Where to start?
Okay - so I struggle with seasonal depression, which many people do, but most people don't see it until February, when holidays are over, and everyone has gone back to their own lives, and the weather lacks sunshine, and life just feels hard. However, for me, it's the start of the cold season, the first span of gray days weigh down on me like no other.
Recently, we had literally five days of rain and gloom without a break, it was terrible. I didn't want to function. I just wanted to lay in my bed by myself. When I am struggling with my depression I have tendency to isolate myself from society. I don't want to talk to people - this isn't normal for me...
Okay so that's the source of all this -
So I'm just really down and gloomy. It feels as if there's no hope, my heart is heavy, and I'm in need of my savior. Living in household this year with six other women God continues to reveal his love to me in profound ways.
First, living in community you are forced to be surrounded by people, whether you want to or not. Someone is there, and when something is up they notice, and one of them is going to ask you if you're okay. I promise.
One night I came home from work, and I had just discovered that one of my kids couldn't read. I work with an after school program called AmericaReads. Anyway, I was helping with homework and one of the boys, who's in third or fourth grade, asks me for help on his homework, and I realized he couldn't read. He is in fourth grade (I think) and he can't read! How does that happen! I was appalled I was shocked. I was disturbed. More than anything - my heart ached for this child. His parents didn't care enough to notice he couldn't read, and if they did notice, they weren't doing anything to fix the problem. Why is this the case? Why. I was so distraught by this.
On top of that, I wasn't feeling good. It was just a bad week. I was upset. The weather was getting to me. Things of our culture were upsetting me, the list goes on. It felt like my every action took all the energy within me. Therefore, Friday night and really Saturday too, I feel extremely anti-social. I keep to myself both days a lot, and just do what I need to for the weekend, but also spend some time watching movies. Saturday night I watched some Christian movies on netflix, and end up in tears (that happens a lot). In one of the movies, it was a woman's conversion story, and that got me thinking of my own conversion story, and had me asking Why did God choose me? Why did I find him? Why did I come to our God, there is no logical way for this to have happened. My family's not really Christian or anything, yet I came to know the truth of the Catholic Church and came to know Jesus in a most intimate way. For this, I am so thankful, but I just started asking why. I texted one of my dear friends, and he told me that it was because God knew I would do the work he had for me, but also because I was the lost sheep and he was the Good Shepherd who came back for me. And I was like okay - you're right. Then the next day at mass the readings hit home. God kind of smacked me in the face, but not really, but kind of...
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind,
and with all your strength. (Mk. 12:30)
God's love is enough. He is sufficient (well he's much more than sufficient, but we'll go with that for now). So I was like okay, God's love is enough.
Then Sunday, I was up in our attic studying away, or working on something of some form and my housemate, friend, and sister came up and we started chatting. I told her what was going on, and we cried together. Something she asked me that really struck me was "Why do you want to be a saint? ... because you want to hurt Jesus anymore".
I forgot to add, in one of the movies there was a scene that talked about how Jesus loves us day in and day out, despite the numerous times we reject him, and I was also asking myself why do I deserve to know this love, why did God choose me?
Okay, so because I don't want to hurt Jesus anymore - yes. In my imperfection, I deny and reject his love, his truth each day. I was finally feeling better, my chat with my sister lifted me up, and I was like it's okay, I'm not alone in this struggle, I keep going I can do this.
Then Monday, Monday was okay. I was still in thought a lot. And we had small group that night, and I shared with them all of this. I had also thought up the idea to make a Positivity Book - so a little something for myself filled with positive uplifting things to help me when life weighs me down is essentially the idea behind that. Then one of the girls asks me how they can help with my seasonal depression and honestly, I was shocked by this question. I was kind of like, oh you don't need to do anything or I don't know if there's anything you can do. Then I was like, honestly, what helps is being reminded I am loved. I often feel forgotten, and sometimes I feel myself pouring out love to people each day, but feel like I never receive love. I often feel unloved, unwanted. I remember telling a friend once that I felt like people were nice to me because they felt it more of an obligation... because of one reason or another. I often just feel rejected, and unloved, which makes the seasonal depression most challenging. So I told the women I was sharing with, just little things to remind me that I'm loved and cared for will help the most.
Tuesday, I was at work, and the bigger kids went on a field trip, so we had the littler ones, and they just loved on me. We played games and when they got out they would come sit on my lap. I had literally six little children on my lap at once... it was one of those "I'm in heaven moments" because I was loving these children, but it was also a reminder to me that I am making an impact on these children, and that warmed my heart. There was an immense amount of love being shared, and it was so beautiful, to see the innocence of these children being embraced.
Then Wednesday, I was upstairs studying, as per usual. Wednesday was just a weird day.. oh - I forgot to mention I didn't go to class Tuesday or Wednesday morning because I woke up with a headache, and just didn't feel all that well, so I didn't go to school.
I'm upstairs studying away for my Friday exan, and my roommate comes upstairs and she tells me she needs a favor from me, and I'm like okay - is everything alright... she sounded kind of like something was wrong, and she was like yeah, I just need you. So she grabs my hand, leads me down the stair to our room, has me lay down in my bed, puts my blankey over me, and tells me she wanted to do something special for me, to help me with my seasonal depression, and I was like awww okay. She plays this song for me, click here to listen. And she turns her super pretty lamp on and leaves the room. I sit there, listening to the lyrics,
Tell me your story
Show me your wounds
And I’ll show you what Love sees
When Love looks at you
Hand me the pieces
Broken and bruised
And I’ll show you what Love sees
When Love sees you
I see what I made
In your mother's womb
I see the day I fell in love with you.
I see your tomorrows
Nothing left to chance
I see My Father's fingerprints
I see your story, I see My name
Written on every beautiful page
You see the struggle
You see the shame
I see the reason I came
I came for your story
I came for your wounds
To show you what Love sees
When I see you
practically in tears at the beauty of this - and the depth of God's love for me. And then she comes in as the song ends and we just sit there and she holds me, and I cry, and she looks me in the eyes and tells me I'm beautiful, and how loved I am. And I just stay there for a while. To be so loved, and for it to be shown, so deeply, so thoughtfully just lifted my heart. And then I went back to studying, and she brings me up tea and I was like oh my gosh, I can't handle this - to be loved is the most precious gift.I see your tomorrows
Nothing left to chance
I see My Father's fingerprints
I see your story, I see My name
Written on every beautiful page
You see the struggle
You see the shame
I see the reason I came
I came for your story
I came for your wounds
To show you what Love sees
When I see you
Alright, we're coming to the best part now - the power and beauty of prayer. In my community we have One Gospel every other Thursday night. These entail 150ish students gathering in a classroom, we hear a talk on Christ, or something faith related, and then we worship our God through songs of praise. I was really excited for this night because my youth minister from high school was giving the talk, and he is a very gifted speaker, and multiple times has impacted my life - I mean, he's kind of the main reason I'm Catholic :) and came to know Jesus - because of his boldness in proclaiming Christ as King and not being afraid of the outcome.
His talk was entitled "Big, Hairy Faith" and he opens talking about how we belittle our God. It is important to have faith in small things, but we need to have faith in big things too. And so often the world crushes our faith. John 14:12 Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.
We must have faith that our God will work and do great things. And he talks for a while about how we need to have big faith, expectant faith, faith that God can end abortion, and do great things. We talk about the apostles performing miracles, and how God wants to do the same thing now, but so often we belittle him, and do not have faith that he can do this great work. Then he starts to talk about hope.
Now hope is quite the special virtue to me. It is what has kept me going for the last three years. Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen - Hebrews 11:1
Then he says "Faith requires that we have hope, without hope we have nothing."
And this made me think of a conversation I had with my sister Sunday - without suffering we have no need for hope. Faith, hope, and love are greatly intertwined and we need all of them together.
This turned into a really long post - but essentially - God is good. He knows us so well, and knows exactly what we need, and how we need to be loved. He teaches us lessons through peculiar ways. But most of all - through all of this, and through a retreat I went on this weekend I learned by choosing to live our life for Christ we lead an ordinary life in an extraordinary, by simply knowing our source of love and life is Christ Jesus.
God is good. Amen.
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