So, I came to the realization today that I have been the most down these last two weeks than I have been in a long, long time. I mean, the most I have dealt and battled with depression in the last 16 months of being sick, and the most I have experienced it in years. For reasons and things I can't go into detail on here at this time.
Reasons and things that led me to need time and space for my heart to bleed, and I could not take it any longer and was dealing with so much and constantly getting triggered and so I decided to deactivate e-mail, my facebook, and this blog for most week, just until I felt my world felt intact again. And let me tell you, when things started turning around for me emotionally and spiritually Thursday afternoon, Friday and most of today, being able to sit and write out an email yesterday I plan on sending to some friends soon and feeling safe to re-enter the world of facebook and my blog yesterday, though I am just now getting a chance to do it today, has been great.
Reasons and things that led me to need time and space for my heart to bleed, and I could not take it any longer and was dealing with so much and constantly getting triggered and so I decided to deactivate e-mail, my facebook, and this blog for most week, just until I felt my world felt intact again. And let me tell you, when things started turning around for me emotionally and spiritually Thursday afternoon, Friday and most of today, being able to sit and write out an email yesterday I plan on sending to some friends soon and feeling safe to re-enter the world of facebook and my blog yesterday, though I am just now getting a chance to do it today, has been great.
But as I said, just coming into the realization of those words earlier tonight, I am depressed, surprisingly, as in another breakthrough earlier this afternoon, was such a freeing admission.
Freeing in the sense that I know struggling and dealing with depression to the degree that I have been is also healing. Healing in knowing that my admission or the reality of me struggling with it does not change or take away from my trust in or love for God.
It does not eliminate my joy or my peace or my hope nor make me question, doubt or believe that He is here, because He is.
It is just a weight that has to be acknowledged, accepted and felt. To know it is okay to not be okay.
And I think why I have been fighting even admitting or realizing to myself that I am, is that being a Christian and walking through hardship like this, I can sometimes feel the pressure whether from others or myself, that I have to be perfectly trusting God at every moment, even when it is hard.
Or that I need to always have complete and total peace, joy, hope, praise and worship Him. Even when it feels like my world is falling apart.
Or, that being depressed means that I am weak. That I am giving up or am hopeless or that I “should” be able to handle it all. That being depressed means I lack maturity or opens me up to judgment... if she REALLY knew or trusted God, she would not be feeling this way... and on and on the lies carry on.
Yet, I know that is NOT true. If there is anything I have learned in my life and in the last 16 months, it is that all that Jesus wants me to be is real. We have emotions and they are not bad. In fact, they help us to really see ourselves and to really see and discover God's true heart and who He is. Struggling to accept and cope with the reality of all that has turned my world again upside down in the last two weeks is not bad.
It does not mean I am losing my faith. It does not mean I do not love or trust God with me or all that is happening. It does not mean that I am not able to have moments where things feel okay. It does not mean I cannot still have fun. Or that I'm not doing well. Or not encouraged. Or have cut myself off from community or from doing the other things I need in order to be emotionally and spiritually healthy. I am still living my life. It has just been ten times harder recently.
But you know what, it doesn't mean all those things, nor does it mean something is wrong with me, it just means this is reality. This is life. And life is hard.
I am grateful we don't and I don't have to have it together all the time. We don't have to be okay all the time and that it is okay for me to feel and wrestle with all that has been raging within me. In moving towards, not away from these deep-seated emotions and the activating events that triggered them, I am coming deeper into the realities of this situation and where I am at and where God is at, in ways that lead not to death, but new life.
And, as I was sitting on my porch and reading, something in one of my favorite passages jumped out at me...
'They will not see prosperity when it comes...” From Jeremiah 17 where we find... cursed are those who depend on flesh for their strength... they will be like a bush in a wasteland... but blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose confidence is in him... they will be like a tree planted by the water... etc.
“They will not SEE prosperity when it comes...” just kept grabbing my attention.
Man, do I not want that to be me. That I would be so focused on what I did NOT have, that I'd miss it even when it came. I was reminded of something I have been thinking about a ton lately. About how much I've been reminded to not take things for granted and have seen so much more or seen with new eyes all the good He has done and is doing in my life.
And how ironic it is, that these extremely challenging last two weeks come on the heels of a time I joked with a few friends the week before my birthday and again with a friend when we had coffee the day before my birthday, that I had felt like I had been celebrating my birthday for the last 10-12 weeks.
The last 12 weeks (not including last week and this week), have been pivotal for me. So MUCH that God has done in the emotional and spiritual realm.
I have never felt nor been more alive. I felt it has been this period of rejoicing and sheer celebration of all that He is and that He has done. This semester has been a crucible, a series of trials that He has faithfully brought me through, and I felt like I was literally emerging on the other side of this, feeling completely made new.
(Before these last two weeks), I have never been more grateful for this precious gift of life that I've been given. In this time, more than ever, I saw just how blessed I was and have been overwhelmed with gratitude. It was also a time in which I have never felt more in love or intimate with God. There has been so much He has revealed to me and spoken to me about and done. Things that He would tell me one day, then days later it would happen and so many other evidences of His presence, power, love and grace.
I have never been more grateful just to be ALIVE, I remember telling Kat, one of my friends from small group, as we both sat and shared tears, this time, tears of joy of all we have seen Him do.
And then, the next day, on my birthday, crisis came again like I thief in the night and I have found myself re-living the horrors again from last year, 16 months ago, when this all began. I do not understand it, I cannot explain it, we do not know what is happening or what happened.
Yet, it does not seem at all coincidental to me that the biggest relapse would occur on not only a day that the Enemy knows has been something I have been celebrating and praising and thanking God for the true meaning of a birthday – being grateful for being given the very gift of life and another year – but the Enemy knows all the battles and the victories that have been one in the spiritual realm.
And I am reminded that the Enemy came only to steal, kill, and destroy.
But, you know what. Satan does not get to win.
He is NOT going to win this battle. He is not going to win me, and there is nothing that he can do to take away the love, the peace, the joy, the safety, the security and the life I have in Him. No. You do NOT get to win.
He has put up a hell of a fight these last two weeks and is not backing down. But my God is my hope, my strong deliverer. He has come that I may have LIFE.
Our God is with us, our God is for us, and my God is mighty.
Mighty to save.
Ahem, as I was saying before I got all fired up lol, was that as I was sorting through and processing a ton of things this morning on the porch, when I finished reading and journaling, this thought hit me. A continuation of a 12-week period where God has been doing something new, opening my eyes to see the beauty and the gift of life, the beauty and gift of each new day. And so this is not a vain attempt to just “think positive” and deny all that pain and hardship I am going through, but something that has helped release my heart to live in that reality, yet be grateful for the God who is in it all.
“The rediscovery of the precious gift of life and existence, often taken for granted, gives birth to the spirit of gratefulness; the awareness of contingency, forcefully presented by the evening news, prods the decision to accept the invitation to celebrate the feast of life one day at a time.
Couple with an intermittent awareness of the divine Indwelling, Jesus' words 'I have come so that you may have life and have it to the full' (John 10:10) sparkle with the sense that life is to be cherished infinitely.”
:: Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust
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