Category: Depression

in the midst of ashes, hope

Broken Bits and Pieces

I am so bloody tired of this feeling of being trapped and held by the past, unable to live the abundant life that was promised to each of us.

And I am frightened.  Scared to death of the endless looking back to see and remember.  When will I find in the midst of the ashes, hope.  And where is it?

All the broken bits of me are scattered and the wind gusting into my life today threatens to blow me away.

I don’t know what to do with the bits and pieces of memory – those things that hurt.  They cause me to doubt myself.  They are vicious. They are hurtful and dangerous, drumming.   They are clamoring.  They are ringing in my head  louder than my small wavering voice (only just) learning to speak.  Are they a lie from the pit or truth?  When I get like this, when my wounds are oozing as they do today, I cannot distinguish lies from truth.   It is what it is.  I am nobody.  Just another nobody with a story.  Who cares?  I cannot believe that this story would help anyone.  One word put on the page after another – risky only in its admission. Here, now, this, these words, they are nothing.

I am so tired of this place.  My family and its circling pain, all shattered fragments, falling apart more every day.  Who will hold the generations together?  They are slowly slipping away and soon they will be bits and pieces of nothing.

More importantly how do I learn?  When will I be transformed?  

Trust Him

The disciples appear to be sitting around, unsure of what to do, until Peter decides to go fishing (John 21) and the others go along.  Was it aimless activity.  They needed to  eat.  Not necessarily completely aimless but doing the thing in front of them. The disciples do not know what to do, so they do the necessary.  And the story suggests that they have put themselves in a place where Christ meets them.

“Here is the simple truth, attested to by the saints, that when we are uncertain what to do we should simply do our duty and God will guide.”

But that night they caught nothing doing what they perceived as the right thing.  It is suggested that they are being prepared to learn one of the central lessons of discipleship–apart from Jesus they can do nothing (15:5).

Jesus has taught this lesson before, for “never in the Gospels do the disciples catch a fish without Jesus’ help.”

I feel like those fishermen who struggled to believe—they were fishing in order to pass the time and in order to eat.  It has been a long, long time that I have sat with my story, lived it, tried to find something redeeming there in my story.  And my life.

I fear, like the disciples with their nets in the water, that

I. just. don’t. believe.

Yes, I am having trouble believing that you can catch fish here. With my life.  With this story.  It’s been “a long night of fishing and I have caught nothing.”

I need to hear His voice, and I don’t even know for sure that I know what it looks or sounds like any more.   Is it even him they wondered when he showed up?   When He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat”….

What are his promises for a moment like this?

Lay It Down

So I have to set down my anger and disappointment at myself for quitting my job so that now, in the middle of a recession, I have no possibilities.  I have to put my desire to work or “to do something” to support my family down.  I have to let go of my ego and pride and the very real delusion that a job will make me more esteemed person to others or bring me respect.   Lay it down.

I must believe that all of this, my story, is part of a purpose bigger than I am able to imagine or see.  Jesus is teaching me that apart from him I can do nothing.

Even I don’t see it.  It is almost easier to look backwards because that is so much clearer, ah beautiful hindsight.

No the future is confusing.  I think I want to go back to school then I am I’m totally frozen by insecurity, self-doubt, and fear — perhaps I’m not smart enough, diligent enough and more importantly have nothing original to say?  It has all been said, thought, written, done.   Lay it down.

I thought I was going to write my story, but there isn’t even a story.  It is just a story about an average nobody middle child who had a raging rather, became a workaholic while having three kids and a step daughter, who quit her paying job, got depressed, became an alcoholic, and now does what? Lay it down.

Tom says it is a spiritual attack when I start to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world, to my children, to my friends (what friends?), to him.  Lay it down.

Don’t tell me I’m a good mom, because I don’t care right now.   I don’t even know why I am here.

The future is blank.  It requires faith.  Big faith?  A small quavering timid faith is all I seem to have today, a brokenhearted faith.   Whatever it is, it’s immeasurable.

It simply is.  I have to lay it all down and believe what he promises, when he said …

“Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” – Luke 1:45

Lord I believe.  Help my unbelief.

Thoughts on the Impotence of Parenting

I’m sitting in the lobby at surgery having an internal hissy fit because I cannot get my wireless to work. Ironically I don’t even need to get online.  I have come prepared with two bags filled with at least four books, a journal and my camera – the bags are heavy with options!  My thoughts alone could keep me busy or at least entertained for hours but instead I’m angry that I cannot get online.  A sad commentary of the state of my mental life.

Note to self: never wait in a healthcare office without headphones.  I forgot how badly this bothered me when my dad was ill and we had endless waits in the hospital as he was treated for his brain cancer.

Hell, I hate the clatter associated with the comings and goings in a doctor’s office.  A moment of total honesty — Humanity’s cacophony gets under my skin.  With the nurse’s numerous interruptions as they are fetching folks in and out, the cable television blaring unceasingly, the elevator’s chimes, and boring conversations on cells phones as people make arrangements for their day.  No, I don’t want to talk to the elderly woman with a novel protruding from her red pleather bag.  So she chats with the stay-at-home mom who has already introduced herself and has already mentioned her four sons and that she is waiting for Kevin, her husband.  I am also annoyed by the two loud women, (it is much too early for loud or conversation) obviously friends, whose smoker’s voices are husky and grating, their tracksuits and year-round tans are simply strange and irritate me.  I have no patience. Stale coffee smells.  Everyone is nervous, chatting with the companion who drove them. Their voices annoy me, made even more so because I cannot resist listening to them and that pisses me off.  The only one that sounds halfway interesting is the gentleman on the phone speaking in Spanish who cannot reach whomever he needs.  He shakes his head in frustration.

This place is depressing.

And all the while my baby girl is in there, knocked out cold, having an invasive procedure on her face.  Sinus and Adenoid surgery and I am thinking about the fact that I never made that call to my friend Mark about natural remedies.  Perhaps if we had done that, changed the phlegm level in her head, she wouldn’t be here today.  I suppose one can always second guess.   I know I will.

It is likely that I am so irritated because I am scared.

This day has been three years coming and here I sit at “the Holy Grail” because we are hoping against all hope that this resolves the consistent sinus infections that have plagued our thirteen year old daughter for years.  I cannot imagine what it is like to live in constant pain.  It makes me work extra hard to be patient with her, to understand that her frequent moods may not simply adolescence.

And I wonder, what is it that makes me withdraw into myself here in the waiting room pissed off that I cannot connect to the internet?

Rosetti01
Image via Wikipedia

Perhaps I am simply too introspective.

I think — I amagine — that I am in control of my children’s worlds.  And this week I have one under the “needle” and the youngest has traveled to Florida for a trip to Disney with Grandparents.  The truth is I have no control over these circumstances.

Finding a small consolation in the knowledge of my impotence, I begin to read an essay in Not Alone by a young (I’m assuming) woman named Laura Droege.

It is a distressing story and once again I feel anger that a person can suffer for so many years and the very people who should have helped – parents, teachers, doctors, pastors, therapists and friends – all left her alone in her mental illness.  Why?  What is the meaning of this and how is it that we are so unable to understand when someone struggles with an illness such as this.  Something needs to be done to educate the public, I am especially interested in Christ-followers knowing how to help those they love when they come up against someone with the troubles that Laura faced.  Something must be done for people who live for decades with suicidal thoughts, obsessive behaviors, wish for self-harm, depression, and the never-ending feeling that God has abandoned you.

Something must be done.

I wrote my story to help others, but as I was doing that I realized that I could barely say anything in 2000 words.

The challenge to the Church is clear, it is there in the stories of the forty people in Not Alone who shared their experience with depression in that small tomb. The question is how will the church respond?

Truly Depressed People Scare Me

My neighbor, who is eighty-four, won’t answer me directly when I ask how she’s doing.  “Tomorrow will be better” is her reply.  It always amazes me that she never complains.  Not even when asked! And in my estimation she’s got some things she could.   She had surgery on her back last year for pain.  It didn’t work.  Now she’s home bound (not allowed to drive any more) and a few days ago, when we talked on the sidewalk, she told me she is suffering from “what you had Melody.”

Depression.  It is huge that she would admit it to me.  At least for me, the telling to others was so difficult! The feelings of shame and failure and personal weakness are overwhelming.

For two days since that conversation, that knowledge has ridden on my back everywhere with me.  It is heavy on my mind and heart when picking up my kids, shopping at the Goodwill for Halloween, chauffeuring children to church and back, walking the dog past her house morning and night, washing the dinner dishes at breakfast. I can’t stop thinking of it. Jeanne told me she’s depressed and I should know what to do.  But I don’t.

Should I bring her flowers? She loves plants.  A happy pumpkin.  A copy of Not Alone and tell her about my essay in there?  What should I do?  Experience does not bring knowledge of what to do.  Everyone is different.  And I’m so upset by the realization that truly depressed people are scary.  

That shouldn’t be — not for me.  I know what she’s feeling (as much as one can.)  I can picture her over there, in her darkened living room, sitting alone, unable to stand at the kitchen sink any longer because of back pain, or cook, or do any chores.  “The only thing that doesn’t hurt is sitting.” she told me last summer when I asked.

I know I need do something. Give her a call.  And I am afraid.

I think sometimes when we know someone is depressed we get overwhelmed by how to respond.  And so we don’t do anything.

I am here to tell you anything is better than nothing.  All a person really needs is contact with another human being.  How easy it is to forget how very alone one feels.

I will search for my lost ones who strayed away and I will bring them safely home again.  I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak…”  (Ezekiel 34.16 NLT)

I am thoroughly glad to not have had a depressive episode for months and months.  So I can freely say that I am in a good place and I feel so grateful!  I recently had an essay published about my experience with depression called Hope Heals.  It’s published in the book Note Alone: Stories of Living with Depression.   

Whatever the outcome I will give her a call.  I don’t have to fix the situation in fact, of course, I can’t.  I just need to show her that she is not alone.  That someone cares.

Someday In September, I Won’t be so Glum

Someday in September I won’t be so glum.  It hits me around this time every year as everything in the garden is dying.

I look out my kitchen window at the wilted and black stems and the herbs that need cutting before the first frost.  I have cucumbers and tomatoes still, but I can feel the death in the garden.  Yes, it is the same feeling I get around this time every year. Have I mowed the grass for the last time? All I can think of is winter looming.

I cannot enjoy the sunny, blustery September days because I am thinking of the cold that is coming.  And I am wondering when the leaves start falling? Thinking that if it is warm this weekend I should clean up the yard for winter.  I will be glad that I did, come spring.

And every year around this time, I think this is the year that I will plant bulbs.  Some years I have even gone so far as to buy Tulips and Daffodils bulbs then I procrastinate, setting them in the garage for “a while.”  Blubs in Wisconsin have to get in the ground before the ground gets frozen hard, so I have months to ponder it, and the truth known already.

I won’t do it.

I think it is mostly because I haven’t the faith to believe that Spring will come.

But it does.

Oh that I had the faith required today to plant.  To wait.  To believe in spring.

Therefore the Lord waits

to be gracious to you, and therefore

he exalts himself to show mercy to you.

For the Lord is a God of justice;

blessed are all those

who wait for him.

Isaiah 30:18

This is what got me inspired, after having a gloomy wretched day.  I read about hope from Ann Voscamp.  Thank you Ann.

 

 

 

 

I Regret Not Being Happy (A poem)

I regret not being happy. Or happier if that makes you feel
better. As if I could do anything to change myself.
I doubt that it is in my power at all
to change me. Particularly when I feel this heavy.  Smothered by a lingering gloom.
And I know that disaster sits around the corner waiting. No, I do not choose
my moods. I don’t believe one can
choose to simply be something else. If I did, I would not last long
sitting with this regret.

September 21, 2011

Sleeping poorly and feeling increasingly unsettled the last few days.  I’m not sure what’s going on or what this poem even means, but this was the result of trying to write about it. MH

I Am More (a poem response to Blackhawk’s Sermon “Who Is Your God?”)

I Am More

By Melody Harrison Hanson

The future disturbs,
chases at my sanity and sensibilities.
I am scared of each intake of breath, every thought
and this moment. I am stuck.

The only thing that makes sense is Jesus.
I lean in to Him.  I cry, ready for anything.
If only I could cry actual tears. 
That too soon reminds me I am only partly healed.
I feel barely human.
What kind of person cannot cry?
The weight on my chest is unimaginably heavy. 
Hope is cloying and oppressive.

I am scared of the future, looming dark and cold.
I am afraid of these days I am living now.
I want to believe that eventually this life of mine will have a purpose beyond this day.

I am more than the money I don’t earn.
I am more than the things I do.
I am more than what I give.
I am more than what I take.
I am more than the words I write, slipping them into the cosmos with trepidation.
I am more than merely a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a friend.

Why doesn’t being beloved feel better than this?
In the end I am stuck with myself, I am barely human.

I want it all to mean so much more.  I want
the children I meet to change me.
I want the people I love to make me feel alive.
I want each action I take to mean something.
And yet it is all utterly meaningless unless
Yahweh is everything.

———————————————————————————

This poem is about the greatest of idols self-identity — allowing our meaning and purpose to come from anything but Yahweh.  The sermon at Blackhawk this week kicked off a series titled American Idols.  The premise is that anything in your life, even a good thing, that becomes more important than God is an idol.  In an age of psychology and self-healing, through medicines and talk therapy, self-worth can all too quickly become an idol.

For me, the journey of finding my way back to faith and belief was so huge in my development of a healthy identity.  Still, many days, as I search, as I long for, need, wander, hope and fear — the process becomes an idol.  The process becomes this thing that distracts me from who God is, what it means to be his beloved child, and the few things that he calls me to each day.

Here is what I wrote last week in response to the sermon Stop.  It is a part of a series I am writing called: Be Real.  

One of the ways I’m going to do that– be real — is by writing a response to the sermons I hear at my church, Blackhawk. These responses are not from the church, just my reflections.  I am always challenged by teachers at Blackhawk, sometimes profoundly, but I don’t — to be honest — always take the time needed to apply them to my life. But, if life is too busy to apply what you’re learning about your faith and if you don’t change and grow, what’s the point? So here goes.  Many people are busier than I, including my husband, and I just hope that this helps reinforce in some small way what God was already saying to you.

Life is Work, Hard Work (but there is a ray of hope)

To want–to strive–to long for more is to be human. Isn’t it?

We are all on that journey of life, which for some comes so easily and for others, I include myself here, is work, hard work.

Jesus says in John 8:32 “the truth will set you free” and that I believe.  It is what makes me a believer.  The truth will free me from my constant desiring, striving and longing for more out of life.

But in the meantime it also can make you quite miserable don’t you think?

As Richard Rohr says, “Medieval spiritual writers called it “compunction,” the necessary sadness and humiliation that comes from seeing one’s own failures and weaknesses … Without confidence in a Greater Love, none of us will have the courage to go inside, nor should we. It merely becomes silly scrupulosity and not any mature development of conscience or social awareness.”

 

Desiring. Striving. Longing. It can become a burden.  And a weight.  And before you know it you are running from the truth, any truth.

What does that have to do with my nearly ten-year wrestling with major depression?  That experience made me into a different person.  I stopped running.  I began to face the past, the present and the future and admitted how scared I was.  I began working on my life. And it was hard work.

But I have become a different person.

I am more content and able to just be than at any other time in my life.  I once was filled with the pain of needing to prove myself, heavy with the belief that I had to be significant and do incredible things with my life in order to be loved.  I thought I was unlovable.   Instead, I am different and happy for the first time in … as long as I can remember.

  • I found my way back to Belief.  I know I am Beloved.
  • I am a more empathetic, genuinely loving and generous person with my time, resources and life experiences.
  • I am able to face my addictions:  alcohol (three years in July), cigarettes, shopping, work, to name just a few.
  • I have forgiven and I have been forgiven.
  • I have learned that in telling my story others are somehow compelled to grow.  It is almost as if knowing what I have been through opens up a place in others to believe that it is possible to be healed.

I took some time this summer to write briefly about my experience and it will be published in a book titled Not Alone — It has stories of living with depression.  The book is available for pre-order.   I hope it helps and encourages others who may suffer with this confusing and difficult illness of depression.

helmet

From the book:

Depression is a very real experience for many people. The causes can be varied. Abuse. Chemical imbalances. Divorce. Rejection. There is no one reason that a person might suffer depression. However, one common theme is that it can leave the person feeling isolated and alone. Because of the stigma that is often associated with depression, people often remain silent about it, never knowing that the person next to them is going through the same thing or has experienced it in the past. Instead, they hide away, believing that no one understands, believing that no one cares.

In this book, the authors break the silence, boldly sharing their stories of depression.  Whether sharing how they first discovered that what they were feeling was depression, telling how they sought help for their depression or giving words of hope that depression can be managed, the authors all tackle the lie that you must suffer in solitude. With courage and honesty, these stories give a glimpse into the depressed existence. While you will not find a cure for depression in these pages, you will find a sense of community. You will find words of hope. You will find that you are Not Alone.

And here are links (chronologically and a list) to other things I have written here about my experience with depression.

You are Beloved

This post is about being loved and feeling loved.  And what can happen when you don’t believe you are dearly loved — to your relationships and to your hopes and dreams for your life.

GROWING UP, I was not told…

I never believed that I was “dearly loved.” This was partly because I grew up in a frightening and unpredictable home and because of my father’s angry raging behaviors.  I have always been profoundly unsure of myself.  I remember how important it became to simply grow invisible. 

Invisible was safe.  If you aren’t seen or heard, you cannot upset anyone.  No opinions.  Eventually no thoughts at all at home, where you might slip up and express them.  This was okay if he agreed with you.  But if not, there was no telling what might happen.  You might be lectured at for hours, or berated in front of a friend. Humiliation.  Threats.  Intimidation.  Blame.  It just wasn’t predictable.

When I look at my children I’m appalled by my upbringing.  I want nothing more than to see my kids discover and grow into unique people.  I see incredible things in them and I tell them often, out of love and a wish to affirm those truths.

 “Those are beautiful words you have written.”

“God made you full of joy.”

“You memorize things so easily. That will make life so much easier for you.”

“You are careful and precise and that will serve you well in the future.”

“You make people laugh, what a gift!”

“You care about others.”

“You are gentle and kind and the world needs more men like that.”

“You will grow into someone who washes others’ feet.”

“Yes, that is sexist it pleases me that you saw it.”

  “You articulate yourself so well!”

I speak these truths and other, because I believe children need help to discover their talents and abilities and to experience the spirit of God.  I believe we don’t naturally know.  My place in God’s world, made in his image, is something that I never discovered in that shrouded, hidden place that I disappeared in to for so many years as a child and young adult.

THE CHURCH didn’t tell me …

Secondly the Church sent subliminal, and sometimes outright sexist messages to girls  where I was growing up in the south.  I “heard” that I am a second class person; less valued by God because I (somehow) need men to support me, protect me, and teach me, especially about the Bible.  I was to subordinate myself to men.

Though I heard those things, in my gut I knew it was wrong.  I have always believed that if you believe in the world of Gen 1 & 2, and in the hope of lasting and true restoration by Jesus on the Cross, then you cannot accept the cultural Church practices spoken of in the NT.

MARRIAGE

By the grace of God I married beautiful, ennobling, questioning complex thinking person of faith.  He lives with me in the land of questions and he does not attempt to tell me what the answers are.  Together we began the journey and partnership of marriage in June of 1993.  What he spoke into my life was hope, and goodness, and empowerment. He listened for my voice and I began to heal. 

I was a fanatically hard-working ministry leader when he met me.  I worked for my father (ironically) so at the end of the day, I finally had my father telling me what I was good at by giving me promotions.  The more I accomplished the more responsibility I was given.  I discovered I had many talents, I was a hell of a hard worker and I had a need to constantly be proving myself and my worth.  At the end of the day, week, month, there was always more to be done.  More to prove.  More to do to validate myself as a daughter, as a woman, as a leader, as a human being.

I still didn’t believe I was BELOVED.   Skip forward from my mid thirties to today.

TODAY I am …

44.  I have been out of the workplace for ten years.  I “used” my children as an excuse to leave an acrimonious place where (I felt) I had hit the glass ceiling. I was burned out trying to prove myself.  I didn’t know the grace of God in my life.  I didn’t really believe.

Over the last decade I have walked a painful path but I have discovered that I am beloved.  Oh yes, those difficult lessons (my experience with clinical depression, my alcoholism, losing my parents) were so vital to my becoming human again and the reason that I am alive today.  I got sober, which took courage in the Christian community.  Actually I didn’t get any help from Christians but by God’s grace, my life is living through and beyond being an alcoholic or being depressed.

Today my life is so incredibly rich and full.  And now as a woman, a burgeoning feminist, a feeble follower of Jesus, a sometimes photographer, a frequent writer, hungry student of the Bible, I am asking for others to speak truth into my life now about my unique contribution to be made.

If I let myself, I quickly become focused on what I am, who I am, why I am … and the fact that I am so afraid.  (I think) I want to study and learn and be able to articulate Truth by going back to school. When I look around my community there are needs everywhere.  I see them.  I feel them.  My heart breaks for it.  As a white person with affluence I believe I have a unique responsibility and a unique place of financial privilege.  As a woman, and a feminist and a follower of Jesus I believe my voice is unique.

The Jesus that washes our feet wasn’t a macho oriented, “women should be in the home cooking, cleaning, having babies and bringing me my dinner” kind of man who has been written and preached about in the Church.  He preached that we are to live in peace, he offers us a life full of victory (over our sin), and he makes us generous and loving. We are to speak against injustice. That’s the Jesus I know.   That’s my kind of faith.

But I am afraid and I can no longer blame my upbringing.  I can no longer blame the Church.  I can no longer blame my father.  With no one left to blame, I am here with my convictions and beliefs, greatly needing shape and formation.  It is time to act; to step out in faith that God is with me each step of the way and that there is a reason for each experience I have had.  In some ways I “woke up” just a few years ago.  A late bloomer doesn’t do it justice, but you are never too old to do something.

At fifty, my mother began a process of waking up.  She is now in her seventies and to her credit is a person continuously searching for truth.  I greatly admire that about her.

Andy Crouch, on his blog Culture Making, says disciplines are the key to excellence. Ten thousand hours is a good benchmark—that’s one hour a day, five days a week, for forty years (with two weeks of vacation each year!). If every Christian decided to spend 10,000 hours developing their capacity in a single cultural domain (painting, stress fracture analysis, genomic sequencing, you name it) and also 10,000 hours on the spiritual disciplines that embody dependence on God (solitude, silence, fasting, study, prayer), in forty years we’d have a completely different world. How are you spending your 10,000 hours?

I am a white woman of privilege, blessed by living a beautiful life, a feminist and Jesus follower, who finally knows she is BELOVED and is finding her voice and asking:  How should I spend my next 10,000 hours?

The Act of Sleeping (a poem)

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Image by -= Bruce Berrien =- via Flickr

the days of late have been quite enough for my heart, mind and soul to keep up … and so…

I was

drifting off to sleep,

taking an illicit nap in the middle of the day,

when it hit me.

I have always loved the act

of sleeping.  It is a thread

that holds my life together, connecting me

                     to health,

                     to sanity,

                     to strength.

It is safety, a place I have run to all my life.

For life is full of danger and pain.

Life is sometimes more than I can bear.

I do not know if there is anything

I enjoy more than sleep.

Catching Up

It has been a while, so I thought I’d simply catch you up on some goings on.

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world” –CS Lewis

Writing.

Much of the month of May, I was busy writing an essay about my experience with depression for possible acceptance to a book at Civitas Press.  Until I hear yay or nay, I cannot publish it here.  But I thought perhaps I’d include a paragraph or two to tantalize you.

Hope Heals

By Melody Harrison Hanson

“I will search for my lost ones who strayed away and I will bring them safely home again. I will bandage the injured and strengthen the weak…” (Ezekiel 34:16 – NLT)

This is the story of how I fell into the sinkhole of depression and climbed my way out again. My story began with pride and self-delusion and moved to healing and acceptance—forgiving myself for being less than I imagined. The path of brokenness took me to frightening, even diabolical places, but God found me in the pit of my depression, tenderly loving me as I accepted my raging need for him. Finally, in my forties, after a decade of turmoil, the crooked path led to hope and healing. Writing this, going back and lingering, has been harder than I expected. I offer it here because of what God has done in me.

When I quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom, I was unprepared for how unhappy I became. Forever seeing my life in terms of success or failure, I believed that I was failing. What kind of a mother doesn’t love being at home with her children? Over the years we shared long, sun-burnt summer days at the pool and sweaty bike rides but, even as we meandered through the zoo and the farmer’s market, I grew increasingly restless and miserable. If I was truthful, I had been frantic and dissatisfied at work. Leaving was more like running away under the ruse of caring for the kids. For years my job had buoyed me up on the raging ocean of my insecurities and fear of failure. Going home took away that life-preserver. I had never dealt with the need every human being has for purpose and significance. I had no where left to run!

I was at that time incapable of being happy at work or at home, battling the haunting, negative tape loops in my head repeating vicious lies.

I feel unimaginably grateful for so many things today.  Even if the essay doesn’t get published in the book, the exercise of going back was terrific—hard and good.

Photography.

I continue to relish taking photographs for Our Lives Magazine.  As I talked with a new acquaintance and took images of him, he spoke of wanting to be a bridge person between the Mormon community and LGBTQ friends.  That pretty much sums up why I continue with OL.  As a Christ-follower, I hope that we can know one another and treat one another with love and respect.  Darren is a photographer as well and he turned my own camera on me.  It reminded me of the feeling of always having a camera in your face (unpleasant) but I appreciated that he was able to capture a smile!  He said “You’re much nicer than your picture on the website implies.”  Thanks Darren!

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless–it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” — CS Lewis

Family.

A field trip to Old World Wisconsin, was informative and fun!

6th graders have a Middle Ages unit.  Lucky for us, Grandma Hanson can sew and she was willing and so able!

My sister and I went to the Milwaukee Art Museum the other day.

The pool is open!

Summer!

Summer officially starts for us in a week.  I will have one child in morning summer school, two middleschoolers in Young Shakespeare Player‘s rehearsing all summer for Romeo & Juliet which performs August 11-21.  And of course we have an aging college student in the house, whose laissez-faire attitude and bouncing emotions I find irritating, and draining.  But each child stretches me.  Each one, uniquely challenges my wisdom, sense of humor and grit.

The pool is open and it is finally warm!  I know we will spend long hours there, though I am no longer allowed to sun!  Squamous cell carcinoma requires me to cover up, lather up and basically consider the sun my enemy.  (Secretly, I still love the sun and being sun-kissed, hot and becoming brown and freckly.  As long as my sunscreen is strong, I do risk a little.)

I am launching int o the big task of dividing perennials in my garden.   (Let me know if you want anything).  Not just Hosta and ferns, of which I have a plethora, but lots of other plants.  I’m rethinking the front of my yard.  Because of a neighboring Black Walnut tree I’m about to give in to the fact that nothing will grow happily and I will move a number of plants and put in something (I don’t know what is resistant to Black Walnut) to cover the ground.  I’m also going to plant an herb garden in the sunny blank patch in front.

Gardening and Thinking about Writing.

While I dig in the dirt, I’ve been thinking about whether I’ve got a book in me.  The essay was incredibly challenging, fun and a lot of work!  I can see now why it sometimes takes years to write a book.  I’ve boiled over for years about women in the evangelical church, and wonder…   Is there a need for a book to challenge the current situation in the local church?  What do women need to hear?  What do men need to hear? What hasn’t been said?  What needs to be said differently?

The friend that helped me edit my essay says the full story, a memoir, could/should be told, of my fall into the sinkhole of depression.  Coming from being a workaholic and the brokenness of my dysfunctional childhood and how the Lord found me in the pit of depression and for the first time I experienced grace and peace, hope.  Perhaps there is a book there?  I have found, as I tell my story, that many people suffer from depression and feel isolated and alone.

Some images of spring in Wisconsin.

“I asked God for strength that I might achieve. I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

I asked for health that I might do greater things. I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy. I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men. I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life. I was given life that I might enjoy all things. I got nothing that I asked for, but everything I hoped for.

Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered. I am, among all women, most richly blessed.” (author unknown)

I don’t know about you but I am reveling in my blessings.  And because I have to work at it  it is sweeter.  I am so grateful.

the ebb and flow

Those words, ebb and flow, gifted to me by a friend offer a hint of relief as they innocently imply a constant fluctuation.  She is alluding to the in and out movement of ocean tides —  a perfect metaphor for the dark moods that come over me.  A decline and increase.  It is true the dark moods come less and less for me as the years pass by.

I hate this day. 

I hate the day or two after a I write something like yesterday.  (That was a major dumping — discharge — purge.)  Though the writing is therapeutic for me on one level, in the sharing of it publicly I am left sitting here alone in my study anxiously worrying that people will think I am a narcissistic, egregiously self-absorbed person.  Which I am.  Didn’t I just say I want to be my own God?

But the ebb and flow metaphor only barely works because the moon pulls the tides.  The tides do not control themselves.  The tides are daily, predictable, constant.  Are my moods predictable? No.  Are they known for their patterns?  To some extent, yes. Ironically, as time passes I forget how dismal this mood genuinely is; it is utterly insufferable.  God forbid this thing was foreseen!

I had forgotten how bad it feels to slip into the murky place of in-between.  I go through the motions.  Though some are too difficult, already. I have random thoughts.  Do not kill the dog.  Cannot make the lunches.  I find myself wearing PJs for half the day only because I can’t bear to choose what to wear.  I can lean down and pick up book after book from the library bag that has spilled over on the floor.  I must bring order so that “they”, the ones I love, don’t have to be afraid.  Won’t start to worry.  Don’t worry about me I want to say.  I resolve not to be anyone’s extra concern.  The weight of the day is enough for most people.  I sit and listen to my son tell me about aliens and zombies in the book he’s reading.  It’s noise.  Even though I want to care, because he cares.  I can’t get up and make lunches (the task at hand) even though I know I need to make myself engage.  I try to pretend the cement is not in my veins.

How’d it happen, this time? 

How could I possibly have let this happen? I know.  I think.  I am absolutely dejected about the future and my lack of purpose and even perhaps my inability to accept the purpose put before me.  I am afraid of what others think of me, unless I find a high-powered job or pursue a degree that will puff up my sense of self and be something esteemed by others.  I am afraid to enjoy the garden, photography, writing or family! 

Should I write the book about my spiritual and psychological journey of healing?  Much of it is written here.  And I have more than fifty poems.  I also have a book of photography waiting for printing.  I am frozen and disgusted by my self-pity.  And terrified that once again I find myself anxious about the little things (which intellectually I know I can handle.) And even more so, I am wondering if I have the book in me.  If these experiences would be worthy to put on the printed page to help others.

For today, all I have is my excuses.  My brain, clouded over by this mood, aches.  And all I can do today is resolve to get a little exercise, to not isolate, and I shake my fist at the ebb and flow wondering aloud to the One who controls the moon and her tides.  What do you want from me?

Melt Down

I am my secrets.  They make me human.  And yet, if I don’t trust you enough to share them, I will die of my shame.  I need you to know my despair.

I need to tell you that today my heart is aching. I need you to believe that my masks are not all lies.  You do know me, because I always tell you the truth.  About my despondence — my anguish that comes too easily.  I need to tell you about the internal corruption that sits with me night and day mocking me.  And that I sit with my secrets wondering where are the friends to reassure me that everything will be okay?

Where is God to say that his Truth is all that I need?

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now.  I thought for a minute I kicked this habit of despair.

I don’t doubt the fact of knowing you God.  I am certain that you are there. Knowing you love even me.  The tears I cannot cry, you wipe away.  No misunderstanding there.  But what I have come to understand is that some days — it makes no difference at all.  I hurt anyway.  Your song, God, offers no comfort today.  The music at times so poignant.  Nothing about that seems to matter, when I know you don’t care what I do with my life.  Universal truths don’t matter, today, as I sit here thinking about what I now know.   What I think I want.  Sitting here smothered by the heavy weight of my self doubt.  Begging you to help me understand what is happening .

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now. I thought I kicked this habit of despair.

Why do I have to feel my life is so important?  Why can’t I surrender to simply living each day. Loving. Others. Quietly.  Unknown to the world.  Anonymous. Why can’t I just do it.  Instead I sit here under the black cloud of the sinkhole and my need stares back at me in the mirror.

I. want. to. be. s.o.m.e.b.o.d.y.  I want to be important.  I know what I can do.  I know my own potential.

But that is what I thought you took from me — God — in my Exodus years.  I know you took my heartache and salvaged my soul.  Gave me forgiveness and in the sojourn to hell and back you promised to take this hideous ingratitude, ambition and greed.  The need for accolades and esteem.  That part of me that I loathe, that wants so badly to earn my worth.  That thinks I can prove something, anything.  Those ghosts of ambition crowd out all that you have taught me through my affliction.  Face it.

I want to be immortal.  I always want more than you.

It should be enough that you love me.   The knowledge that somehow you are rebuilding the frame of this crooked broken heart, that aches and thinks it is something, anything without you.  My secrets remain.  The fact that some days I don’t want to serve you.  I want to be my own deliverance.  I want to be God.  As if I could.

Damn you, fear. Damn you pain that sits lodged inside me.  I am choking on it right now.

This is me melting down.