Tag: god

Another Trip Around The Sun

43. Who knew? For a girl that literally thought when she was 18 she never would see 30…43 is like getting bonus years.

In all seriousness, some of you know (but many don’t) that this time last year my depression was so bad I would have told you I didn’t want to live to see another birthday. I was locked in a battle of wills between a past I couldn’t let go of and a future I didn’t like or want. The result was a paralyzing soul crushing “there is no point” place. Only the thought of leaving my daughter with no parents on this Earth kept me here. And I’ll tell you openly there was more than one day even that was a slim slim thread. The darkness and pain had life so unbearable I honestly would have rather have been dead to have relief from it.

Many toss around terms like “crazy” or “nuts” for covering their own inability to understand the effects that depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts have on a person. It is so much easier to judge than wrap your brain around how terrifying it can be. “Just doing it for attention” or “all talk” are two of my least favorite pass offs I hear when someone is talking about someone else’s suffering. It is because of that type of non-understanding that those who suffer from those illnesses push them down. Hide them. Keep them away from the people who love them and need them despite the voices in their head telling them all those people would be better off. It’s those types of judgements that led the great Robin Williams to leave us instead of face his fan’s judgement if he told anyone how unhappy he was. Despite how far society has come in understanding mental illness it has SO FAR to go in grace, compassion, and kindness for those who suffer.

Through so much love and support this last year – support coming from places I didn’t expect – I am deep in counseling and medical treatment of a disease I will never be rid of. It was a genetic “gift” from both sides of my lineage and one I finally understand I’ll never escape. I can manage it. I can ask for help on the bad days. I can watch for signs I’m hurting the ones I love in my own pain. I can be open and honest in my struggle so someone else will make the right choice in that darkest hour.

But I’ll always be a little bit broken. God made me that way. Perfectly imperfect! I may not know or understand His purpose for me every day but right now I think some of it is to use my voice to share my journey so maybe others have a shorter path to recovery. Life is messy. It’s ugly. Feeling alone and hurting in the agony is excruciating.

As I reflect on starting another year on this planet I can tell you I have hope. I believe God has me exactly where I am supposed to be. I have faith each of my children are firmly in His hands and that God can protect them far better than I can. I have peace that Fred and I raised good kids who will put good into the world. I have hope there is someone out there for me to share my life with. Not someone to replace my Fred – there is no replacement. But someone who can love me understanding all that I have been through before him. I have God protecting me and the ability to talk to Him daily for probably the first time in my life. I have a job I adore that supports all the changes this past year has brought me and pushes me to follow through with taking care of myself. I am grateful that I am still here. I have far to go but from where I was a year ago? Sheesh. I feel lucky to be alive.

Ok.. enough pontificating. Birthday celebrations about to happen.

Peace y’all. Love each other. Be kind. Life is precious and short. Make every moment count. ❤️

Reflections of a Wounded Heart

They say everything changes when you turn 40. Actually they say it all goes to hell in a hand basket. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Things droop that didn’t before, going to bed at 8 am no longer seems appalling, the eye doctor says the dreaded “bi-focal” word. You don’t FEEL 40, heck you don’t feel 30, but the number keeps climbing.

More importantly your perspective on many things changes. For some, it happens naturally and without pain. Maturity just grows along with the number of candles on your cake. For others, 🙋🏻‍♀️, it takes catastrophic events to shake them out of the protective bubble they have cast around themselves. While I wish dearly I had fallen into group “a” my life has always dictated I do things the hard way.

If you have known me long or been reading here you know I’ve been going through massive changes in my life. Some of my choosing but most, well, not. What I didn’t anticipate as I fought, scratched, clawed, disrespected, and basically did everything but throw myself in front of things beyond my control is that God was working. He was allowing me to screw up to the “nth” degree. On purpose. Letting me get to a place there was no light. No hope. No joy. No love. Nothing at all left of the stability I craved with every fiber of my being.

Before you jump ship saying He wouldn’t do that – hang on. God had been trying to get my attention for years. Aborted journals reflect that. Times I cried out but quickly “fixed” it myself attested to that. I am a “fixer”. There is nothing (so I thought) that I couldn’t analyze for all the possible negative outcomes and navigate myself or someone I loved out of danger. I mean c’mon. If you were dealing with a human that dumb wouldn’t you let them fall as far as they could before you showed them the way?

Not saying God has any such thoughts. But I certainly would have looked at me and say “you have fun with that let me know when you need real help”. Blessedly God has abundant mercy and grace. He is patient and knew long before I did that this dark season was coming. Sometimes I wish he had given me some warning but if I look back really hard I bet I can find the warnings I chose to ignore.

Recently a co-worker told me he’s finding many people our age running into self reflection. I can’t speak for anyone else but self reflection is putting it mildly. Self analysis, soul searching, self questioning, self correction, self remodeling…you get the idea. Coming face to face with every one of my imperfections and analyzing and agonizing over how I have handled some parts of my life. How it changed relationships in my past or present. How it passed down to my children. Who my own fears and insecurities erased from my life. It’s exhausting. I’m not a bad person – I know that – but I, like any human, have places I could have chosen a different path.

It would be easy to blame it all on the very broken environment I was raised in. And while the lions share of it belongs there (validated by the counselor) at some point I consciously or subconsciously made choices for my own protection from pain. I willingly tucked my family in closer than it should have been (to be healthy) because I was afraid the world would break the happiness I had found. I guarded the nest Fred and I created with the energy of a tiger protecting a steak. When I suffered the catastrophic loss of my husband I somehow pulled my children in CLOSER. Unknowingly stifling their growth and happiness.

Regardless of what anyone thinks not a single choice I have made has been with ill intention. Not one. I am discovering how very hard it is for others to know that. In a society where judging comes first and any sort of compassion and understanding comes second it appeared controlling. Only those closest to me, who know my purest heart, understand who I am. As I embrace the woman God intended me to be, and get the love I need from Him (where I should have gotten it all along), I am finding myself still battling stress and regrets but with a softer tongue and a self awareness that comes with maturity and being shaped by pain. I find myself understanding which wrong turns I took and how a different path would have landed a different outcome. I find myself letting my children know where I went wrong so they can avoid making the same painful mistakes. Fully understanding that in their young immaturity they’ll probably have to make them anyway but once a protective mother always a protective mother.

I say all this to say…take time for reflection. Allow God to speak to your heart and show you the way. If you are still young avoid youthful impatience in your choices. Be mindful of the longevity of adulthood and how lasting decisions really can be. But know that if you are nursing a wounded heart? God still has plans for you. He does for me and while I’m impatient to find out what they are I know it’ll happen on His time. And that I am learning in every second that I am waiting.

God Bless – Amy

Walk by faith, not by sight…

For a supremely focused on details have to know what is happening at all times person…walking by faith is not my default condition. As a matter of fact at 42 years young I am learning that when taken out of the control all things – predict all outcomes – prepare for anything bubble I’ve lived in all my adult life I become agitated, aggressively protective of all things I deem to be mine, and my mind skitters out of control. It triggers deep anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. It also triggers a no filter ready fire aim reflex that has consequences I can’t even begin to see in my agitated state. It’s confusing to those who know me to be kind, loving beyond measure, and deeply compassionate. Who is this monster saying these things? For me it’s frightening in it’s intensity and after shocks. It’s like waking up after a car accident where you didn’t even realize you were driving and being surrounded by bodies…

I’ve always attributed smaller episodes like these to be my “Mama Bear” syndrome. Do not – under any circumstances – mess with one of my children. The consequences have always been swift and razor sharp. There are more than a few teachers or parents who made the mistake of singling out one of my children as an example that can attest to this. Or a school district who failed to recognize the patriotic importance of Memorial Day as the case was. Or a coach that didn’t recognize family time on an every other weekend schedule as more important than a Sunday practice. It has always been an involuntary launch at whomever made one of my children cry, made them sad, or threatened their welfare. No thought process just “go”. And if you draw tears from one of my children – for any reason – I see red. Just…RED.

As I am learning daily grief when Fred died literally stopped time for me. The kids stopped growing in my mind. I stopped my life. Sure, I did things. Traveled, worked, had friendships. But I made no significant progress at healing or recognizing that life should continue on. I started counseling and stopped when it became uncomfortable or hinted at those things needing to happen. I avoided people who needled me about the kids needing to have outside interests. I mean we were having fun and seeing the world – what IS your problem?

I DEFINITELY resisted the call of God in my heart to lean on Him. He took my husband away. Just three short years after taking my grandfather, the only father I had really had, away. Why on earth would I trust GOD? My life had been a series of heartache, pain, and bad events. Birth defect, abusive mother and a series of step fathers, now the loss of my beloved spouse. Didn’t He just put me on this earth to suffer? No way He wanted me – I was just His punching bag.

With all three children out of the house now I have no distraction from the call of God. And with the pain I’ve been in for the last almost year and a half – I’ve got no other option but to feel His pull. As I’ve learned to lean into Him the gentle nudge I’ve been given is to walk with Him without knowing what is next. Walk by faith not by sight. Without knowing if my children will be ok. Without knowing if I will be alone forever. Without knowing if my health will stabilize. The repeated message – in so many different ways I’ve lost count – is “Trust me child”.

My brain wars with itself every single day. The old demons are still there. The gentle peace I’ve felt small tastes of are there too. Some days I get a headache from telling myself to let go and just trust. Some days He sends so many signs I’m surprised He hasn’t taken out a billboard (He did three times on the way back from Lubbock a couple months ago). He’s provided me with a church that lights up my curiosity about Him. He’s provided the NEED for the peace of prayer. I know He can but He hasn’t gotten me completely past the anger, anxiety, and depression. I assume He’s still teaching me something with that. Some days I wake up so tormented it’s a wonder I can function. USUALLY those are the days I wind up praying so hard it’s amazing I do anything else and by the end of the day I’m peaceful.

The message in all this rambling? If God can take me…someone who literally has felt most of her life that she was being punished…and make me understand I am His child? Walk by faith. It’s HARD. I struggle with it and probably always will. But I’m learning He has a plan for all of this crazy life. And I’ll be ok if I trust Him.