Malva, from Austria, has attended TeenStreet for a number of years as a teenager. Here she shares about how, in the midst of fear, God met her in a very personal way at TeenStreet and showed her that He is always by her side. 

In the last two years, life has gotten a little bit complicated for me. This mainly is because I started to get panic attacks, mostly because of having fears of vast crowds or being in the dark. 

I wasn't able to go outside normally because there always was the possibility of meeting a group of people. Sometimes I have been too afraid to fall asleep because of the darkness. 

I lived with this for two years without telling anyone other than my sister and my best friend. 

I thought that this belonged to me, and that I had to live with it because it is a part of me.  

On one hand, I really looked forward to going to TeenStreet, especially because it was my last year as a teen. But on the other hand, I was extremely scared due to the fact that there would be about 4,000 people around me. 

This also determined my feelings while being in Offenburg at TeenStreet. I was nervous and scared the whole time, and even though I didn’t actively think about it, in the back of my head was a huge question: When will the panic attack come? 

But when I heard a talk about identity and what kind of identity God wants for us, I suddenly realised that this surely wasn’t how God wanted me to live.

He doesn't want me to be afraid of coming to TeenStreet, he doesn't want me to be afraid to leave my room. I was really encouraged! 

But it didn't change that I got nervous being surrounded by so many people. Eventually, my panic attack came. I felt angry, helpless, scared and overwhelmed. And, as always when I panic, I wasn't able to breathe. 

After this incident I decided to have a meeting with the Fountain Team. This was the most amazing hour of my entire life! God really spoke to me! I realised which situations make me nervous, which is something that I had never understood before. 

We also talked about different occasions in which I had panic attacks, and God showed me where He was in each of them. He had been right next to me. 

Then we talked about fears and how I got them. Again God showed me this in a way that I could understand. God then helped me to realise how to handle these situations and hinted to me that praying helped. 

After that I was thankful and happy. But it wasn't a normal happiness; it came out of my heart and filled my whole body. 

Not only am I relieved because I now know that God can and will help me, I now also want to seek professional help to one day live a normal, fear-free life. 

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