I’ve been trying to figure out what to call this posting and “Am I Depressed?” was the best I could come up with. While emailing my Clinic friend in Florida, I found myself going off on a rant that would be better served here. I feel like I’ve been having too many problems lately and not seeing enough (or any) solutions to them. That’s what leads to depression, and why I was once again counting my problems instead of those blessings Joelle was reminding me of last week.
So, you ask, what’s going on to cause all this? Well, the first thing I was listing was the fact that after two months there have been no obvious improvements in how I feel. None. Worse, I seem to be going downhill physically, something I know not exercising has probaably created. The problem is that I can’t exercise if I can’t get downstairs, and I can’t get downstairs if I can’t exercise. A conundrum to be sure, and I don’t know how to fix it since there’s no room in my small house to bring exercise equipment upstairs into. It’s in the basement or it’s nowhere.
Next, I think I was dealing with a bit of grief that hit me while I was husking corn. Husking fresh corn is something I actually like to do, and it was a job I always took upon myself when we would visit my father and mother-in-law for a weekend summer supper. Whenever they were in New York we would usually get together at least once every two weeks for a meal, and sweet corn was a summer staple that everybody loved. Needless to say I was hit with a flood of memories, and began thinking about the time we’re now missing together. I was assailed by a sense of loss; I miss my mother-in-law greatly, and cannot believe that only last summer she was still with us, feeling well and making one of her usually inventive and excellent meals.
From there, I decided it was time to change my state of mind and my current thought processes. Oddly enough, I did that by going back and reading my own words from March and April, the last time I was struggling with this feeling. Back then I was waiting to return to Texas and it seemed to be taking forever to get the trip lined up. I browsed a few postings on ‘patience’ and ‘waiting,’ and was rewarded by the reading and impressed to take the advice therein. Amazing what a few of your own words can say to you! I think as a society we are missing the value of the written word, of putting our thoughts on paper (even electronically), and I was given a new reason to appreciate why I spend a few hours every week assessing and listing the events in my life.
After spending a half-hour going over the progress I’d documented on the page, I sat back and wondered at the place I found myself. Yes, things aren’t going as well as I’d hoped. And no, I will never see my mother-in-law again in the land of the living. But all in all, I am still alive and kicking (at least proverbially), and I need to appreciate the life I have been given. So I return to the question: Am I depressed? No. Impatient? Yes, as usual. Griefstricken? For certain. But not depressed, because that would mean I think I have a better plan for my life than God does, and that is not possible.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11
That specific hope and future should be–and is–enough.