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)