Author Archives

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limits of an illness


Its been  bit of a struggle lately.  I seem to be surrounded with negativity. It’s not the voices of darkness and his friends.  Its people.  Drama in the house – 16 year old daughter hungry and tired after n school job.  I can’t take it.  The negative surrounds me like a shroud trying to choke me, I can’t breathe.  I head to my sanctuary in my back yard and disappear in a book.  The quiet and the night sooth my frayed nerves.  As I step out of the book and back to my yard I realize the limits of illness.  My limits. The thought makes me cringe.   I have been a women that could move mountains in heaven and earth. Give me two hours and I’ll show you how much on can do when on a rampage.  Clean a house, look after kids, and cook an amazing dinner and dessert and still have time for a quick work out and time for a glass of wine.  I have been looking at a spot in my yard that needs cleaning up.  It requires moving some patio stones smoothing some ground and adding stones back and weeding. I look and know I can do the work.  I need to get this done. Everytime I look it just drains me of energy I can’t find the strength to do it, there limits.

Limits.  walls surround me and to be honest it pisses me off.  Sorry for the blunt crude talk.  I am limited in how much I can handle.  How much I can do, How much I can think, How much energy I can dispense, how much I can accomplish, how much I can listen, how much I can advise, how much I can love,how much I trust, how much I pray, how much I faith I have, how much I can Mother, How much I can help, how much I cry or don’t cry,  Today I cry, the walls that stop me make me cry today,   It’s like being a great hurdle jumper.  Gold medalist. and then the next time you run you hit every hurdle and they are cemented to the ground.

Its late I am tired and frustrated and feeling a little crazy

so now I will sleep and see what the morning brings

till next time………………

by

Tears like Rain


September and I put on track pants today!  I like track pants, comfortable, warm, casual, you can hang out and relax.  I need to relax, I am coming off a high stressful week – start up at school and it went well but it has been a hellish weekend.  I made it through the week but I didn’t survive the time off.  We had some drama in the house and between dealing with that and trying to get regular weekend stuff done I am frazzled.  I wanted some peace, just a little peace.  Everyone in this house tonight is tired from lack of sleep and grumpy.  I keep moving to other sections of the house in hope of getting away from people – they follow like my cat!!   Its been a difficult time, I had to give a presentation at church this morning about a group I belong with and the charity work we are doing.  As I presented what I wanted to say about why I wanted to be apart of this group, I became choked up and had to stop twice in order to get myself together to proceed.  I am very passionate about it and I took a breath and it caught in my voice and I am beside myself with embarrassment and shock that this happened.  I have said in other posts that I do not cry or hardly ever now, the meds seem to have sucked up those tear ducks dry.  This weekend I can’t stop. I started Friday night, before all drama between a teenage girl and her father, and here is it Sunday night and I am still crying.  I don’t know what has come over me.  Deep in my heart I feel such brokeness and I don’t know why.  I can’t seem to get passed it.

I know a good cry, like a good sneeze, is a good thing, and I have always loved a good sneeze but this feels strange and I am not sure why.  Maybe I analyze too much, I know I put too much pressure on myself.  I know that I have left myself in a open and in a vulnerable state a lot lately.  I have felt over the past months that my broken heart is on display. There are no secrets and I feel exposed.  Thinking about the word exposed brings up so many feelings, emotions, I am not sure how to sort them.  This feeling brings the tears again. I feel drained, I want to sleep for a week but am unable to.  That same old confusion comes knocking at the door, the darkness; that has been sitting in its chair for the past few weeks, has moved its chair closer, it just sits looking at this exposed heart and the tears that will not stop running.  The confusion greets the darkness and sit there like old friends in over stuffed chairs of a coffee house enjoying a latte and saying nothing — watching and nodding at each other like they know what they are each thinking.  As they sit in the darkness of a coffee house, I am clinging to the stool of a pato trying to sip a cool drink and soak up the light of the world.  Praying in my mind but the darkness and confusion smile at each other sarcasticly like “Ya that aint going to help”  So I Picture Jesus sitting on a rock with small children surrounding him.  You know the picture, looking so kind and in a beautiful white robe and smiling at the innocence of these little ones.  I picture myself crawling up upon his lap, and being a small child, laying my head on his chest and feeling his strong arms around me as a father would a child.  As a brother would one of his family, as a friend would his best friend.  Let the battle begin –again

I am trying to hold this image. —— till next time

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A day or two or maybe a week…..


August 26 taking my son to College, that is 4 hours form home.  It’s been a trying weekend.  We have been very busy we had some work related social events to go to.  I am back to work and thus lots going on.  I have been fighting some depression twinges.  I have felt the darkness sitting across the yard, or the room or the office or where ever I have been.  It’s not sneaking up on me, its sitting there watching me.  It is sitting in a lounge chair relaxed and watching waiting, wanting me to drop my guard or my defences, any sign of weakness to approach.   I have turned my back on it.  Looking to the Lord to protect me, which I know will happen.  The Lord always protects me.  It’s my mind that lets me down and confuses me so I forget that God protects me.  That of course as I have said before, is the pitfalls of a chemically imbalanced brain.

I actually cried today watching my daughter jump on her brother and tickle him as she left for work and he got up to finish packing to move.  I cried again when he showed me the text she sent while she was on the bus to work.  Full of love and sentiment.  Gosh they really do love each other who knew!! (joke).  We are an hour away from the city he is moving to.  I have been sitting in the back of the van doing some  paperwork  for work.  Writing this blog. Thinking about life and things.  Like how the hell did this boy of mine get so old so fast.  When I brought him home from the hospital it seemed like yesterday and I walked around the house for house wondering what to do and then I thought I could put him down.  Maybe I shouldn’t have!  I put him down he grew, but this is what is suppose to happen.  It is truly all good and it is apart of his journey in life and my journey too I am not ready to let the change happen. We went to a party yesterday for my husband’s work, and we were talking to people who were there and they were talking about when they were born,  and I’m thinking darn it I was in school then—I have always been the youngest of groups how did this happen?  The process of aging.  It is something that sneaks up on you.  I still see myself as a young chick and I’m not in my 50’s so yes I am a young chick.  I am just having a change in life and maybe that is what is shocking me.  I have time away from kids and time with my husband.  The parents get older – of which my Mother is still alive and so I look at her and see the needs she will have in the future and see that maybe I will be busier than I think.  But there is another thing in all of this growing up and maturing I am also maturing my faith.  God has shown me he is with me in the good and bad and as I go through these changes in my life he is the constant; the never changing love and creator of life from the beginning, which he set, to the end which he will decide.  I am created loved and apart of a spiritual realm that I cannot explain.  As I think of this realm, I feel the love and warmth of God fill my spirit I am driven to discover know and understand more.  I can feel the darkness move his easy chair back a few feet away from me.  Its times like this when I am tired from lack of sleep and restless,  I am concerned that my son has all that he needs to spread his wings in life, that is when the doubts come and the darkness’ chair moves a few feet closer.  Did I do all I could have done to prepare this boy for this world.  Does he desire to be apart of Gods direction or his own.   Was there more that I could have prepared him for?  Doubts doubts doubts.  They swallow up all that is good and true and solid in my mind.

There is something that God has been revealing to me that I have been trying to understand and I am far from being there, but I think that people with depression can grasp this and handle it better than those who don’t.

Depression reveals a darkness that can pull at you and completely engulf you.  It shows you a dark realm that is at work looking for the weak to devour, and pull down. It is looking for new conquests, and if it does not get you the first time it will follow and try new tactics and try to confuse hurt and bully you into a state of panic.  But this real realm of darkness also has an opposite.  The Realm of Light.   Jesus said he was the light of the world. He was a beacon that reveals itself in the darkness so us dimwitted humans can see the light and follow him.  In the first chapter of John (where I have spent most of my studying this summer) talks about Jesus being with God in the beginning and a light to the darkness but the darkness does not understand.

In my darkest points of this depression I did not understand the light.  The darkness though is a little quicker than I and can easily confuse me into believing that the Light is loud, exposing and lacking love — when it is the darkness that are all these things and the light is love kindness truth.

Its the middle of the week now. The use of hand held divices has kept me connected with my boy and I am feeling better about that.  But the darkness has moved his chair closer today.  He is still just sitting watching I am occupying my mind and body with exercise and cleaning of the house.  I have not been sleeping this week, again!  And am at my wits end about that. Maybe tonight.  Its this sleeplessness that makes resisting the darkness so hard.  I become so tired and unable to think straight that I have a flight or fight feeling come over me and I want to run, where I could care less, but its what I want to do. Tonight however I am trying to relax.  Maybe my occupying of my mind and body has left me unable to relax. Tonight as I write this I am watching the slow rising of the full moon.  The full moon makes me happy.  My Grandfather used to say if you butcher a pig on the growing side of the moon your bacon will not shrink….ah ya I’m not sure about that too.  But a growing moon always makes me feel better… no idea why.

Forgive me for not writting in a while… summertime things have occupied my time I only hope that it has for you too.  In the mean time I will try to fight this darkness watching me and I hope you can too.

till next time…….

by

Holding my arms up to the Lord


Its been over a week since I typed anything.  The dinning room table got refinished, the hutch that didn’t match the table; now does thanks to a coat of paint and some paint treatments.  I went on a camping trip last week with some friends.  I managed to get some rest, some exercise and have a lot of fun.  I also managed to spend some time with a pastor friend of mine.  We sat for a long time and talked about a bible verse I have been wrestling with and we talked endlessly about my depression and how attacked I have felt and how hard it has been for me to deal with.  It was good and it was helpful and I left better.  I went to church Sunday morning and played in the youth band and my heart sang with great leaps and my spirit uplifted.  I gave flesh to my words but they were words of Praise and words of belief in the Lord Jesus Christ and the Creator of the world God himself.

Rereading this paragraph I think what a nice ending of a terrible horrible couple of weeks.  But I can’t say I am rejoicing.  Don’t get me wrong, I am praising God for delivering me from the darkness that I put myself in.  I am Thankful for friends and a wonderful husband  to support me. I am humbled by the thoughts from God that have come to me to open the verses I have not understood till now from the bible.  BUT.  There is always a but. As I rejoice in this wonderful place to be I know that this is not the end.  It is not over.  Today I stand in victory.  Tomorrow will be ok, and I may be fine for weeks.  But it will come again.  The darkness creeping up and the attacks again.  What a killjoy eh?  Don’t get me wrong I do appreciate, and love the place I am right now.  It is like falling in love only to have your heart-broken.  You repair the heart and someone else comes along and it is wonderful and lovely and you think this could be the one and as you consider giving your heart out again, you can’t help but remember the broken heart you just repaired.   Today my unfaithful mind is functioning, tomorrow??????????  This is the delema this is the thing that lurks around in the back of the mind.  Is there a next time? When is the next time? will it interfere with my plans, will it be something I can ‘t resist? Or will this be the time of a complete break down?

I think the only plan of action I can take right now, is to get together with my pastor and my best friend and pray.  I need time to prepare for the next time.  If the next time does not come great! but I don’t know for sure but I do know that in order to fend off the darkness I need to embrace the light and to build the wall around me in the name of the Almighty.

God be with my mind as I heal after the past few weeks of battling.  Help me to rely on you. Forgive my unbelief and continue to protect me.  You continue to teach me so much, continue to lead me, protect me, feed me, show me, so that I can walk in your ways.  And most of all I pray the prayer that never fails.  “In name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, may your will be done.”   Amen.

Till next time……………………….

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New Week Smaller Demons


Last week was so exhausting.  It was hard to keep things together.  This week is all about me.  I started to refinish my dining room table two years ago.  I ran out of steam then, and decided to leave it for a bit.  I moved it outside yesterday and I should be done it by tonight.  I made a point of not rushing anything.  I went for a run, I ate some breakfast, I bought some groceries, cooked an amazing supper.  Everything I did I did slowly and dilibertly.  I actually managed to get some sleep Sunday night so Monday was great.  Last night I had an hour sleep and I can feel the pulling down of my spirit, but I keep reciting the same mantra “I am just tired at 2 have a nap.”

I managed to make it to church on Sunday I had told friends I would not, they were happy I came.  I didn’t want to, but Sunday I felt a drawing to the church so I went.  I asked my friend to sit beside me.  It seem silly, but last Sunday I was harassed by negativity, I wanted positiveness to surround me I wanted my friend who I knew was praying for me near, my protection, my shield.  God is my shield and should be my protection, but I am still wrestling with my unbelief,  I just wanted a flesh and blood friend beside me.  In the end I was feeling better somewhat at the end of the service and went home in a better place than before.  I guess that is the main thing.

I was told when I am in this down place I should not examine my faith.  This depression is such an ever-changing thing.  I have learned that it’s not a sadness, it is so far from just that I don’t see it connected to depression at all anymore.  I still feel my spirit being pulled down, but it’s so much more than that.  It is attacks.  When my spirit starts to be pulled down, I feel myself withdrawing from people.  I become afraid of them.  That is how it always begins.  Then the negativity starts.  The attacks of voices, your no good, etc, etc. then the questioning, I hear the songs, I hear the bible verses, the sermons I become confused and can not sort out right from wrong.  I can’t sort out truth from lies.  This causes me to become afraid and in cases like last week I have a bad anxiety attack.  It sucks your energy. You think and rethink everything.  You can’t remember things, I can’t talk.  I forget words and studer which only adds to the feeling of insanity, which adds the fact you are not yourself, you forget who that person was, and you belittle yourself more because you are not the person you thought you knew and around and around it goes. If is was only a case of sadness I could deal with just that.  It is a whirl wind like a dust storm. Thick of partials not knowing what  one speck is from another and  where or it should be.

So for today – cause I can’t think of tomorrow.  I will finish my dining room table.  I will make a good supper. I will try to have a nap and continue to ask God to forgive my unbelief.

till next time……..

 

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From the depths


It has been a long week.  I had my first major anxiety attack in a long time.  I have had some twinges, some moments where I have had to talk myself down but this one was a pop the meds situation and it scared me, the thoughts going through my mind.  I almost checked myself into a hospital to be honest.  But my daughter left on a mission trip today for Panama and Thursday if I had done that she would have been majorly freaked out and I couldn’t do that to her.  So I called my neighbour who go to this restaurant every Thursday and invited myself and had my son drive me.  The kids were unaware for the most part what was happening to me but I had to get out of there and my husband was at a company golf tournament  Had I got in the van to drive myself I don’t think I would have stopped at the restaurant, I might have drove drove drove till I ran out of gas, I had a full tank.

So what was the trigger you may ask.  I don’t know I think it was building over time.  the previous week was a bit of a struggle, I blamed it on busy time at work.  This week I have been fighting a shadow on my back.  Its been there for days now.  I was doing VBS crafts this week.  I just did the crafts I didn’t teach them anything about the bible the craft/connection.  I didn’t believe it and I couldn’t say it and sound convincing so I left it.  I couldn’t even stand to listen to the music.  Every time they started I just cringed and the voices started up–” how can you listen to this, this is not really the truth– how can God be love when you are hurting so much”.  I had so many negative thoughts I could not stop.  But I was able one little victory – I didn’t voice them out loud, I knew what the voices wanted me to say but I would not say it.  But the thoughts, “walk away from his church, walk away from trying so hard, walk away from this delusion of saviour, love, truth, hope.  What is hope there is no hope just pain, death, struggle that is the real world.”  You can see how desperate the fight had become.

I asked my pastor to pray with me but couldn’t follow through – I felt foolish, and insane, and how do I say the things going through my mind.  Here in this format I can let it out, but face to face, out loud I am afraid I will totally give in. I kept thinking, First there was the word and the word became flesh–I didn’t want to add flesh to my words. I also didn’t want to be classed as insane, because that is pretty much how I have felt this week.  This week has also been a week of no sleep.  2 maybe 3 hours a night. I was doing VBS in the morning (only stayed to do the craft clean up and get the heck out of there) then working at my job from then till 2.  Cleaning up for next year.  I am officially done last friday, I now have a week to myself.  My daughter gone to Panama, my son working a 40 hour week, my husband still working too, then we go away for a week camping. It’s nice to have time to yourself but at the same time I am a little scared. I’m afraid of the extreme voices that came over me the past week.  I will fall back on our plan that my husband and I set.  I will (and I got heck for not doing it) call him at the first signs of losing it.  I didn’t last time cause he was 40 minutes golfing- what could he do from the 11th hole.  He is in his office this week and I promised I would follow the plan

I have no conclusions for this week… no Godly connections to make…. just an end of my writing for today.

Till Next time………………..

by

In the night


In the quiet of the dawn, it is when my soul relents.

It was the noise of the darkness that made it spent.

The dark things come out to play and dance,

it puts my heart into a  pant.

I do not want the darkness so close

but I can hide there closed in it most.

But there is no peace in the dark hidden places,

It is in the light that peace can be faced.

This tug of war between what I know and what I believe,

it is my good sence that takes its leave

To leave me to fight,

when I want to flight.

So in the quiet of the dawn before the birds morning song

I sit in a heap spent from the things that have gone on.

I neither look to God or to myself,

for I do not know my right from my left.

by

This is the hunting grounds of confusion


“God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out.” 1 Corinthians 10:13

This is the hunting grounds of confusion.  I am doing crafts for Vacation Bible School next week. How do I do this in the confusion of my mind.  The above vs is one of the verses I will be teaching and creating a craft for next week.  I read this and I think: I have been brought to my knees, and beyond in the depth of depression. I know others who have taken their lives or wanted to, or tried to– who suffer from depression.  How do you believe this verse.  These are the things that shake me, these are the things that confuse me.  I know God is love, I know he will not forsake me, but at times like this, how do you believe it.  In the depths of my suffering God has been there, but I was allowed by him to suffer.  Will it end or will I be forever stuck as someone two steps away from crazy, death, or instituionalized.

“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1

God I am in trouble — why do I feel your back against me.  What am I to learn, what am I to know from this, what blessings or punishment am I supposed to get.  It is in these times I know you love me and you watch out for me, but it is at this time I feel like I am the only tracks in the sand as I walk through this dark day,  if you are carrying me, I do not feel it, for I feel face down in the sand.

“My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:19

My needs! My needs are to feel sane, my needs are to not fall apart, my needs are to feel safe, my needs are to be normal, being able to handle my finances, to handle myself, to be functional, to not hide my breakdowns, to be the me I knew and others used to love, to not be the one people wonder or look at, or talk about as being weird, crazy and different.

I have a tatoo of the triune God symbol on the back of my neck.  This represents that God has my back.  On a night like tonight I feel like something has my back,  but it is not God, it is a darkness and I can’t shake it.

It is late tonight I will try to sleep …. pray for me that I do…… till next time….

till next time…..

Aside by

Its been a couple of weeks since I have written.  Take that as a good sign.  I have been feeling good.  I had a dip the other Thursday, I was on a fishing holiday, being with good friends was wonderful and it melted away.  Today is Sunday.  Happy Canada Day.  I am so tired.  I can not tell you how bad I feel.  I hardly slept last evening.  I had horrible dreams of evil and death and things I can not discribe.  I tossed and turned and eventually became scared to fall asleep. So I didn’t.

I went to church today — we have been out and about for a few weekends so its been a month or so since we have been there.  As I sat there I could feel the darkness slowly sneak up on my and crowd around my back.  It sapped my energy, it confused my mind.  I am in a state of …… I can’t even put words to it.  But I feel broken hearted, I feel confused, I feel like I am unable to concentrate.  The darkness hasn’t been around for a while now– I don’t understand why its here.  As I listened to the service and the sermon I was in a tug of war.  I was being gently lead to step closer to the light, and tugged to hide in the dark.  Its easy to hide in the dark, its easy to curl up give up and hide.  Just a few hours of sleep, some time alone.  Not to be found for the darkness drawnsyou in but there is no peace.  Just a constant stealing of your defences and you.  As the darkness came closer and closer I felt my defences decreasing.  It is this that scares me.  The dreams, the darkness and the confusion.  I fought;  I tried to fight.  I think in the end there was a stale mate.  I am still being hasselled as I write this.

The one lie that kepts going over in my brain is, if God is love he can heal you, but you are not healed so you are not worthy.  I am allowed the depth of this pain for a reason, I don’t understand the reason. If I could touch the hem of the cloak of Jesus I could be healed, like the women in the bible.  I feel like I am reaching– but in reality I am just waveing my arms in the air – blind – confused – and crazy.

Its just a wave a small set back, but if I reinjured a hurt that was purely physical, if I hurt a limb again it would heal because I would do the right things to heal it.  But when there are emotions envolved, you don’t know what to do, how to move forward.

I just hope and pray and meditate that this thorn will be taken away from me and it I am to learn something form it, I pray that I finally figure it out, before I finally lose my mind completely.

till next time…………………

Darkness

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I should have known.


I should have known that if I tell my Mother my feelings and what is going on she would prescribe her own theory as to my problems and miss label.

I spent the weekend at my Mothers helping my husband build a fence for her.   We worked very hard and built it in record time.

Saturday night Mom and I were sitting in the back yard enjoying a glass of wine.  I have been telling her over time what kind of hell I have been in for the past couple of years.  I tell her about the drugs and the other issues I have had.  She listens and asks a couple of questions. .  She doesn’t look me in the eye when we are talking.  She keeps a continuous flow of hmmms and oh really’s as I talk.  I start to feel the anxiety rise in me but I am not letting myself give in– I forgot my anxiety meds and I am not letting myself freak out.  I sooth myself with another glass of wine.  Not a good choise.   After a while we have nothing else to say about it, the subject gets changed and I have no idea what she is thinking.  We go to bed shortly after that where I spend a night of restlessness and mapping out the ceiling of the guest room, as I lay awake and blink myself into the morning.

Next morning Mom has the coffee on – its hot and strong just what I need.  She comes over and puts an arm around me, something I do to her but not so much the other way.  She tells me “Oh I know what your problems are, you just are feeling empty nest syndrome.  Get a hobby and you’ll be just fine. ” If I wasn’t slightly hung over and tired from lack of sleep I would have argued with her, left to go on a run, get away from what I know is coming next.  But I had no energy so I turn all my attention to my coffee, (who knew coffee could be so interesting little bubbles, swirls of cream,) while she gives me the wisdom on what hobby things might interest me.

We leave later that day when the fence is done.  I don’t discuss this with my husband.  I feel so let down.  My Mom thinks this thing is a controllable thing.  I have spent hours telling her what depression is really like and explaining why a 65year husband of a friend of hers hung himself.  That is was a result of depression and what the mind does and the tricks it plays.

She doesn’t get it.  What do you do? I have run into so many people who condemn depression as a self-made thing — just snap out of it be happy!  These people; when I figure out how they think,  I  would never admit to them my illness.  I leave Mom with her dillusions and decide never to bring the subject up again — to anyone.

till next time……..