friend recently said something I am still sitting with. He told me the problem is that I have always been able to fight through things myself. But where God is taking me now, He has to be the one to do it. I cannot muscle through this part on my own.

That is the hardest part for me. I want to fix it fast. I want to get through the middle and move on. But what God wants to do in me requires staying in it. Not around it. Not after it. Right in the middle of it.

There is a scripture in the Message version that says God shapes a genesis week in the chaos of my life. It is in the mess. It is in the middle that He does the most.

The most frustrating thing is that I still feel like I am in the middle even now. And then I realized something. That is where we all live. We get through something and there is already something new right behind it. We have a win and there is another mountain.

Life is lived in the middle. And I think maybe that is the point.

04What Has Actually Helped

If you are in a season where the pressure is heavy or you just feel like you are running out of gas, here is what has made a real difference for me. Not from someone who has arrived. From someone who has been in it.

1. Let someone in.Counseling is not weakness. Getting honest with a safe person changed my life. Find a therapist, pastor, or mentor who can hold what you are actually carrying without flinching. You were not built to carry it alone.
2. Move your body consistently.Swimming, lifting, walking. When your mind is in chaos your body needs to move. Physical movement is one of the most direct ways to regulate an overwhelmed nervous system.
3. Pay attention to what you put in your body.Caffeine, alcohol, poor sleep. These all amplify anxiety. I had to make real adjustments and it mattered. Your body is telling you something. Listen to it.
4. Show up before you feel like it.Prayer, reading, stillness. Whatever your daily anchor looks like, do not wait until you are ready. The consistency is what builds the ground under your feet when everything is shaking.
5. Remember it is not about you.A mentor told me once when I was terrified of speaking in public: Reed, you are not that big of a deal. It is only when you focus on others that you can be confident because it is not about you. It is about them. That one thing has saved me more times than I can count.

05Grace Finds Ragamuffins in Parking Lots

I do not know where you are right now. Maybe you feel like you are losing your mind. Maybe you are not happy with where you are. Maybe fear has its hand around something God is calling you toward and you cannot seem to shake free.

Brennan Manning spent his whole life writing about the kind of grace that meets you in the places you are most ashamed of. Not the cleaned up version of you. Not the version that has it together. The ragamuffin. The one who has been trying so hard and still falling short.

That was me in that parking lot.

So let me say it plainly. If God can take Reed Bogard, with all his flaws and all the ways he has failed the people he loves most, and still reach down in a parking lot at LAX and say I am not done with you yet, then He can still work in you too.

Right in the middle.

You do not have to be further along. You do not have to have it figured out. Just be willing to stop performing and start surrendering. Let Him do what only He can do. Especially when you cannot see it yet.

Wherever you find yourself today, be where you are. And let God work.

Someone I love and respect has said it to me more times than I can count and I carry it with me everywhere I go.

The best is yet to come.

Keep your head up.

This is In The Middle. Not for people who have arrived. Not for the highlight reel. For the ragamuffins who are still in it, still fighting, still showing up even when nothing feels certain. I will keep writing. You keep going.