The not quite believable Miracle: there is Power to Change

I have a big problem with trust. It’s as if I’m expecting a colossal

smack down from Life.

The question I’m always asking myself is do I make it happen, with my fear and negativity? This existential question cannot be decided simply, not today.

I do know that I often withdraw from life.

I’m afraid of things, of humans. My long ago voyage into stay-at-home-mother-dom only worsened even determined this quality in me. I’m a hopeless introvert. I feel like misfit in the world. I hate that I’m afraid all the time. (This is one of the reasons I chose FEARLESS as my word for the year.)

And here’s the funny rub, people like me. People seem to generally want to be with me. People find me interesting, worth listening to and engaging with, they even find inspiration in my art.

Recently, my eighty-eight year old neighbor, confined now to a small 11′ x 11′ room in a retirement home called me. She’s expecting a visit. And I don’t mind, but I’ll drag my feet. And when I do call, and when I do finally go, it will be lovely and wonderful.

And I’ll wonder why I didn’t do it sooner.

Friends, acquaintances reach out and I’m scared.

I put on a strong face, as a mother you must. And I don’t really have any trouble keeping up with others since life is being forced into endless interactions, but I don’t like it. Until I’m in the middle and then I’m fine, I guess

Our children cannot know how fearful we really are. They need our strength. So we are strong, when we feel weak. It may not be fear for you, it may be something else but there is an aspect of parenting that is simply about white knuckling it through.

My son has asked me, endlessly it seems this week. “Why am I so afraid to talk to others?” – In class, to teachers, to any adult figures, to grandma, to a stranger, even girls. And I don’t know.

I don’t have answer. Did I somehow do this? That’s the perennial question.

I hurt for him. I do not want him to feel what I feel. I don’t want him to be like me, endlessly afraid to open his mouth out of perfectionism, fear of failure and the judgement and condescension of others.

How can you help an introverted child learn to find their voice?

When I started in the workplace as assistant to the director of missions, I came out of myself, in order to pick up the phone, make travel arrangements, set appointments, and interact with folk. Now some twenty years later, I’m still hopelessly introverted unless forced. And I don’t know how to help my son.

If you had power to and could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

And would you really do it?

I’m shy. I come across as aloof. It’s because I’m a fearful person. I’m expecting a hard slap from life – and if I’m being totally honest, kind of think the rug will be pulled out from beneath me, by God.

Especially this last year, when many things in our lives have been hard, even horrible. It is without doubt, one of most difficult painful years of our lives full of challenge and struggle. I want to blame God. I want to be mad

but what I know is that rather I need GRACE, daily grace, AMAZING GRACE. In me, deep down,

Into my pores, and deep within, where my heart got broken as a little girl, such a long time ago.

Truth is, Jesus loves us,

me. And gave his life. And Jesus

has the power to do miracles. The woman in Luke 8:40-49, only and simply

touched Jesus cloak

and believed. And she was

healed.

I need to touch Jesus’ cloak today.

I need to believe it’s possible to be healed. I’ll always be an introvert, okay. But I don’t want to live afraid, a perfectionist, aloof and proud. This isn’t free. This isn’t grace.

There’s a song sung at our wedding which has ministered to me for twenty years. It’s words so sweet.

Amazing Grace! (How sweet the sound.)
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
and grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear,
The hour I first believed!

Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,
His word my hope secures;
He will my shield and portion be,
As long as life endures.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine,
but God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.

It is not simple. It is not easy. It isn’t magical.

It is about touching Jesus cloak and believing.

(This is a part of five minute Friday.)

{Life and Death in 25 Lines}

His homework was to write a poem.
Tell us a childhood memory. He wrote,
The Week my Grandpa Died in 25 lines.
Over two sautéing onions, tears. I’m choking on them and the meat and spices,
Mom, is this too hard?
Mom, do you need a hug?
Mom, I need to give you a hug he says coming around the stove. He is kind
like his grandpa, I want to say. A grandpa he’ll never know and I cannot be
the Memory Keeper,
but if not me, whom?

Taco casserole is easy. I can do this dinner while the world’s crashing,
Spirits and hearts cracked open, still but beating
on and on.
This wasn’t life as I expected, messy and smashed
down like our fifty year old house, neglected
and falling down. We’re patching souls, daily.
Kissing away tears.

A warm bath washes gone the youngest’s stinky boy smells and the heaviness of weeks and months of strain,
we’re rinsing off sorrow again.
How are you faring, I ask. His shrug says more than words. “It’s okay.”
He finishes quietly.
“Sometimes I want to yell, …”

Oh, how I want to yell and holler at God, What are you thinking? If you’re thinking of us at all.
I’m waiting,
in this mixed-up, broken space
lost in time.
Wishing, sick dizzy from the spinning!
And knowing,
it won’t end. Knowing I must let go my fear, the idea that God
isn’t listening;
fearful that life is
emptiness, pain and endless sorrow.

Henri Nouwen says, we long to be occupied.
We fear our endless emptiness. YES.

The snow outside reflects a cold calm I don’t feel.
Inside I am holding, still.
My emptiness an offering
to the Holy Spaces of In Between
(belief and disbelief)
I do not understand.

He sits down hard by the sink, in the way kids they often do. Asking
“Mom, do you believe in heaven?”
What he’s asking I cannot know – is there a space there outside of time and cosmos.
A space where we will see Grandpa again?

This, the place
of unknowing, is uncomfortable for me, for him.
It sits down hard between us,
the air thick and heavy with our mutual wondering.

We stop, just for a moment and look into each other’s eyes.
Comforted by the solidity of his teenage boy body, I take from him.
Another hug and wait.

Uncertainty,
pain,
fear,
all a part of the human condition. Not even this
can I keep from him but I long to teach him too.
About trust, surrender and continued openness

to the Unknown.

{Nightmares and Day Dreams: For Our Children}

bad dreams
we free fall together.

an enormous wall, grows looming.
the waves rise and fall

the pull
of the tide, a wall

in the distance threatens drowning.
i grab for her,

shouting
“raise your head.”

and still, it comes.

“Childhood: that happy period when nightmares occur only during sleep.” (Unknown)

I have always believed that a parent’s job is to protect.

Our children come squalling into the world, bloody and innocent, at risk. As we push them out of our body we are committing to make their world safe. We make a promise that we will provide every opportunity for them to thrive.

I have always believed; I was wrong.

We cannot protect our children fully. At a certain point this safety net we so carefully construct around them hurts them. As they flail, or run away from us, as they pull and long to soar, our net of safety, it constrains them.

On the other hand, I always understood that scrapes on the knees were important. The physical scars that come from running hard, playing insane and wild in the backyard, from jumping off the swings as

just for a minute, they imagine

they can fly!

These experiences toughen up a child and teach them about life.

In real life, you cannot fly.

My youngest wears a tiny, centimeters long scar on his chin which has lasted when other scars have faded. He was running through, round and round in an utterly maddening and charming way, in my parents Colorado kitchen. As a toddler, he was curious and strong. unafraid. Chubby, teetering, always about to fall, he loved to run the circuit of their kitchen, dining area, living room and back to kitchen driving my father mad!

But there was a rug and it tripped him. Down he went. Down, with blood spurting from his beautiful chubby chin.

No stitches only a scar, which sits on his chin today to remind me that I cannot keep him safe even when I know the dangers.

I’ve walked the path of life; I know well certain things that are sure to trip them up. That tiny, sliver of a scar reminds me, though I want to ignore it, that

children need to fall down.

It is Elizabeth Stone who said the truest of words, “Making a decision to have a child is momentous – it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

When your heart is hurting because children will get hurt, there isn’t much you can do. I mean, these hard times of adolescence come quickly.

I blinked and the wonderful days of stinky diapers and toddler-hood, learning first words, proud scribbling on paper and walls, putting blocks in the right shapes; those days of innocence are so quickly gone.

Overnight. They become small adults, a scrawny teen wearing pants the long length of a man and I wonder at it. How did we get here? I’m still holding on so tightly, trying to keep that net of safety around.

It constrains.

Our children need to run, to let go of the sweaty grip of our hand, to fly away from us little by little.

We cannot hold them, at a certain point. We cannot choose for them. We cannot do the hard work of homework, and friendship, and the heart searching for God in a big and wide universe, or for young love, and we cannot even do the work of mental and physical health. We cannot do it for them. In many ways, we must step aside and

let them fly;

Up and out the door of our hearts, taking our heart with them.

I feel the time slipping.

: I learn to be open-handed,

I must teach them to look up and out, not fearfully down.

To lean forward, toward life, hopeful. To be filled, fully taking life in, not afraid.

And only then, we become – ears to hear them, when the troubles of life overcome. Eyes to see them when the world seems to not value how unique and incredible they are,

And then,

Less and less, we use our

Mouth to shape, advise and teach but from time to time, still we are doing the hard work of instilling day dreams.

Being a parent is difficult. What was once intuitive and charming becomes jagged and painful, a tidal-wave, the stuff of bad dreams.

Even as I dreampt of drowning, of not being able to pull my daughter from the waves

I woke, and knew that I cannot save my own children.

I have done the work of preparing imperfectly, of praying much less than I should, and now in many ways I must begin

again, by letting go. And getting on

with day dreaming of my own.

{Apart and Away}

I’m worn-out; tired as I’ve never been before.

Weary in a

not sleepy frantic hungry and hysterically wild frightened,

nothing-is-working,

everything

falling

Apart and away.

Restless and abysmal

[unable to talk because some problems are not for public consumption.]

I lay arrested, in the midnight hours, whispering

Jesus, what are we going to do?

Some problems are so profound, causing the scary-monster-in-the-closet

kind

fright

that you cannot

cry enough tears.

The universe isn’t large enough to contain these fears. I cannot pray

long and hard enough, for there are no words

for this kind of tired.

Comfort, Jesus

where’s the comfort? No pithy assurances.

No words.

Except soul weary, bone aching, wretched

tired.

[Ten Things I have Learned to Battle Depression]

Living with depression, while functioning as an adult, leads to many hard days. I thought why not offer the top things I do to stay mobile – that is, able to move freely or easily even while depressed, if only for a few hours each day in the middle of this illness.

Get out of bed every day, no matter what.
Eat healthy food. Eat three meals a day, even if they are small. Avoid too much carbohydrates and white sugar products. No that coffee and pastry are not the answer and they are not food that will heal you.
Get dressed for the day, in “work” clothes, no matter what you feel like. Fake it till you feel it has been my motto for months. Fewer people ask you how you’re doing, assuming if you look good that you’re okay. And frankly, this is important and leads to #4.
Stop thinking about yourself so much. It’s okay to distract yourself from the rabbit trail of depressive and negative thoughts. Netflix is a Godsend.
Do something, anything, that is helpful or necessary part of being a functional adult. Some days for me that’s only simple things: do the dishes, get the kids off to school, cook a meal. I cannot always comply with my own rules, the grocery store with all its decisions being hard, hard, hard place for me.
Let others touch you. Some days my skin is crawling with discomfort and agitation, but allowing an embrace from Tom or a hug from my kids helps acclimate one to being and feeling human.
Do something creative. For me this is writing, or taking some images (even if it’s only on my crappy cell phone) which helps me SEE the world which is quite stunningly beautiful.
Be with a friend. It doesn’t even matter who, it forces shut for a little while the negative narrative that’s knocking around and in my head. Even if this is just for a few hours it changes the pattern of your brain, your heart to listen to another human being. Yes, you don’t have to talk about yourself, you don’t have to talk about your depression, and honestly this is a good thing.
Exercise, if you can. This time, it started with a friend who knows me well; she kept texting me – “Go for a walk, Melody.” Get outside even if it’s to walk to the end of the street, because the fresh air, the sunshine (if it’s there), and the movement help stave off the beastly sand in your veins, weighing you down.
Listen to music or read something that usually speaks to you when you aren’t down. It may be a poet you love, or a certain author, or God forbid even bloggers that you know are encouraging and positive. I have a book of Psalms that I read when I can no longer think, no longer pray, no longer believe anything good.

All of these things help me. And having been through this countless times I can tell you that they will work, not immediately, not every day, not even perfectly! But eventually, your mind will stop racing long enough to make the phone call and get in with your psychologist.

And that’s number eleven, see a professional.

If you have suffered with feelings of unusual anxiety or sadness for longer than two weeks, if the normal things no longer bring you pleasure, if you have an unusual change in your mood that you cannot stave off with any of these things, know that you need to see a professional to help you sort out why.

And this will be of the most difficult things you will ever do – to talk to a therapist about why you are depressed. I find it to be a specially, hellish experience because usually I don’t want to deal with my sh*t. And if I can go without a therapist I will stubbornly trudge along on my own for long stretches and sometimes this is okay.

The desire to be “normal” is strong, to feel joy, to experience contentment and receive love from others is the Human Condition but if you are unable to do that then get some help from a professional.

I have learned these things the hard way. But I can tell you that no matter how much you want to give in, to allow yourself to fall down that slippery path into the sinkhole of depression, know that this is the illness talking.

The only way to get well is to get back up again tomorrow, or even later today, and fight.

{Ten Thousand Tears}

My tears are welcome.

I see them splattered, dried on my glasses as I peer out the window into the wintry, cold, gray, foggy morning;

tiny specks on the panes of my eyeglasses.

I wipe hard at these dried salty witnesses.

They are a record of my sodden heart.

Ten thousand tears come raining down.

The soil of my soul is softened.
Broken apart by tears, which took forever to reappear. Though I fear

that I cannot stop them, deep down I know that they are what keeps my heart growing.

Soil ready for love, open

to the community of believers,
to grace,
to healing, forgiveness and new life,
to hope.

My tears, such an old and forgotten notion

for me.

When I was a child I pinched my eyes closed to reject my weakness, my torment as I was hollered at by a daddy that

didn’t know

better.

I closed down my heart;

it hurt too much to feel bad all the time. So I told them, you aren’t welcome here.

And my heart and soul slowly turned

hard as stone.

Today my tears rain down though I fear them, they make no sense

their intensity, they make me vulnerable,

they make me feel weak, even when I know this

wrong thinking. But it is true now, I cannot protect my soft heart, sodden and murky, saturated

still,

My tears, they are here to stay I hope, welcome.

MHH

I’ve lived with depression, at some points melancholy as a part of my “personality” for much of my life, but it only became clinical major depression about ten years ago. A variety of things came into play and I fell into a dark, frightening place. (I tell a little of my story in Not Alone. I tell parts and pieces here on the blog — under My Story.)

But I have worked hard to face my mistakes and demons,as I did I began to heal and then had the strength to do the personal care that one must do who lives with this sort of mental illness.

Though I am in a similar place today, depressed I know that I am a different person. I am different “Spiritual Soil.” I thank God for that picture that came recently from a friend’s teaching in Luke 8. I know God as I never knew God then. I sense the Holy Spirit’s whispered truth of healing and hope. I have enough hope to believe the truth that I will heal, I will heal again even as ten thousand tears rain down.

Much of my blog has been about my depression, beginning in 2001 which worsened through a series of personal and family adversities over the next several years (including the death of my father from brain cancer, during which time my sister and I cared for him in our homes). In 2005, when I became even more severely depressed, I was nearly non-functional, attempted suicide, and I was hospitalized for a while.

In later years, I became a quiet, desperate drunk attempting to self-medicate and forget.. My drinking addiction grew worse and worse over the period of my depression, becoming debilitating by 2006 or so. This was very difficult for my husband and the children at a quite impressionable age saw me frequently out of control. They are now to the age when these things do impact them, though I got sober in July, four and a half years ago.

These are not easy things to admit. They make me feel damaged, weak, and if ever there was a stigma related to being broken I feel it like never before. But it came to me recently, that I have to write my story. I have to tell it, and let it go. So that’s where I will go, to that place of heartache, depression, my experience with being a hard-core fallen down drunken mother and my cavernous personal grief about that, and interlaced in-between is Hope that I have found.

So as much as I fear my own tears, I fear more the depth of my sorrow and grief when it I shove it back inside. That’s what makes one depressed. That’s what made me drink.

I know this is the next step for me, to sort it out and live hard days, weeks and months of therapy, sleeplessness, and depression ahead.

I am thankful for the everyday, tangible and incredible voices of love and encouragement I find foremost from my husband, but also from friends and family.

Thanks for all those that read and live this story alongside. I know there are fellow sufferers. I know there are others who have family or friends who descend into this murky, sinkhole of a hell and you cannot imagine how to help. I hope that whatever I find in my story that’s redemptive will one day help others understand, find help, and live through it as you walk beside a fellow sufferer.

This isn’t over for me, my story isn’t written.

Grace & Peace,

Melody Harrison Hanson

January 29, 2013

What If All Your Life You Believed A Lie? You Are Too Broken.

The morning air is all awash with angels … – Richard Wilbur

You cannot unbreak a broken stick.

This morning, I awoke to a sense of life’s forfeiture. I am broken.
I’ve lived half my life, if my mother is to be believed I’m only in my middle years, as if I am a broken stick; a lost cause [in my mind.]
Separated from love, undeserving and
Lost to hope, real joy and vigor.

Trudging along beside humanity
Caught in my heartache.
Living in the grays, all color is gone.
Broken, bent, useless; a searing mark of shame,

On me.
I believed the lie – I am too broken.

Yesterday I heard my father talking to me about reconciliation. Oh the irony!

Yes, our family is stuck, stuck broken open in pain, wrecked by sorrow and a narrative we’ve been unable to overcome. Addictions, the palliative that settles us for a moment; achievements, work, knowledge, studies, alcohol, even religion our swan song.

God is saying that I need to sort things out, that I am not
A lost cause.

But many things have become an immense wall of fear and excuses.
And if I say this out loud, it sounds like blame.

Brick by brick, I have built a wall like Fort Knox around my heart.
A broken stick cannot be fixed, but a branch
Still attached to the vine can be pruned.

Holding on to that image of hope which honors god’s love for us and his forgiveness of us and his promise to make all things
NEW.

Fear is the thing that corrodes my spirit and damages everything good in me. It is not from God. God seems to be working on in me,

In my sleep, asking: Do I trust him enough to help us work toward reconciliation? Can I let go of the belief that our family was broken such a long time ago, so broken that it would never heal.

I’m trying to trust that God can heal anything

Even a broken stick

That is me.

{a message from my dead father}

Jumbles of words wake me up; clotting in me. My body resists waking for it’s much too early. This is my day-to-day litmus test. How bad? Long before dawn, I am scanning for the gravity of my depression. I have always eavesdropped on myself in this way.

Somehow the heart knows, even if one has learned to shut it up, even when we deny it or work diligently to be fine in the daytime. But while asleep the soul’s true confession takes hold and those few moments before waking are clear.

The words woke me. I need paper, pen. I am remembering Dad, how he held on to say goodbyes and even give us time to make amends.

What amends does mother need and with whom? I push through cobwebs of my dream world; the sentience all but gone.

What were you saying, Daddy?

My daily reading in Bishop Edmond Lee Browning in A Year of Days says that we remember the dead, miss them, because we love them.

“This energy between us, the energy we call love is eternal. The soul is made of it, and it is set free from the compromises and disappointments we experience…” And, then, “They are now perfected, made entirely of the love we shared on earth and continue to share.”

It is difficult for me to imagine.

Tonya, me, Paula, and Holly with my father (L to R) in 1976.

I was a little girl longing for peace. I became invisible, on purpose. I was hoping it would help them. I disappeared into the fog, lost, alone, afraid of every turn. Courage only came from him. When he pushed.

I thought by disappearing I could make things better.

Recently, I have remembered frequently that day of waiting. The endless wait to discover – would he die? Brain cancer was a death sentence and all I felt was glee, a dizzying freedom. I pierced my nose.

Silly, but somehow this marked the hour I started living. Soon I wouldn’t have to fear his

His recrimination,

disappointments

anger, even

rage.

His control and power. Her fear, his constant

pushing.

Soon he would be dead and we could live. I was glad.

In those murky, cotton filled minutes, the in-between of sleep and waking, my father was with me.

He was perfected, finally fully loved. There was nothing to fear.

And he is gone again, but there’s a fragment here, he left for me.

It’s something we need.

He’s waiting for her, but he knows she needs more time.
…………

We’re all going to die.

My mother isn’t any closer to death than many older adults, but I realize as we face uncertainties that there are things that need finishing when you are married to a cruel, controlling megalomaniac, it is damaging to say the least.

As I sit here contemplating this visit from my father, I know full well it wasn’t really him actually visiting me in my dreams. Perhaps my subconscious knows there are things that I can do to help my family bring needed closure, healing, last words, even forgiveness – I don’t know.

I remain open.

When my father was ill, I read a powerful and important book, Final Gifts, written by hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley. I learned a lot from their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life. It shaped me profoundly. I saw him hold on for certain goodbyes. I saw him waiting for particular conversations. And finally, I saw him go when he felt finished.

My father is a part of me. He made me into what I am.

I stopped living out of fear and now I know I have to begin again.

God Help Me {Part One}

I can’t figure out why I’m here. ~~And not that evangelical crap about the Good News.~~ I’ve got a news flash. It isn’t good, my news. I can’t figure out why I’m here and I can’t figure out how to help myself. I’m sorry I’m sad and even sorrier that Jesus isn’t answering my prayers.

(Skip to Part Two, where God answers, if you simply cannot bear all this honesty.)

The other day I faced a sorry fact, that my writing, all that I write about living with the mental-illness of depression and addiction, is stigmatizing.

People don’t mean to, but they can’t help themselves. They cannot help feeling pity. Tough break, they’re thinking. Poor girl, she is a mess. And they’d deny it to my face, but I am certain they must wonder about the depth of my faith;

I know I do,

Surely if it were deeper, then God help her, God,

would help her? Either way, I’m hurting.

I feel alone. And not because folks don’t care, so many do, care. But because I have such a short memory.

I forget, when I sink here, mired down, coiled up into this misery, into this bleakness, then. I forget the Truth.

The Truth fades, and in my shadows, in the slum of my core I am filled with shame. I’m ashamed for being a drunk even if I’m almost five years sober. Of course I am, no matter how often I speak of it. I simply speak of it to stay sober, group accountability of sorts. I’m ashamed for walking away from an interesting ministry and career, even though I was at a spiritual standstill, I was unbelieving. And here’s the vilest, most reprehensible, horrid part. I’m ashamed of my half-lived life.

And I’m most ashamed that I have written about all of it.

Glued to my bed, unable to move from the weight of it all, I imagine deleting my cyber self. Just make disappear, all those places where I tell the hideous truth about myself.

Keep it Good News. Keep it light. Keep it simple. Keep it clear that everyone is okay. Everything is alright. Shape and mold a self that is void of issue, trouble or pain.

Pretend.

I used to believe that I am the one Jesus loves but once I sank here

that no longer matters. That is no longer real.

Where is Jesus? How can he help? And the Jesus community, the “Jesus followers” so busy being and doing, making and completing, they don’t see

Jesus isn’t answering my prayers.

Because here’s the Truth. Here’s the Good News. “Jesus” is the people. And they are occupied.

Even as I write those words of anger and resentment I know I’m the one who’s broken. I’m the one who’s lived an empty voided life vacated a long time ago. Since then, not sure when it happened exactly, it was a slow trip down.

I’m a weak copy of the sorrow and heartache of my father and of my mum. I never learned to make my own way. The question remains, am I too broken? Are the secrets ‘

now told, too damning? Is the stigma tattooed on me forever – am I

good news, gone bad?

Part Two: I Asked God for Help (This is much more hopeful, I promise. He answered)

I Asked God for Help {Part Two}

I asked God to help.

That is the key, assent;
Letting down.

Holding out and open, my hands. Release.

When everything hurts, when chaos has taken over and I cannot even imagine

Solutions,
That is the key

Letting down, holding out.

When fear of outcomes prevails
I asked God for help,

I ask.
Ask again,

God help us, all.

The answer is in the act of asking.

Parents want, even expect beauty and joy. As time goes on life becomes
Wrecked
And you face over and over your lack.
Life is sacred, all of it.
The beauty and pain.
The bitter and sweet.
I envy those who don’t seem to suffer, who don’t know this sorrow and sting.

Then, I am drawn in

To Jesus
Who came for
Suffering.

Life is hard.
Life is holy.

I ask God to help.

He is the answer.

Here I am, tethered to soil and grief.
Longing for the eternal, knowing
Holy living isn’t the absence of pain.
It is acknowledging
The pain

With eyes for the kingdom of God.

I asked God for help

For joy.

Here and now

Amongst the living.

This offering up of myself,
This trusting with the hearts and minds and souls of my children,
This becoming someone Good.
This is the answer.

This dark, cold time of year makes me angry. I have the hardest time believing
In spring. New life,
Bulbs and buds

The Coming

The forward thrust, this is a Holy Hope.

I asked God for help

And he reminded me

Spring always comes.

I asked God for help

And he promised me this Ache
Doesn’t equal doubt;

Wrestling with him in the darkness of depression
Doesn’t equal sin.

Problems don’t equate punishment.

I asked God for help.
I kept asking.
I shouted, I screamed.
I heralded God with curses,
With my pain and he held me.

WINGS, did you know he has enormous feathered wings and they surrounded me,
As they enfold
They are mighty and comforting.

I asked God for help.

(On Being Human — A Prayerful Poem)

We will go soon, and I’m afraid.

I laid awake last night, wondering.

And in the meantime, since.

I thought and thought. My brain hurt for thinking so hard. When does rationality belay trust in God? Our souls churn, the crushing

Weight of heart ache. We are sore from it. Sleep won’t come

And it’s 3:30 in the morning.

Then you must pause.

As I waited I said to the Holy One, “So. I’m here now.

This.
It’s just you and me. What is your plan?”

And now

We will go,

Soon.

Into the future

Yet untold, unwritten, unknown

Looming.
I’m afraid. I’m undone, weary.

And yet I gave it to God. And my sweaty grasping hands and my heavy heart are open and free.

Still,
There is fear in the uncertainty as I long for assurances

That haven’t yet come nor will they

Perhaps ever. For that’s the way of it,

Being human.

I’m Not Gonna Lie, I’m Depressed

I’m not gonna lie, I’m depressed. Not that I was lying before

when I pretended that I wasn’t. Life is a silly game, and a beautiful dance, It takes skill – to weather life’s storms.

(And we’ve been in a blow-your-mind-knock-you-down kind of hurricane!)

It’s a special skill to endure, to survive, to not

get

depressed. Even for people who aren’t inclined, as my doctor so kindly said. I’m inclined, thank you very much. My mind and body, the know well the slippery incline toward this sink hole.

Still, no matter what I know, no matter what I am told, what I tell myself or read, or have in my head from doctors, the evil voices in my head say – FAILURE.

I’m doing my best. I’ve walked fifteen miles this week and let me tell you it took me a whole month at least to gather up the energy to dust off the treadmill, plug it in. To only do that. Just to start, to begin again when I’m so damned tempted to give in to this beast,

the dark nights, the soulless thoughts, and the depravity which is my companion,

depression.

It’s a sinkhole.

Lordy, if there weren’t so many counting on me, I think I might collapse. You see I don’t care about myself and that’s a big part of the problem. I don’t care about me.

I live for others, mostly my kids, my mother, this house, and our life. I know this is wrong. And I’m not lazy, though the voices tell me I am. I know money doesn’t equate success, or my value as a person, and yet still, I quake in my soul as I lie in bed, hiding away under the heavy down comforter, with quick glances at the clock.

4:30 am is too early to get up, 5:00, 5:40, finally dragging my sorry self out of bed.

I don’t want to get up. I don’t want to take care of everyone. I don’t want to be an enabler.

And I am angry. Angry to still have an adult child ~~freeloading~~ living in my house sleeping till noon. Angry to have a teenager whose beautiful life is spiraling out of control into a major anxiety disorder. Angry because my husband still enjoys things, wants to be with friends and in this case spends a few minutes of music making downstairs. I don’t enjoy anything right now. I am angry that we cannot figure out what’s going on in my little boy’s brain. Angry that my teenager cannot, will not, does not read books. Angry that everyone gets hungry, on schedule, three times a day. I’m even angry that I have the space and freedom to go the three-hour doctor appointments with my mother up to three times a week. I’m angry about my priviledge. I am so sick of being angry.

This is simply part of the thermometer of my spirit telling me I’m

far gone, depressed.

And so, machine like, for a week now I have put on my workout clothes and the beautiful running shoes I earned this summer. I walk downstairs, set the machine to three miles, turn on the book of Hebrew, or Luke, or Matthew. and I listen for themes of Jesus seeing or hearing women.

I listen hard, I listen angry about this too, feeling that this is also something stupid that I accept, something about not caring about myself. Angry that the Church pretends women aren’t fully human, made in God’s image, just like men. I’m angry as I quickly jot a note on a piece of tape I’ve attached to the treadmill, looking for themes from the creator God, the Holy One.

It is a scribbled prayer,

Jesus sees me.

Jesus hears me that I’m angry

and depressed.

Jesus cares.

And people care, so many good people who reach for me. Know me. Care. And I’m not so far gone that I’m oblivious or ungrateful. And I’m not so far gone that I won’t get up when the alarm goes off and continue. I’ll continue to pray, because the anger is the depression speaking and I need to know

what it’s going on and on about. I know this — it’s not the kids, it’s not the so called problems, it’s not my hubby (for sure). It’s not a friend sick with cancer, or a child with mental illness, or an aging mother, or an elderly neighbor being committed to a home, or the sexist church.

This is about me. I’m not gonna lie, depression has come knocking. Now I have to listen.

Melody

Thanks, Jamie the Very Worst Missionary, for this.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

“Childhood: that happy period when nightmares occur only during sleep.” (Unknown)

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.

Ya'll, thanks for sharing.