It would be great if life were all sunshine and rainbows, but it is not. While I enjoy being around upbeat people, I also need to be around some folks who are real and admit they struggle with things like I do. Their honesty lets me know I am not alone in my personal challenges, and that is surprisingly encouraging.
Some people seem to surf through life, keeping their façade intact, never going very deep, managing to stay above the consuming waves of grief, anxiety, and depression. That is not life. It is fantasy. Those people worry me. Everything is too pretty, too perfect. Scratch the surface a bit and you will find a different person.
The waves are real and they are not easy to ride. Maybe you feel like what you are going through one of those waves right now that might just take you down.
I just came through a wave, and it wouldn’t let me get back up on my feet for several days. I knew I was muted, not myself. I was carrying a weight that I could not put down no matter how hard I tried. I felt weak, sad, and everything that went through my mind had a negative spin. I wanted to run away from my thoughts. Simply, I was not myself.
If you ever felt that way, welcome to the human race. We all are, to some degree, damaged goods, damaged by people and circumstances in our life, damaged by bad decisions and bad thinking, damaged by things out of our control and things under our control.
There is a word for that: “sin”, sin in our hearts, the sin of others who have wounded us, and sin that is just part of the world. It is a universal problem. Sin hurts us and others. I like calling sin, “sin” and guilt “guilt” because there is a cure for it: Jesus. His redemption, his unconditional love and forgiveness.
There are a number of things that can be like life preservers to rescue you from the rogue wave. It might be as simple as a pill, that helps calm the steady stream of obsessive thoughts in your head. It might be a focused way of praying and self-talk that repeats the messages you need to hear and not the ones you need to avoid. It might be professional therapy that will give you the tools you need to get through a rough patch. It might be new activities like taking a walk, reading a book, or calling a friend.
Stop beating yourself up. We all have triggers, stresses and reasons we feel the way we do. God wants us to enjoy full, joyous lives. It certainly won’t feel like that every moment, but we can keep coming back to that base line. We have to keep ourselves healthy mentally, spiritually, and emotionally to help others. So, there is an “otherliness” about taking care of ourselves.
