I feel things very deeply. I've said that before. And I've also said it is the biggest blessing and the biggest curse. Most of the time I try to focus on the blessing part of it. It is who I am. It is how I was perfectly created, and so why wouldn't I try to find the best in it? Unfortunately, at times, the curse part seems to loom over it all and that's where I'm finding myself lately. It's all very haphazard actually. It sneaks up on me like a thief and takes away my joy from time to time. And it's hard to shake when it does.
Here's the deal about feeling things so deeply. It works hand and hand with the imagination and I was given a big ole heaping helping of a great imagination when I was created. I got my degree in art for Pete's sake. Once again ... a blessing and curse. I look back at my childhood and see some of the ways my sister and I created things and it blows my mind. I was able to escape to different worlds and places in my mind that were beneficial to me then and even now, but with the good comes the bad. When times are tough and circumstances are teetering on going the way I don't want them to, my imagination runs away to the end of the story and my spirit is dragged down with it.
If there is the possibility there is a bad diagnosis. I'm already at the funeral. I can see the flowers and smell the room. I can hear the people telling me sweet things to make me feel better. I already feel what it feels like to sit in a room without the person we have lost. Or pick up the phone to call someone that isn't there. I already picture my life without someone who I loved (we'll get to the loving part in a minute). Everything is real because the chemicals in my brain just work that way. It isn't real but it feel so darn real.
Every breakup or broken friendship I've ever been a part of has been really tough on me, not because I doubt who I am, but because I feel it all so deeply. I can imagine them with their new friends happier than we ever were. Him being loved like I couldn't love him. Them laughing harder and having more fun than we ever had. I might as well be there because my imagination has taken me there.
And that's where the depression comes in. I don't talk about the depression a lot because it's embarrassing and feels so overwhelming to me for people to understand who don't walk through it themselves. It seems dark and untouchable. I don't want to be untouchable.
Nonetheless I've struggled with it my whole life. There was one time when it was so bad I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I knew I'd get out of it, but I didn't know how. Thankfully by the grace of God I haven't ever been that low again. But I'll always feel things deeply and imagine things vividly and will from time to time find myself in a fog of depression.
The tears flow for me when I realize it's just who I am. That's the hard part too because "Why me?" I don't want to be this way. I want to have my head in the clouds and float through life and take things as they come. I can do nothing about it other than just ask the Lord to join me in the fog and help me out of it. I have to ask Him to remind me of reality and stop my imagination from running away to the scary place. And I would say for sure He meets me there because again, I haven't been in the deep dark nothing of a place again. I am thankful for that victory.
On the flip side of the depression is the love and the joy. And boy do I love and boy do I love to be happy. I love strong and I love well ...... when I allow myself. I think I reserve the love and joy most of the time for the fear of the depression. The slope is so slippery that my fear keeps me from outwardly loving people the way I inwardly feel it. And as I type this I'm just now realizing that.
This post isn't about a lesson I'm learning. This is something I live with daily. And sometimes there are many days and years between the depression. Sometimes the joy does take over. Sometimes I do have those easy days and weeks and months. What this post is about is me saying that I know I'm not the only one. There are millions of people who deal with this on a daily basis and millions of people who overcome it and live happily with all the feelings. And I hope I can be one of those people. I hope I laugh hard and cry hard. I hope I learn to balance the two and not get swept away in the darkness. I can't do it alone and no one else can help me. That's a hard place to be. All I can do is trust in the One who says he will carry me when I cannot take the steps. And the joy comes flooding in when I know He will do just that.
So we walk, you and I, in this world. In our own unique skin. Hand in hand with our on struggles that look differently or the same. And we trust and know that the Lord is equally as good in the joy as He is in the sadness.
Because He is. And I'm choose to believe it.
Here's the deal about feeling things so deeply. It works hand and hand with the imagination and I was given a big ole heaping helping of a great imagination when I was created. I got my degree in art for Pete's sake. Once again ... a blessing and curse. I look back at my childhood and see some of the ways my sister and I created things and it blows my mind. I was able to escape to different worlds and places in my mind that were beneficial to me then and even now, but with the good comes the bad. When times are tough and circumstances are teetering on going the way I don't want them to, my imagination runs away to the end of the story and my spirit is dragged down with it.
If there is the possibility there is a bad diagnosis. I'm already at the funeral. I can see the flowers and smell the room. I can hear the people telling me sweet things to make me feel better. I already feel what it feels like to sit in a room without the person we have lost. Or pick up the phone to call someone that isn't there. I already picture my life without someone who I loved (we'll get to the loving part in a minute). Everything is real because the chemicals in my brain just work that way. It isn't real but it feel so darn real.
Every breakup or broken friendship I've ever been a part of has been really tough on me, not because I doubt who I am, but because I feel it all so deeply. I can imagine them with their new friends happier than we ever were. Him being loved like I couldn't love him. Them laughing harder and having more fun than we ever had. I might as well be there because my imagination has taken me there.
And that's where the depression comes in. I don't talk about the depression a lot because it's embarrassing and feels so overwhelming to me for people to understand who don't walk through it themselves. It seems dark and untouchable. I don't want to be untouchable.
Nonetheless I've struggled with it my whole life. There was one time when it was so bad I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I knew I'd get out of it, but I didn't know how. Thankfully by the grace of God I haven't ever been that low again. But I'll always feel things deeply and imagine things vividly and will from time to time find myself in a fog of depression.
The tears flow for me when I realize it's just who I am. That's the hard part too because "Why me?" I don't want to be this way. I want to have my head in the clouds and float through life and take things as they come. I can do nothing about it other than just ask the Lord to join me in the fog and help me out of it. I have to ask Him to remind me of reality and stop my imagination from running away to the scary place. And I would say for sure He meets me there because again, I haven't been in the deep dark nothing of a place again. I am thankful for that victory.
On the flip side of the depression is the love and the joy. And boy do I love and boy do I love to be happy. I love strong and I love well ...... when I allow myself. I think I reserve the love and joy most of the time for the fear of the depression. The slope is so slippery that my fear keeps me from outwardly loving people the way I inwardly feel it. And as I type this I'm just now realizing that.
This post isn't about a lesson I'm learning. This is something I live with daily. And sometimes there are many days and years between the depression. Sometimes the joy does take over. Sometimes I do have those easy days and weeks and months. What this post is about is me saying that I know I'm not the only one. There are millions of people who deal with this on a daily basis and millions of people who overcome it and live happily with all the feelings. And I hope I can be one of those people. I hope I laugh hard and cry hard. I hope I learn to balance the two and not get swept away in the darkness. I can't do it alone and no one else can help me. That's a hard place to be. All I can do is trust in the One who says he will carry me when I cannot take the steps. And the joy comes flooding in when I know He will do just that.
So we walk, you and I, in this world. In our own unique skin. Hand in hand with our on struggles that look differently or the same. And we trust and know that the Lord is equally as good in the joy as He is in the sadness.
Because He is. And I'm choose to believe it.
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