It is not meant to be.
It is a picture of the reality of my poor little tomato plants.
Yesterday I had about decided to give up on them producing ANYTHING this year. I had yet to see a single bloom, and they were fading...after all, it's the end of August, and they should have already produced.
Today was a HARD day for me.
I had a nightmare last night that woke me from a sound sleep.
I have not had nightmares of this magnitude in YEARS, but something triggered a return last night. After awakening from what seemed like a life-threatening situation, there was NO WAY I was going to be able to go back to sleep...and it was at least another hour before I was able to settle down enough to get any more sleep.
And my youngest two children started school today, so I had to be up and moving early this morning...no sleeping in.
After I got the girls out the door, and got the two high schoolers up (school starts for them tomorrow!), and did a few more chores around the house, the tiredness started to catch up to me. As is often the case, when I am over-tired, the depression comes back to pull the rug out from under me again.
I had fired my most recent counselor, and have been in the process of finding another, but have not seen anyone for a few weeks. I knew I needed to talk to someone, so I let a trusted group of friends know the level of suckage that I was dealing with so they could pray for me.
Despite kind words, the prayers of friends, and KNOWING what I *should* be doing (exercise, sunshine, eating well, getting enough sleep, ad nauseum...), I was struggling and finding myself falling deeper and deeper into the mud pit that is depression.
The fact is that when I am depressed, EVERYTHING looms larger-than-life, and there seems to be no way out, everyone seems against me, and I am hopeless.
Today was no exception. I almost gave up on me, on healing, on hope, on a future.
But, God.
My friends kept praying for me.
My children arrived home from school.
The new counselor called back, and let me know that YES, she is taking clients.
The insurance company immediately approved the referral.
And I got up off the floor, and went outside to water my flowers and plants.
I wasn't planning to water those sad, wilted tomatoes...I was just going to let them die.
But then, I looked closer...and, miracle of life....there was a BLOOM on the top of one!!
Just when I was going to give up on that little plant, there was signs of life!
And just when my depression was saying I should give up on everything, God gave me this little bloom, to show me that He had not given up hope.
I know He loves me. He showed me with a little bitty yellow bloom.
"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." Jeremiah 29:11 NKJV
2 comments:
His demonstrations of His love, and the deposits of hope that comes with them, are the best! Feel better, friend. (And remember...you can call me when all is shroud of darkness).
This up and down aspect to the recovery process wears on a person. I had two weeks of rest, of reading for pleasure and actually being able to focus, no struggle to write truth. I didn't consciously think that everything was fixed and I was on a perpetual plane of ease. I am dismayed at how quickly it changes. I'm waking up trying to untangle multi multi-stranded psychological knots. I'm beginning to feel agitated with no clear incidental cause. These are the signs that I need to write again. I need to do it a different way. My previous methods have so completely drained me that it crowds all the rest of life. I have a little life now that isn't all wrapped up by the emotional and psychological aspects of recovery. I can't/won't sacrifice that! I don't know how to do it a different way. I need a concept I don't have. I need God to change conceptual water into wine for me.
I am grateful that I have this shot at recovery and over-the-moon that He never gives up on me.
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