Good Days and Bad

I never know when I wake up in the morning what kind of day I'm going to have. Sometimes I have really good days - I leap out of bed with tons of energy, I feel inspired, even happy. I go through the day getting lots of little things done. I even practice my violin - something that has definitely gotten sidelined with being sick. I make dinner, have a great evening with my husband, and pat myself on the back. I must be getting healthier, I think. There's light at the end of the tunnel. I go to bed happy, looking forward to another good day.

Sometimes I do end up having a good day the next day. Other times, like yesterday, I wake up after what should have been enough sleep - 10 hours - and feel like I'm in a daze. My brain is foggy and my limbs are heavy. I drag myself to the computer and take my morning meds, thinking that maybe they'll help wake me up. I check my email and blogs and Facebook, still trying to wake up. An hour later, not sure what I've actually been doing for an hour, I stumble back to bed because everything hurts.

When I wake up again an hour and a half later, I still feel like I'm in a fog but now it's almost noon and I have to actually do some things. I stumble through the rest of the day, forgetting to eat until late in the day..maybe I make dinner, maybe I cave and order in because I just can't handle making decisions and standing in front of the stove. Then I kick myself for not eating whole foods from scratch - you know, the kind that will help me get well. We watch some TV and then I stumble back into bed - my constant sanctuary - wondering what kind of day I will have tomorrow.

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It's hard not being able to count on anything. I can't make plans or have goals because I just don't know what I'll be capable of doing tomorrow, or the next day.

Lately I've been getting back into exercising, something I wasn't able to do in the earlier stages of my illness. I'm a fan of the TV show "The Biggest Loser" - I love how hard everyone works in an environment of support and respect. I want to work that hard, I want to become an athlete like the formerly-out-of-shape contestants. Sometimes I go to the gym and have a FABULOUS workout, feeling great afterwards. I'm on my way, I think. Other days my body is literally so heavy I can hardly move. So I don't. I can't set a goal of working out three times this week. Some weeks I work out five or more times. Some weeks I don't work out at all. I just don't know.

I'm starting to practice my violin again. It's like a friend I haven't seen in a long time - I love every minute I get to spend with it. I start building up my practice time, thinking maybe I can get up to something respectable like two hours a day. This works for awhile, then I have a day of such extreme exhaustion that I don't even consider going into the studio.

I love to write. Blogs, journals, something called "morning pages" that I'm doing as I work through "The Artist's Way." I would love to write every day - I feel more alive, more in tune with myself, more able to do other things well. But I swear, the minute I set a goal of writing a little bit every day, I have several bad days in a row or I get the flu or a migraine or...something.

It's depressing; in fact, it may be one of the biggest sources of my depression right now.

It's like God is asking me just to trust him for today. Not tomorrow, not next week, not a year from now. Just today. Wake up today and assess how I'm feeling TODAY...not taking yesterday or tomorrow into account. Asking, what do I want? - and then, going and doing that, not worrying about goals or plans or "have to's."

It sounds so lovely on paper...being present in the here-and-now, living every moment to the fullest of what God has given me for that moment, being honest with myself about my limitations. Just being. Excusing myself from the rat-race of life.

But I chafe.

I want to have goals, lists, plans. I want to see my life going somewhere. Though I've always eschewed the idea of a five year plan, I do like to have an *idea* of what the future is going to look like. But I don't. Hell, I don't even know what tomorrow is going to look like.

Being present, one moment at a time, is the hardest thing I've ever been asked to do. It's a laying aside of my human desire for big goals, achievements, successes. It's learning to rest, to refuse to equate my value with my doing. Sometimes it's struggling with the depression and isolation of not being able to relate to everyone else's busy lives and packed dayplanners.

But then I'm reminded that depression isn't always a bad thing. Oh, it can be. It can be ugly and brutal. But I think, right now, I'd choose the depression that comes with stepping off the treadmill of busyness rather than the meaningless filling-my-life-up-with-lists-and-plans.

Of course, I see it that way for a very simple reason...today is a good day.

Living at the Edge

I sat in the car, with my baby asleep in the backseat. I couldn't tell how long the engine had been off. I didn't have the energy to unbuckle my seatbelt. Instead, I sucked listlessly at the end of my Starbucks green tea frappe.

"You shouldn't be sitting here," I told myself.

"I don't have anything else to do."

True enough. I was sitting alone in an unfamiliar state with my hosts at work and my husband in the throes of his second Bar exam. With Piper sleeping in the back, there was nothing calling me to push past my lethargy.

My mind wandered over the events of the last few months, aimlessly pulling memories of other times I had been in this place - the desperate feeling that was too much to take, followed by the urge to just shut everything out, just go... to... sleep...

No more pain. No more. I can't do anymore.

Then, "Odd, that the conviction I've been feeling over the last few days is about God being good."

I hate that thought. That He is good. I have to love Him then. I can't love Him. Look at me. I can't even move.
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In the last few months, I've been living at the edge of sanity. I know I am not insane, because I know where I am, and I know what is real. But what is real is so much...

I can feel myself shutting down, shutting out. I panic easily, but I can't cry.

I feel paralyzed.

But I am not paralyzed. I don't have the benefit of a hospital bed and nurses to wait on me and care for the things in my life that need to be taken care of because I can't do it myself.

I wouldn't wish it anyway.

Living like this, sometimes, I can only do the next thing. I don't have a choice about the act I put up for others - reality is all I have, mess or no mess.

I reach for hope - I know I need Him or I'll never get out of here. I'm beyond believing that depression itself is a sin. I've thought about getting counseling - but I can't bear the idea of someone picking me apart to give me a new "lease on life," or of talking to someone who really doesn't care about me beyond a quick fix.

There is no quick fix.

I've thought about support groups - but sitting around in a group of people with a "Hi, I'm Kelly, and I'm depressed" mentality freaks me out. Geez. It's not who I am.

I've thought about medication a hundred times - but I can't justify it. I don't have a peace about it. It doesn't address the root cause anyway.

I'm scared that the only answer is Him. My only hope is something that is not seen. It is not explainable or provable.
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I think about faith as I stare blankly out the windshield of the car. Faith is the gift of God, not something I can manufacture or strengthen. It is His.

James says that faith without works is dead.

So... maybe my "work" is stepping along the edge of reason and insanity and doing the next thing because God is enabling me to believe that He is God. Because He wants me to believe that He is good.

Nothing glamorous.

I'm not angry anymore, I realize. I'm just tired. So tired.

A car pulls into the driveway behind me. I move, climbing out of the car as if I had just gotten back.

Rage

My first post here is going to be about a difficult subject for me: rage.

I have never considered myself an angry person, or a person who would ever struggle with anger issues. After years of struggling with depression and dark emotions, I'm not scared of very many emotions anymore. I've faced some pretty dark stuff. But I have to admit that I'm a bit scared to talk about anger, and especially rage.

Anger and rage are not socially acceptable emotions. There are very few situations in which people believe anger is justified. Angry people are looked at as if they have a problem. They're being reactionary. They're not "giving it over to God." They're "letting their emotions rule them."

All these things and more I've heard from the super spiritual crowd. So what do I do with the veritable well of rage that is rising up inside of me?

Recently, at a gathering of Christ followers, we were having a conversation about depression. My friend Brad pointed out that sometimes depression comes from anger turned inward against ourselves - because there's nothing else we can do with it. There's no socially acceptable thing to do with it. We don't feel like we have a right to be mad at the person/people/institution that let us down - weren't they trying their best? We don't feel like we have a right to be mad at God - after all, he's God, and do we think we can do better than him? So we take all that rage and suppress it, turning it against ourselves. We're the ones who are unlovable, we're the ones who failed, we're the ones who expect too much.

And then we wonder where the depression comes from.

When Brad was talking about turning anger inward, the tears came. He was actually talking to Kelly, but it applied directly to me.

You see, I'm really angry. There was a night recently when I was lying in bed crying, clenching my fists. I really wanted to break something. It was all I could do not to get up and start crashing furniture. I wanted something on the outside to be as broken as I felt on the inside.

It's like Brad said...I'm turning all this anger inward because I don't really feel like I have a right to turn it against God. I mean, I AM mad at God, but I don't know how to be. So I redirect it at myself. Sometimes I feel like a whiner because I know people with much worse health problems than me, and I feel lucky to not have to deal with some of what they are dealing with. But the truth is, I feel gypped. I feel cheated. I'm only 27 years old and I feel like my youth has been stripped from me. There are so many things I can't do, so many stories I can't live. I hope that I'll get better, I hope that this whole ill-health thing is temporary, I hope that one day I can appreciate and respect my body, but the fact is I don't know. I don't know that I will ever have the energy to be like the people I envy, the people who travel and work out and live their dreams. I hate what my life has become like. I hate that I watch TV and spend endless hours "killing time" in front of a TV or computer screen. But I also know that I don't have the energy to do much else. I hate what I see in the mirror when I look at my body (so I try to avoid it.) I envy people who are thinner and healthier and more energetic than me. Sometimes I even get mad at them. Then I get embarrassed that I'm mad at people who haven't done anything wrong and poof, once again I turn the anger against myself. I'm the one who has failed, I'm the one who didn't take care of myself, I'm the one who has gotten myself into this mess.

It's so much easier to be mad at myself than to admit the simmering rage I have against Father.

I get the whole fall-of-man-sin-entered-the-world-now-we-get-sick thing, from a theological standpoint. But seriously, what loving father would let their child get sick and stay sick if they could do something about it? And the truth is that God CAN do something about the fact that I'm sick, and he doesn't. Not that I deserve it any more than the other half dozen people I know who struggle with chronic illness. But why? Why can't he heal all of us?

Yet I've never asked him to heal me. Maybe it's a result of turning all this against myself, maybe it's the feeling that I don't deserve to be magically healed any more than anyone else, maybe it's that I view this as somehow my fault. But I haven't asked him for much. I've done the legwork myself. I've researched. I've read. I've asked questions. I've participated in discussion groups. I've worked with doctors, but for the most part I have been my own doctor. I am much better than I was a year ago, largely due to my own initiative and research. Why am I so scared to ask God for help? Am I afraid that he's going to condemn me to chronic illness for the rest of my life and the only way to "handle" this is to handle it by myself?

Like I've handled everything else in my life?

About Kelly

Over the last nine years or so, I have struggled with health-induced depression, relationship depression, and, most recently, post-partem depression. I received an MS diagnosis that changed to a Lyme diagnosis - an infection that affects everything in my body, including my pituitary gland, which governs my hormones. The physical depression has taken its toll on my heart. At the beginning, I noticed loneliness, and some fear, but in the last nine years, I was transformed from hopeful girl to cynical, reclusive, distrustful woman. Now, I stand hopeful again, walking a little, stumbling. I'm uncertain about the future, more sure of my God, and the rain still falls.

I am woman, wife, mother of one, daughter, beloved. I am undeniably God's. These things are true about me. I know this in my head. The person that I feel I am often apologizes for her existence, because she is failure, empty, not enough, and too much. She does not feel lovable, and she is often afraid.

Because I am live and human, I know there will be more struggle to come, but I'm finding healing, instead of standing frozen, waiting for the next hit. For my husband's sake, for my daughter's sake, for my own sake, I am hoping for light at the end of this tunnel.

I hope this blog will encourage you - whether you are walking through depression yourself and need to know it's all right to be there, or whether you are walking with someone who is dealing with it.

We offer you these stories of us from our hearts to yours, a journey in grace.






Please visit me at Restless Heart if you'd like to know more about me outside of this blog.

About Heidi

I'm a woman of many apparent contradictions. I have a wonderful life in many respects. I have a wonderful husband, wonderful family, wonderful friends, and a job that I love. I've been incredibly lucky.

I've also been incredibly wounded in my short time here (I'm 27) - and have struggled with depression off and on since I was a teenager. The causes have been both physical and circumstantial/emotional. In all cases the utter blackness that I found within myself has been frightening. Sometimes I have run from it. Sometimes I have walked into it. And sometimes, in the blackness, I have cursed God.

I struggle with chronic illness, and right now it is making me question God more than any of the other times of darkness that I have gone through. Rage is a constant companion of mine. I feel like I've been sidelined from the game of life. I hate what my illness has done to ravage my body. Sometimes, I hate the God who has let it.

Questions, doubt, and depression are not intellectual or theological questions for me. They're right here. Right now.

I hope that by opening up my wounds to share with you, I will be able to encourage you that you are not alone in whatever pain and darkness you are facing. I hope too that by writing I may find a way through this darkness to a God who loves me and ultimately has good for me even in this life.

A Prayer

“For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height – to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

"Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

~ Ephesians 3:14-21