Tag Archives: depression

The Only Cure For Despair

8 Jun

Every human is confronted with the same decisions: believe the dark thoughts or cast them out. And I am realizing that intersection faced multiple times a day is really what makes or breaks a life.

I am reminded again, you can have the whole world but lose your soul.

Money is an illusion. Adventure can be miserable. Traveling doesn’t bring you peace. Neither does having a beautiful, loving family.

The reality of human nature is this: nothing is ever enough.

We grasp at the stars with hands that can’t hold anything, it’s always just within our reach.

Happiness. Fame. Romantic love. Success. Amazing experiences.

They fade in color like anything left out in the sun too long.

We are the desert wanderers, watching miracles happen next to us and forgetting in a day, never arriving to the promise land we’re camped right outside of.

We are dust and we can’t get back to the ground fast enough.

Meaninglessness, meaninglessness.

If we’re honest, we all face the reality of the futility of it all.

Some of us ignore the pressing truth. We numb ourselves with pictures and noise, bury ourselves in stuff and other’s drama. We curb the appetite of despair just enough to get us to the next high.

Some of us fall completely into the darkness and let it engulf is. We give up all hope and decide to leave. The world is shocked for a moment, then keeping spinning.

But some of us. Some of us touch the light on the other side, grasp it like a rescue rope.

Some of us have tasted Love and know everything else is bitter. And know matter how often we forget, we have this Hope.

A Reason.

A Meaning.

Beyond the easily combustible stuff.

Beyond fickle emotions or the next best thing.

Beyond the broken parts of our mind telling us it’s not worth it.

Beyond this world that is slowly expiring.

And it’s not even some intangible thing we have to conjure up or repeat enough phrases or read enough or attend the right church or seminar.

IT is a actually HIM.

A whispered name that stands firm when all the walls around us are knocked down.

A nest, untouched in a hurricane.

The only real reason for carrying on.

Jesus.

So we moved forward, with Light on our faces and Hope in our hearts.

Knowing what the world needs.

Knowing what we need.

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What the Water Does For My Words

19 May

I don’t know why I get to this place

away from the joy I used to know

almost afraid to count my blessings

nearly afraid to hope

it’s been a long road

towards home

wet and muddy

close to flooding

I usually feel something different in the rain

It’s always been my soul cleanse of choice

(and my cliche poem topic, too)

I’d stop and see

what the water does for my words

how it rinses the dust in my heart

and carries away old, dead thinking

now it’s just some kind of shivering, wet gibberish

trying to build a bridge

in the gap of thoughts

as water rushes in

I wish it were profound and real

but right now, it’s just me

empty and full again

washed and cold and waiting for the sun

stuck in-between the truth I know will set me free

and wishing for anywhere, anything else

all the potential in the world wrapped up in a feeling

fickle as spring weather in Texas

then I close my eyes and  I am a child

tracing raindrops with my finger as they race

down the outside of the car window

 I am going fast and it doesn’t matter where

I am alive

once again finding wonder

in puddle jumping

and the sensation

of the rain on my skin

RS47U87JM0

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When I am Feeling Lost

14 Jun

Sometimes I feel lost.  Lost in my head. Lost in worry.

I forget I am not doing life alone.

Photo Credit: …bmd… via Compfight cc

I tend to try to go at it by myself, and I know that isn’t healthy.

Sometimes I forget simple child-like faith is all I really need.

I’ve done a pretty good job rejecting religion, but I don’t want to get stuck there.

I don’t want to stay at the “what’s wrong with Christianity” party.

Trust me, it’s not worth it.

There is so much goodness and light and life when people just embrace Jesus. 

When they truly love God and love others.

I want to focus on that.

I know the old phrase,

It’s not religion it’s relationship.

I know it has meaning, but what does it mean to me?

Today, I sat in church and thought about it.

Often, it means not doing things “by the book.”

It means figuring out what works for me and throwing myself into it.

It may mean doing the opposite of the crowd. It may mean looking heretical to others.

It means having nothing to prove to anyone, because I am secure in our relationship.

Sometimes It looks like fights. Like any relationship. Hard questions. Moments of anger, followed by intimacy.

It doesn’t always look like feelings. Sometimes it looks like believing I am loved even when I feel hideous and unlovable. It’s constantly remembering the commitment that has been made.

(You know, the one between God and Jesus. The one I have nothing to do with but still get to partake in.)

It means keeping my heart open when I just want to crawl into a corner and be left alone.

But it also means when I chose to do so, I am never alone in that corner.

It often looks like struggle, because it seems “easier” to fall back into a lifeless routine.

But it also looks like rest, because fundamentally, it is.

It looks like a breath of energy when I am worn out and piling burdens on top of my self.

It looks like that calm, certain thought in the middle of confusion, in the midst of worrying about the future:

“This is exactly where I need to be…”

It looks like comfort in pain.

Joy in uncertainty.

Creativity in the midst of a dry spell.

And love. 

Always love.

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I Know You.

28 Jun

I know you.

You think you are the only one who wakes up from a disturbing dream, and sinks back into the feeling that you don’t really want to be awake today.

You feel crazy when you start crying when fresh coffee cascades all over the counter. There is some kind of leak in your french press and you can’t find it.  This faithful friend is suddenly your enemy, determined to ruin your day.

You hate it when you get the urge to check your phone, but you do it anyways. Sometimes you do it so many times you feel sick. You tell yourself you are just making sure no one is trying to reach you, a text or even a simple “like” giving you a split second thrill, only to be replaced with loneliness.

I know you get online to try to drown out the unanswered questions in your mind.  You scroll through hundreds of pictures of colorful home decor and genius healthy recipes because you feel like you are lacking something.

I know you’re just around thirty and feel like that means your life should look like something else.

Like children in school, a mortgage and a career.

Like creating successful art and living independently in a beautiful, foreign city.

Like not constantly second guessing yourself.

Like not still being afraid to talk to people.

I know you look at old photographs of yourself with both a loathing and an envy, remembering the time you were so:

Naive.

Free.

Insecure.

Passionate.

Messy.

Then you shake your head, because even though you feel like a completely different person, the old one is in you, buried beneath experiences that have left you jaded.

But you are still yourself. You can’t escape that.

You think you are the only one who has let their dream die,  just watched it shrivel up in front of you. You could have resuscitated it, but fear got in the way.

“No… it can’t be mine. It can’t be real. It will never happen anyway.”

Sometimes, you feel the ghosts of those dreams hitting your gut from the inside, a pregnant flutter that comes from a line in a TV show or a billboard from a travel agency.

You know resurrection is possible, but not yet.

I know what you’re waiting for:

The Next Best Thing. 

Emotional Healing.

Marriage.

Moving.

More Money.

A Spiritual Awakening.

A different situation than the one you’re in.

I know you believe 90% of the time that’s where your happiness lives, and I know that the other 10% is spent with your internal eyes open, screaming at the rest yourself to WAKE UP.

I know you don’t want to spend your life distracted. You want meaningful relationships, you want to make a difference, you want to love yourself, love others and love God.

I know you’re tired of the formulas to achieve these things, the step-by-step instructions from people who seems to have all this and more just dropped into their lap.

I know your  jealousy for these people keeps you from seeing what they are really saying. You either vilify them or put then on a pedestal.

But in the end, it does nothing but drive a wider rift in your “us vs. them” mentality.

There is NO “us vs. them.”

I know you, because you are me.

You are all of us.

The greatest lie is that you are alone, that what you are experiencing is unique to you.

We are conditioned  to think of ourselves as separate, and so become emotionally vacant.

But this.

This is the human experience.

We grow up, lose our wild eyes and become slaves to worry.

We always want what we don’t have.

We compare, we criticize and we think we are different and alone, not good enough, too emotional, too fat, too weak to kick our addictions.

We search, we run away,  we stay put out of fear.

We love, our hearts break, we question God, we stop faking it.

We’d do anything to see our dreams come true, if not in our lifetime then our children’s or grandchildren’s.

We want our time on earth to mean something more. 

More than our years spent here. More than our words. More than numbers or old photos.

And somewhere in-between all of our experiences, all our pain and joy and “figuring things out,”

We come to see,  Life itself is grace.

and when we are really awake, that becomes enough.

listen

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Rise Like the Sun

15 Mar

It’s a strange world.

Trying to figure out how to be human in only one life time.

We suffer until we reach the split where we have to decide if we want to continue to live or not.

Whether the suffering is widely known, or completely internally hidden, whether deemed “small” or “enormous” we must all reach this point of our lives.

The split.

The moment where we know we are dying or perhaps already dead.

The moment right between darkness and morning.

Where the pain is so great we wish for numbness,

Or the numbness so great we wish for pain.

Either way, we have to decide to live. 

sun

We have to choose to rise like the sun in the morning, evaporating the cold dew on the ground of our conscience.

We do this by opening our eyes and seeing the world beyond ourselves,

A world that splits and suffers and grows numb and shines with incomparable, hopeful beauty.

A world full of kindness and goodness.

We do this by embracing love, a Love outside of our mere bodies.

If my writing has themes in different seasons, the current thing  I can’t escape from is, see the good.

And I know the quality of my life is nothing more or less than choosing to see the good. 

So I will see the helpers,

Open my eyes,

And rise with the sun.

Today.

I will not live in fear.

I will not cower to pessimism.

I will let love win,

first and foremost in my mind. 

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