It’s been three days since I wanted to start this post, but for some reason our computers are running excessively slow, and Beloved’s work takes pressidence; so my stuff has had to wait.

Resently my therapists have been wanting me to write out what I am thinking and feeling, but I haven’t had much success doing that, so I tried doing collages instead. Normally that entails cutting out a whole lot of words and phrases from magazines and grouping them, arranging them to express the confused conglomeration of thoughts and feelings that consisture what is going on in my head. However, this time I’m not finding many of the words and phrases I need in the magazines available to me so I’ve been doing it mentally. I have two mental collages I am putting together in my mind. One is a gigantic commode that I am flushing words and phrases down; and the other is my Savior, Jesus Christ’s cross that I am nailing other thoughts and feelings to. In the process I am sorting out which thoughts and feelings are waist material that doesn’t have much merit to them; and which thoughts and feeling have merit or weight but need to be dealt with by my Savior instead of me trying to carry them. I hope that all makes sense to you all.

The practice has had an uplifting effect on me, and for the first time in a very long time I feel hopeful that this horrendous depression may be drawing to an end. Last night some of the old thoughts and feelings arose again, but I’m not going to let that get me too upset.

The other thing that is hopeful that has happened resently is I am resonating with a name. It isn’t the most positive name, but it is what seems to fit to me, and that is the name, Stranger. I feel like a stranger in this body – unlike the others in some ways that are core to my sense of self. I don’t feel understood by anyone external or internal. Even though friends and family are saying things like, “It’s so good to see the old you coming back again.”, I am not the “old self” at all. It feels good that they can tell the depression is lightening, which is what they are really referring to, I assume. I don’t want to too closely associate my self with the depression that has been interminably long; and maybe as the depression lifts people will see the differences between me and others, I’m not sure. For now I take some hope in the fact that there has been at least a temperary lifting of some of the weightiness of it which has allowed me at least moments of laughter. Right now, as I type this, my heart is not feeling light at all. It’s very heavy and depressed; but I’m hoping that it will be temperary and will lift again soon. I never did expect that the depression would be completely gone in an instant. I knew there would be ups and downs along the way towards healthier thinking/feeling/being.

My father-in-law just sent a quote to me in the mail which arrived today. He was quoting Henri Nouwen in Here and Now: Living in the Spirit, “Jesus says, let go of your complaints, forgive those who loved you poorly, step over your feelings of being rejected, and have the courage to trust that you won’t fall into an abyss of nothingness but into the safe embrace of a God whose love will heal all your wounds.”

I don’t know where Jesus says just that, and I don’t have the book the quote was taken from; but they are words that challenge me to let go of my brokeness – in a sense,  to nail to my Savior’s cross the things I have a just right to hang on to but that weighs me down; and to flush down the drain the rest of the garbage that keeps me wounded and sad.

It’s my sincere hope that there will be more and more uplifting and positive posts in the near future.