He said, “You know, Shannon, depression is a spirit. It’s a seductive spirit. Because, while it’s tearing you apart, it’s also feeding you chemicals that feel good. Good enough to make you keep it around. Good enough to not cast it out… You can be free.”

“Lean in,” I heard. It was a simple, quiet statement. I knew what it meant instantly and it scared me. It meant:

\ Stretching a little farther in embracing (even the idea of) joy and hope for the future.

\ Releasing more fear that the bottom might drop out. Again.
\ Trusting that the worst is behind and the best is yet unfolding.

Lean in. Drink deep…

Our room faced the backyard and gave a wide-windowed view of a pomegranate tree they’d had for decades - bare, stripped-down limbs devoid of any fruit, flower, or leaf. It was the end of October, smack dab in the middle of fall, and the barrenness of that tree would go on to mock my own every single morning for months…

When had the abject misery and despair I was listening to - that I remembered knowing would never end - become something unrecognizable?

...I still either have to brace myself or forget and get spin-cycled through the day/week/whatever.

Is that you?

I’m praying for you - for us - today so you know you’re not alone. You’re not forgotten. You are loved.

One of the hardest things in the world is learning and then confronting who you are. Who you really are when everything that’s made you “you” isn’t around anymore. But now we’re all doing it. We’re all finding out who we REALLY are. Together. Right now. And it’s happening fast.

So what’s the last thing you heard? Do you remember? Have you finally stopped long enough yet during this quarantine to ask?

Resting is about more than jumping on a plane and getting away from it all or having a whole five minutes, hour, or day to oneself. You can be in either of those scenarios and many others and still not run into it. Why??

GUILT 

Good ol’ fashioned guilt. 

When hard times come, does it automatically mean that they are solely meant to harm a person or destroy their lives? Or could those same hard times be there to shape and mold that person in a way that no other method could do or could do as completely and quickly?

My routines were safe. They kept me secure in my mind even as they kept me fastened to my bronze-version life. I’d asked for this. I didn’t know it at the time of my asking. It didn’t sound like that at all. It sounded like groaning. Deep, unsatisfied, guttural groaning. And it wouldn’t stop. 

I was not-so-silently fuming at no one but myself. I’d been here before and felt the cold, dark or dryness of having pushed the ‘grace period’ mentality only to find there was no grace period. I knew better but I insisted and no one was really affected by that recurring obstinance but me. I was furious – at the injustice but mostly just at myself. And then a memory hit me. I remembered another time when one day made all the difference in the world and utterly changed the trajectory of my life forever.

She’d gone out with this man several times and, try as she might, she couldn’t bring herself to get into him. On paper, he was great. And she knew it. So did he. But she was a vibrant woman still ascending into her prime (btw…those old beliefs that a woman HITS her prime in her mid-30s are horribly misleading. if truth be told, sliding into the midpoint of your third decade signals the START of hitting your prime, ladies, and, from what I hear, it goes on and on and on from there... You’re welcome 😉) and he…well he was a guy who knew he looked good on paper.

I hate lies now. Like…A LOT. The worst lies, I find, are the ones that I don’t even know I’m telling. Those are the ones that have their root in the deep, dark and murky recesses of my insecurities, past rejections, and the total conviction that if I can’t see them, no one else can either. Until I unceremoniously find out they can.

Some time ago, I had a friend who shared a house with me on alternative days/weeks when I was in town and vice versa. On one of my trips in town that coincided with one of her trips out of town, I arrived to the house to find it a mess and all the food I’d left 10 days earlier either eaten, given away or tossed out. I was a little low on cash, tired from traveling, and possessed little to no desire to go grocery shopping as soon as I got back. When I asked about the missing food and general ‘ugh’ of the house, I got a plate of evasive answers paired with a juicy slice of remorselessness washed down with a tall glass of ‘get over it…I already have’.

Last year, I made a new friend. I love that because, as I’ve traveled this world more, I have come to value and have a greater appreciation for what that word really means. I don’t take it lightly. One day, as I was talking with God about why this person was in my life, I heard one thing: “…to teach him bravery”.

When I moved to Cabo in Oct 2017, not really knowing a soul save one person, I approached it the same as I had every vacation over the past 20 years to the same locale: I LOVED IT!! But after almost a year of globetrotting from this country to that, I was nearly broke. With no desire to return to accounting in any form and with no clear idea what was to happen next…

I had been praying quietly and singing when suddenly I heard it:

“I’m turning the tap on and I’m not turning it off. The only thing that can turn it off is ingratitude because ingratitude makes you forgetful. Ingratitude leads to forgetfulness and forgetfulness will turn your tap off…”

BOOM!

I realized then that I had continued to hold onto one residual thought; one remnant feeling that was very effective at preventing me from moving forward with any sense of urgency. That residual remnant was this: that there was something to ‘go back’ to.