I have only just realised that I have not posted a link to my new blog.
It is called Chasandrecovery and I have actually been writing it for a long time. Now I definitely feel like an idiot. So if you want to follow more of my wonderful (or maybe not so much) adventures, this time into more of struggles with mental health. Then please follow the link below.
https://chaosandrecovery.wordpress.com
Claire
x
When my grandmother died it was like my life suddenly ended too.
It was the start of my five years of battling with depression and now as it comes up to the fifth anniversary of her death, my mind keeps returning to those feelings of utter emptiness and despair that I felt at the time I learnt she’d left us.
I believe the people we love are what anchor us to wanting to be here. The number of times I think of not wanting to be here further this belief. We don’t want to leave the people we love behind.
It’s why I believe there must be something beyond life. Because we cling so much to wanting to be alive and with those we love how can that strength of feeling suddenly just disappear?
We aren’t just our bodies, there is an element of a spirit, of ‘us’ in there; our personality, ego,soul whatever you want to call it is something that is obviously present- we aren’t just skin and bones.
I work in a job where people passing away isn’t an unusual occurrence. And I can tell you when people are gone they are gone. The body is just a body….the person is not there anymore.
‘If your ego starts out, ‘I am important, I am big, I am special,’ you’re in for some disappointments when you look around at what we’ve discovered about the universe. No, you’re not big. No, you’re not. You’re small in time and in space. And you have this frail vessel called the human body that’s limited on Earth.’
Neil deGrasse Tyson
The time came when the Lord God formed a man’s body from the dust of the ground[a] and breathed into it the breath of life. And man became a living person.
Genesis 2:7
How can that part that is ‘us’ just cease to exist? The human life is so short that we can’t just stop being.
I am a Christian but there are so many other religions that have this belief that this life is just one of the ones we live. It is this belief in the ‘other side’ that has kept me believing in God through all the stuff that’s happened over the past couple of years.
For me this world just being the only one and that’s it would deeply sadden me. Yes this is a life we should give our all to, we should give our best to do all we can while we live. But I don’t think we only live once. Maybe here we do but there is somewhere else we can live beyond this.
And if everyone whose ever believed this since the beginning of our existence is wrong…then maybe we need to start living this one as best we can.
Most of all, love each other steadily and unselfishly, because love makes up for many faults. Show hospitality to each other without complaint. Use whatever gift you’ve received for the good of one another so that you can show yourselves to be good stewards of God’s grace in all its varieties. If you’re called upon to talk, speak as though God put the words in your mouth; if you’re called upon to serve others, serve as though you had the strength of God behind you. In these ways, God may be glorified in all you do through Jesus the Anointed, to whom belongs glory and power, now and forever. Amen.’
1 Peter 4:8-11
Sometimes we need to make apologies not because we necessarily feel that what we have done is wrong but because it’s the right thing to do.
So I am sorry to those people that my blog upset on Monday. The truth is I am a very honest person and say what I think. At the time what I thought in the blog was true, and it still is true but I suppose the way I write things can make it seem too blunt, so I am sorry. I really never intend to make what I say upset anyone. In fact, when someone said they were upset it completely threw me.
This week has been a hard week. I have struggled. Not just because my blog has brought a lot of things into my mind but simply because spiritually I am at a turning point in my life.
It is often said that life is a journey and that walking with God is a path….a narrow path at that.
There are two paths before you; you may take only one path. One doorway is narrow. And one door is wide. Go through the narrow door. For the wide door leads to a wide path, and the wide path is broad; the wide, broad path is easy, and the wide, broad, easy path has many, many people on it; but the wide, broad, easy, crowded path leads to death. Now then that narrow door leads to a narrow road that in turn leads to life. It is hard to find that road. Not many people manage it. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Sometimes this path isn’t just a spiritual one but a physical one. I wasn’t struggling with the Church itself (as my last blog implied but I was physically struggling.
I have no problems with the Church itself but I think that what was annoying me ,and what I couldn’t voice, was this sense that I wasn’t going in the right direction. Someone said that I should place God before anything, the fact of the matter is that is what I live my life by. It might seem that I place other things before it but as I see it God has placed these things in my life because it is what his purpose is for me isat that time.
The Church is not a place but a people. The people that attend churches are the Church. This was hammered home to me in more ways than one this Sunday.
My dad gave me some advice. If you are struggling to get to church why don’t you find one that’s nearer to you at the time. As I said physically I have been in so many places these past few weeks that it has been struggle to get to the location of where I call my church.
I’m in Manchester a lot these days simply because my partner lives there. If God has placed him into my life, which we have both been assured he has than it would seem wrong to not spend the time with him that I usually generally only find at the weekends. So why not go to a church nearer to his house.
I love my church. I love everyone in my church, they have been constant source of support to me from seem really hard times. But sometimes our circumstances change.I feel like my life is beginning to enter a new direction. Where it will lead me I don’t know.
Please pray that the decisions I make with God are the right ones.
I’ve been finding it really hard to connect all the different aspects of my life recently.
I have work, I have Toby and I have church. Unfortunately, I have found, as I have found before, is that church often gets demoted when my life gets to full.
It does frustrate me but often it’s because I’ve been too tired (like trying to go after a 12 hour shift) or the travelling puts me off (on public transport from Manchester). But these shouldn’t really be excuses. And I know that I should make the effort. The thing is I haven’t neglected the other Christian elements in my life. I often listen to worship music at work and read the Bible. But as it says in Hebrews 10:25
‘Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.’
Why is church the one thing that quite a lot of Christians find so hard to connect with if their lives become too complex or too ‘busy’.
I think for me once I started to work especially at the weekends I found it more difficult to make it to church and I am also finding it hard to balance my life out spending time to prioritise all the different things that are happening. I love my boyfriend, he isn’t a christian but he and i have talked a lot about me being a Christian and he has no problems with it. But when it comes it comes to church it really isn’t as easy. I work sometimes 4 days a week and that means I get to spend 3 days with my boyfriend who lives 20 miles from me. So I usually go to work and then go to his house. The first train from his is an hour before church starts and often one of my excuses has been that it’s too difficult to get to church from his. But why am I so easy to make these excuses? Trust me it isn’t an easy thing and it really bugs me.
I just wish I could try and combine all the parts of my life into one easy package. But it doesn’t work like that.
Church seems just something that’s expected of you when you’re a Christian but I know so many people that have become disillusioned with it that maybe I sometimes find it difficult to connect with it myself. In the past church has been difficult and maybe that’s why I don’t place as much priority on it as I should.
This is probably one of those subjects that some people won’t understand but as I see it not going to church sometimes doesn’t make me any less of a Christian. I suppose I’m more afraid of being judged for not going sometimes, being seemingly less of a Christian for not spending those three hours of a Sunday at church.
I still believe in God, I haven’t ‘backslidden’ which is so often what people think when you haven’t been to church for a while.
It is simply a case of priorities at the end of the day but I do think there is a definite lack of support for those people who are finding it difficult to connect to church because of differing circumstances in their lives. Work is not Sunday-friendly. It is not a day that is solely concerned with the church as it used to be and maybe that is part of the reason for this disconnect within many Christians. Until there is a better solution, church can often remain a struggle for many and for those that do struggle to get there for those three hour services they may continue to struggle for a bit longer.
I am a Christian. I believe in God whole-heartedly. And I am struggling to get to Church on Sundays.
That is my truth at the minute.
Being patient and keeping calm are not my strongest points, in fact, as you might see in my previous blogs I am a bit of a whirlwind when it comes to just about anything.
And yet I’ve found that slowing down was something that I desperately needed to do. So I did stop for about a year. It worked, my life got back on track. I am healthy, happy and once again looking forward to the future.
The only downside is that now I’m feeling a lot better my natural tendency to attack life as fast as I can is starting to creep back in. Everything in my mind is whirring at one hundred miles an hour, I sleep less because I can’t switch my brain off and even when I do sleep my brain is filled with dreams that are vivid and so real that it doesn’t feel like I’ve slept.
I know I’m not a naturally calm person which is fine, some people are just made that way but once again I’ve found myself exhausted with trying to keep up with everything that I’ve been thinking/planning for.
The thing is sometimes we need to slow down, we need a quiet place to just switch off. I often find this hard to do. I’m often surrounded by people both at work and at home. And the time that I do have off is spent catching up with others. Having that time to myself isn’t easy.
I feel the need to just slow down again but I feel like I don’t know how. There’s so many things I feel like I need to do.
I need to browse the internet.
I need to watch endless youtube vids.
I need to stay on Facebook all the time.
It’s this need to be connected that is tying me down. And yet what I really need is to go outside/grab a cuppa/ sit down and just take some time to switch off.
I used to spend hours wandering around Gloucester when I was at Uni. My grandma had just died and just being surrounded by people was driving me crazy. So I walked, not really anywhere in particular, I had my phone but I turned it off, I had no headphones in. There was no real plan. And it felt great.
One time I just walked as far straight ahead as I could and then just back again. I spent that time just pounding the pavement, getting rid of all the stress and strain that was surrounding me. Nobody to bother, nobody I even knew around. I finally felt like I could breathe again.
Most of the time now I spend on my own isn’t really me entirely by myself. I’m either on Facebook surrounded by other people, not physically perhaps but they are still there. Or surrounded by news, gossip, TV shows. Often all this stuff can get overwhelming.
I feel like I need to just be entirely on my own.No phones, no music, just me and a path or a comfy chair. Nothing else. Just to relax.
I often felt after my walks in Gloucester more ready to face the rest of my day. Coming to terms with emotions, thoughts and feeling that I simply hadn’t been dealing with because I’d filled my mind with other stuff. I felt a lot more like myself after spending some actual time just being myself with nothing else around me.
And yeah it can be scary with nothing there to fall back on but taking that time can be the best thing in helping to deal with everything else.
“Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.”
‘This is not primarily the place we have to be, it is the place where we are. It is not our prison, but our home. It is the road we must walk, and the walking of it is called life. Because we walk it only once, then how important is it that we should walk it with some purpose that we can call our own
These past few months have passed so quick that I’ve barely had time to sit back and look at all that’s changed. I was talking to someone about last year, a few things brought back some memories, and I realized the way I see the world has completely changed.
Part of this has to do with the counselling I’ve had over the years; it helped me to look beyond the negative depressive thoughts and see the positives in my life.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. It took a fair amount of facing my fears to be able to actually feel confident enough to face job interviews, meet someone I barely knew for a date and go to work, after a time when going out to work had been impossible to handle.
But I’ve realized the things that have made me afraid were actually lies my mind was telling me; making my life come to a halt. It’s true that the only way out of depression is to face it head on, by yourself. People can assure you that they love you, that you have a lot to live for but until you make yourself accept this they might as well be from another planet.
I called this blog ‘Home is where the heart is’ because I feel that to be positive about life is to find that ‘Home’ part in your life; in your family life, work life, social life, etc. Life isn’t just a single thing there are many different aspects and the most important thing ,to make sure you don’t feel overwhelmed, is to find a balance with them, to feel that in each of them you are comfortable in that place.
Of course, it’s easier said then done. But I am starting to realize that that is honestly how I’ve been able to handle my life in a more positive way.
Life isn’t always going to be easy. But I hope that I’ll have the resolve to handle the situation by remembering that by giving everything I do my best , I should be able to find that part within myself that feels at ‘home’ with the decisions I make. And really don’t we all need that feeling of self-assurance when dealing with our lives?
Yet I am always with you;
you hold me by my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me into glory.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
And earth has nothing I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
but God is the strength of my heart
and my portion forever.
Psalm 73:23-26
To be fair there really isn’t an ‘after depression’ moment. It’s something that always affects you….something that has robbed you of any happiness and real ‘life’ for a very long time.
I was talking to someone about what my greatest fear is and it’s moving on from my depression.
It might seem strange but after having depression for such a long time (4 years) moving on from it can be just as difficult as the depression I’ve experienced.
And don’t get me wrong I’m amazingly happy. I feel secure in life, more than I ever have. I have a wonderful boyfriend who understands me more than anyone ever has, a job that is a thousand times better than the others I’ve had and for the first time looking toward the future isn’t a scary thing.
And yet there’s the depression….still nagging me.
You have to understand depression is a mental illness….it affects your mind, the way you think and even though I’ve managed to change some of my thinking patterns to positive ones, the negative ones were so deeply ingrained that it can be hard to move away from them.
Depression effected how I saw myself ( if you remember I thought I was the most awful human being in the world), how I got on with my life (I thought I was inept and was unqualified for even the simplest of jobs) and meeting new people was a nightmare (I wondered how anyone could really like me, didn’t they see the way I was?).
So after all that pretty exhausting negativity you probably think I’d be relieved to get away from it. And I am, don’t get me wrong, but I think there’s still a part of myself that believes I don’t really deserve any of this happiness.
And yes that was a scary sentence to write.
You see for so long I’ve believed so many negative things about myself that believing positive things is taking a lot longer than what I thought it would. The thing is thinking negatively for a long time makes it very difficult to change that into a positive.
There’s a part of me just waiting for it to go wrong, even slightly and then that’s it. It’ll be that catalyst that starts me thinking;
‘Oh well there you go, screwing up again,’
‘Well, obviously it went wrong, you were doing it?’
‘Did you really think you deserve that amount of happiness?’
It’s scary writing this down but all these thoughts have run through my mind quite a lot since my doctor has said I can reduce my medication. I really want to but I’m scared of the depression coming back.
The thing is that to get through depression you actually have to get through it. The negative thoughts are still there, as you can tell, it’s just handling them better than before.
I think a positive thing I can get from this is that I’m actually aware of the negative thoughts this time and am actively trying to change the way I think.
I suppose I should be proud of myself that I’m actually confronting my negative thinking rather than giving into it. It’s just I don’t want to think negatively about myself. But then just part of being human I suppose….we all feel rubbish about ourselves at one time or another but it’s just realising that when things go wrong it isn’t our fault because of who we are but simply that things go wrong.
So I suppose ,even by just writing this down, I’ve realised the best way to face depression is by doing just that, facing it. There’s no easy option of avoiding negative thoughts completely but rather than taking the depressive route (just giving in to the negative thoughts), I need to take the positive route… realising that it’s normal to think negatively when things go wrong but that it’s not because of the way I am.
It’s that whole thing of liking who you are and sticking with it. Just because we trip up and make mistakes it isn’t because we are wrong…we are unique, we are all meant to be different and we don’t need to change to be like other people just to get by in life or get on with other people.
And hopefully that realisation is going to move me on from this depression.
For You shaped me, inside and out.
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb long before I took my first breath.
I will offer You my grateful heart, for I am Your unique creation, filled with wonder and awe.
You have approached even the smallest details with excellence;
Your works are wonderful;
I carry this knowledge deep within my soul.
You see all things; nothing about me was hidden from You
As I took shape in secret,
carefully crafted in the heart of the earth before I was born from its womb.
You see all things;
You saw me growing, changing in my mother’s womb;
Every detail of my life was already written in Your book;
You established the length of my life before I ever tasted the sweetness of it.
Your thoughts and plans are treasures to me, O God! I cherish each and every one of them!
Psalm 139:13-17
I’ve realised the one thing that has held me back from moving forward in life has often been fear.
i was listening to a friend on Thursday saying about how fear was holding him back from making a decision and it made me look back on how fear has held me back in the past.
It got to a point a year ago where I was afraid to leave the house, afraid to speak to people, afraid to move forward from where I was. There is a great reassurance in staying in the place you are in. You know what you are able to do, you know that where you are is safe and that you have the ability to control that situation. You feel safe because you know what to expect.
With me it was that feeling of not being in control that ultimately stopped me going forward. It took me a while to realise that the things I couldn’t control were things I simply wasn’t responsible for; there was no need for me to worry about them, to stress, to get worked up.
They were out of my control and that was ok. I couldn’t control everything in my life but that didn’t mean that I’d messed up.
The only way I’ve ever moved forward is by going beyond the fear I’ve felt and move into the new situation with the assurance by just being myself and doing the best that I can.
As the quote above says sometimes it takes a lot of courage to move out of that ‘comfort zone’, tackle the thing that you’re afraid. Often you find that the thing you were afraid of was nowhere near as bad as what you thought and that you can handle those uncontrollable situations a lot better than you thought.
There are many verses in the Bible that have helped and inspired me to move forward and to not be afraid;
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”
Joshua 1:9
The Lord is my light and my salvation—
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life—
of whom shall I be afraid?
When the wicked advance against me
to devour me,
it is my enemies and my foes
who will stumble and fall.
Though an army besiege me,
my heart will not fear;
though war break out against me,
even then I will be confident.
Psalm 27:1-3
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise—
in God I trust and am not afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?
Psalm 56:3-5
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:26-31
‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'(Franklin D. Roosevelt). When you are afraid it can paralyse you into inaction. It is the one thing to be afraid of because it is the one thing that can drain you of life. Fear can make you live in a small safe place that you may never step out of. You may never again experience life to the fullest unless you understand that by doing everything you face to the best of your ability then you have achieved all you achieve.
The rest of it is in God’s hands and in his hands how can you fear? You might not feel in control but go forward in your life knowing that God is.
‘…. always has been, always will be.’
Eleanor Roosevelt
I’m writing this blog after an amazing couple of weeks. I said to someone earlier that the first few weeks of 2014 have turned out better than the whole 2013 combined…I didn’t expect it but then how can you expect things to happen when you’re not sure what they’re going to be.
First of all, I got a job.
It didn’t feel like it at the time but it was the start of me starting to believe and be more confident in myself and my abilities. It’s a carer’s job, I was never quite sure whether I wanted to go back into care. I’d had quite a rough time with my previous job and I wasn’t sure if I still wanted to do it. But I applied and I got it. I know it is a tough job, not for the fainthearted. You are helping people who are going through a difficult time. People who are away from home, having to deal with illnesses that debilitate them and having to trust themselves into the care of others. It is a job that you have to emotionally, mentally and physically prepare for. It’s something that you have be willing to go the extra mile for. It’s a commitment.
And yet that doesn’t freak me out as much as it would have. I feel sometimes you have to step into that unknown place. You can never be sure what’s going to happen, how you’re going to react to something but you can be in control with how you approach it.
I’ve decided that all I can is do my best, as long as I make sure I’m doing the best that I can and the rest is simply not in my control. And that’s ok, not everything has to be.
Secondly, I passed my driving test.
It might not seem a big deal but to me it was a major thing. I’ve been able to drive for a while now, every time I went on lesson here was really nothing the instructor could teach me anymore. I knew how to drive but passing the test was a huge problem.
My nerves basically got the better of me. Basically, every time I sat in that car for test I had panic attacks. I don’t know whether it was the stress of wanting to do my best, of trying to control a situation I really couldn’t.
I don’t think I’m a huge fan of not being able to handle things myself. I like to be able to know exactly what’s going on and then finding the best way to deal with it, so having to deal with a second unknown situation in the space of one week was pretty scary for me.
But after my test, after finding out I’d passed, I looked back on how I’d handled it and actually I’d changed my attitude. I knew I couldn’t predict what was going to happen, I didn’t know where I was going or what was going to be asked of me. But I knew that had the ability and I knew that all I could do was my best. So I just took one minute at a time. I didn’t rush, I didn’t panic. I actually believed I could do it, that as I couldn’t prepare for the route I’d just have to prepare myself for each challenge as it came up.
And by actually trusting in my ability (something which I find hard to do with anything), believing that I despite not being able to predict what would happen ahead, I could control the way my mind handled it. And, to my amazement, that worked!
Ever since, January last year, my mind has been something that has created problems in my life. Depression had completely overwhelmed me. My belief in my self, in my abilities, in my ability to be able to handle unknown situations had completely disintegrated.
So for me to actually start to not let that part of my mind control me but to get a handle on it and to keep it under control was a massive step in what’s been a long recovery to get back to a life that looks forward and not back.
Thirdly, I’ve met a guy who appreciates me for who I am, someone who I haven’t been afraid to let into my life.
I’ve written before about how my trust in other people had also kind of disappeared. It felt like it was just me against the world and the only people I’d really trusted to see me as who I really is, especially at the beginning of last year, was my family.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want other people in my life but I didn’t want them to see me as who I was. For a long time I’ve never really been able to fully be myself with anyone else. I often held back a little bit, thinking that if they really got to know me, they wouldn’t like me.
And then I met Toby. The only way I’ve ever felt comfortable talking about myself has been on this blog, so I created an online profile. I was sceptical about meeting someone online. You hear so many stories of people who meet people who aren’t who they say are. And actually I had met a few people who said one thing and meant something else.
Then I talked to Toby, a completely normal, funny, intelligent guy. Someone who didn’t seem to want anything other than getting to know me. So when he invited me for a drink, I thought why not.
I was worried, when I first arrived at the pub we were going to meet. What if I didn’t like him, what if we didn’t get on? Then he was there and he hugged me. I felt comfortable already with him. We weren’t trying too hard to impress each other, we were just being natural, ourselves. And he liked me for who I was, he made me feel comfortable just being myself. We basically clicked.
It’s been a few weeks since we first met and it feels as if we’ve known each other for ages. It hasn’t been an effort in fact it’s been incredibly effortless. We’re just taken it a step at a time. And it isn’t a scary thing, I’ve found someone who I don’t have to second guess, someone who I feel entirely comfortable with. And someone I haven’t been afraid to be the real me with.
People have said, man that’s really lucky, but I don’t see it as luck. I see it as not being afraid to take opportunities as you get them. Knowing that you can’t be in control of everything and knowing that facing the unknown is not scary, that it’s okay to be yourself and you don’t have to change who you are to move forward in your life.
Hopefully, that’s something that I can continue to do and then I can really start believing that good things come about because you’re not afraid to go for them not because they’re not there.
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
I’m going to go right out and say it….for me 2013 sucked. Honestly, even when there have been bad points in other years, and there have been loads, I have never found a year that has been so darn hard to deal with.
But I SURVIVED!
Even though I am glad that this year is over, I know that, like all years, there has to be something that can be learnt out of it.
So before I write about my solutions for 2013 here are my constants, the things I learnt have always been there.
1) God.
This sort of goes without saying. God has always been there for me. Even in my darkest moments He’s always been there figuratively holding my hand. And without Him I could honestly say I wouldn’t be here writing this today. He has stood with me when I’ve been in my lowest place, when I’ve hated myself, everybody else, life in general, He was there telling me there was a way forward and that it wasn’t over. And no one else would have convinced me other than Him.
2)Family.
I have to be honest with my family I’ve sometimes put them through the wringer a bit. They’ve stressed, worried and sometimes even chucked me out the house( that’s another story) but despite all the rubbish stuff they’ve gone through with me, all the times I’ve shouted at them and wanted to even run away from it all, they have stood with me. They rescued me from my lowest point. They wrapped me in a love only a family can show. They took care of me when I didn’t care about myself. They hugged me. They cried with me. And they believed in me when all my belief had gone. No other people could have made me believe in myself again. Because they showed me that I could be loved and wanted I made it through this year.
So those are the two constants; God and Family. Without all that stuff I’ve written about I would have happily ended it all just to be free of all the crap that was in my head. It is hard to write about, and I know hard to read about. But all I can write is the truth and that was mine this year.
2014 is nearly here and it’s got me thinking what can I resolve about the things that have gone on in 2013.
1) My confidence in my self.
The beginning of this year the person I loved least in the world was myself. I was rubbish. The worst person in the world. No matter how irrational that sounds that was honestly what I believed. And yet my confidence has come back. Despite the mountain of crap I thought about myself I have slowly relearnt to appreciate who I am and how God has made me. That’s not to say my self confidence is back. I have my bad days. But I am ready to throw myself back out into the world and do what only I can do best….be myself.
I resolve this year to continue being myself and continue to rebuild my life again.
2) My belief in others.
I naturally love other people. I know it sounds sappy but I honestly see the best in others, no matter who they are and what they’ve done. But that belief in others had been stripped back until I couldn’t even trust those closest to me. It was incredibly lonely and even now I sometimes feel like it’s me against the world. The thing is though the biggest part of being myself is being people-centred; caring for others, wanting the best for others. I somehow need to continue finding and building that part of me that loves and trusts other people.
I resolve to find new ways to help others and in the process continue building my trust/belief in other people.
3) Belief in God
This should be at the top of my list but this is the one I know I will find the hardest to do and so I am leaving it as my last resolution for 2014. Even though I know God has stood with me this year my relationship with Him has taken a massive blow. I’m finding it hard to trust in His plan for my life. It seems to me as if it’s come to a standstill. I know it’s me that’s built this barrier against it. To protect myself from the dark thoughts that I had about the rest of the world and myself I found myself cutting myself off from everything and everyone. But God has been patiently waiting. There have been glimpses when I’ve finally found the courage to open up to Him whether it was when I was singing, praying or even writing this blog when I’ve found myself really meeting with Him again; understanding that I was going in the right direction. It has felt like I have been completely alone this year, trying to make sense of everything that was happening. But God has helped me to believe that it is part of His plan. I have a long way to go before I can begin to really open myself to Him.
I resolve to continue trusting God and frequently allowing Him back into my life.
It’s scary writing out these resolutions. It’s been hard facing the reality of what’s happened this year and sometimes I feel that if I really open myself up, I simply won’t be able to handle it. I know that I’ve reached a barrier, however, one that I’ve made myself. To continue to rebuild what has been broken down, in 2014 I need to gently but confidently begin to put these resolutions into practice. I know that I have the ability. God has placed that inside me, within who I am and with Him being in my life already.
I resolve that 2014 is going to be a much better year than 2013.
There will be setbacks and obstacles but I know that as long as I keep trusting in God and the people He has placed in my life. All these resolutions can begin to help stand on the foundation that God has already placed in my life and help me to begin to walk and trust in the plans He has for me.
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just like Moby Dick, but shorter and less whale-oriented.
Reading my way through Time Magazine's 100 Greatest Novels since 1923 (plus Ulysses)
