Blog posts about depression or for the depressed.
Surrender can be a beautiful thing.
When things finally click and you realize there is just so much out of your control
And no matter how much goes wrong, you’re going to be alright.
I find great comfort in the idea that Christ is
omnipotent
omniscient
omnibenevolent
In other words he’s all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly and unlimitedly good.
So, surrendering *to* Jesus, makes complete sense to me in the context of my faith.
BUT.
Continue readingI’m sitting in the waiting area of the counseling center where I meet with my therapist at four o’clock every Monday afternoon.
I have my regular Flat White that I get from Starbucks on my way (if I didn’t have time to stop by the legendary Civil Coffee for their delicious black coffee).
To my left, there’s an old guy tapping on an iPad with his forefinger. To my right there’s a handsome fellow with a salt-and-pepper beard filling out the paperwork. Next to him is a boy with that 10-11 year old chubbiness. His Mom is sitting catty corner with a concerned pride in her eyes. You know the kind of look only moms give.
The thing that always strikes me when I sit here is the normal-ness of everyone. No one looks sickly or agitated or depressed.
It makes me wonder why they’re here. Did they experience a death close to them? Are they having a midlife crisis?
Are the kids being bullied at school? Were their parents divorced? Do they struggle with intense self-worth or anxiety like so many kids their age these days?
I want to both cry, imagining what they must have experienced, and tell them I’m so proud of them for being healthy enough to get help.
I think through all the reasons these normal people are getting therapy and then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and think, “Well, you look kind of normal. Why are you getting therapy?”
I’m sometimes kind of sheepish about using the word “therapy.” It sounds so clinical and dramatic. You don’t, typically “go to therapy” unless something crazy happened to you (even though you probably should anyways).
Despite this, I’m trying to be as open and honest about it as I would about anything else I do. It’s making me process life at a level and with a greater bird’s-eye perspective than when I’m slogging through life moment by moment.
Which is why I go.
My therapist recently pointed out that I avoid talking about certain topics.
This didn’t surprise me. I’ve been doing that for years.
When there’s something I don’t know how to process, I just shut it down and run away. Which usually means I turn on a podcast or Netflix or Amazon Prime. Sometimes it’s just easier to escape what scares me than to face it head on.
I think this is why I’ve found it so hard to write any long form posts or do any vlogging over the past year or so. For example, last Saturday I recorded a vlog and rambled on for twenty minutes about nothing. I felt lost in my own head.
That sounds melodramatic, I know, but it’s true. That’s kind of how my brain is right now in this season of life. I have lots and lots of thoughts and feelings but I’m kind of lost as to what to do or where to go with it all.
Which is terrifying in itself because my job is literally to process thoughts. To think about ideas and talk about it on paper… yet that’s exactly what I’ve been running away from.
I’ve never actually put it in those terms before. (I’m getting this for the first time with you guys!) This past year, I’ve been facing the biggest writer’s block of my life and maybe the reason is because my brain is loaded down with all kinds of mental “laundry,” as it were, that I’m refusing to deal with.
It’s hard to get work done when your workspace is completely cluttered with non-work related junk. (In this scenario, the workspace is my brain.)
Adrenaline surged through my body at the thought. It had never crossed my mind before and I didn’t know how to respond. I had never spent much time thinking about suicide, but in this moment one passing thought of it gave me a rush. Continue reading
Have you ever walked into a house while someone is cooking a meal? Think of Thanksgiving day when your mom is preparing that delectable array of dishes and the aroma saturates the entire house.
Even if you aren’t hungry before, you are once you’ve smelled the delicious food! In fact, if you’re like me, you’re hungry right now just thinking about it!
A while ago, some of my friends and I were discussing what it means to be “hungry for God.”
We talked about how we often ask God to make us more “hungry for him”–to “help us want him more,” as we often put it.
I’ve said this a lot and I always mean it in a good way. I usually say it like a transparent plea before God, being honest about how I feel while also expressing my desire to love Him more. And I think this is often appropriate.
But my friend Vince wondered what it is like for God to hear us pray “Help me want you more.”
Imagine being the most beautiful Person to ever exist, the most glorious Concept in the universe, the most desirable Companion–imagine being all that and having people say “I still don’t want You enough, help me want You more.”
Vince thought perhaps the best question is not “Do you want God?” but rather “Have you seen God?”
Because just like smelling a delicious Thanksgiving meal stirs up hunger, seeing God stirs a longing for more of Him. The more you see Jesus, the more you desire Him.
Today, instead of asking God to increase our desire for Him, let’s ask Him to reveal Himself to us.
I think that’s what will really stir our desire for more.
“One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” – Psalm 27:4
Blessings,
C.D.
Here’s a random fact: It’s been two years, two months, and ten days since I last published an actual post on a personal blog (apart from the “I have a new website” posts that I did).
Obviously–given the two year gap–it’s been hard to get back into the groove of blogging. Having been dormant for so long, I’ve pretty much lost any sort of rhythm that I had. Thus my writing habits have devolved into random spurts that splatter themselves all over Google Drive. It’s terribly messy.
Part of the problem is that my actual job involves a lot of writing. And by “a lot,” I mean, it’s nearly all writing and sitting at a computer. Therefore, writing and sitting at a computer is usually the last thing I want to do for a hobby (unless it means mindlessly scrolling Facebook or surfing Youtube).
All that to say: the creative juices haven’t exactly been flowing.
Nevertheless, here I am. Writing. And that’s what counts, I guess.
Speaking of counting…
I should divulge something right away: I’m a little bit of a nerd. I built a fictional world when I was twelve years old, complete with maps, fragmented languages, histories, and a 70,000+ word novel; I watch YouTube videos about string theory for fun, I’ve read The Silmarillion three times (and other abstract Middle-Earth lore), and I notice quaint little things like when the clock reads 11:11.
In fact, a couple of years ago, I started noticing the time 11:11, or the number 1 anywhere in repeated consecutive order, so much that I began taking it as God’s way of reminding me that he loves me.
“Oh look, it’s 1:11pm. God loves me” or ‘Your destination is in 11.1 miles…’ “Aha! God loves me,” weird little stuff that only a nerd would find interesting. Could be coincidence, if you want to spoil all the fun.
This whole number thing is significant to me because over the past few years I’ve struggled to feel like I have any sort of meaningful connection with God. But I’m beginning to doubt my feelings more and more.