Category: Lifelines Page 1 of 2

Through darkness to sunlight

On 05/05/2023

I’ve known Holly for…well, since I’m only 28, let’s say three years. We met at one of our first jobs out of college and only worked together for a year before she moved on. Thankfully, we have stayed friends for 25…I mean, three years.

Holly is the friend who offered help and to whom I rather vehemently replied I was tired of asking for help before my recent surgery…the friend who then graciously accepted my pathetic request to drive me home from surgery…and to a doctor appointment a few days later. Whose husband spent his lunch hour shoveling my driveway a few weeks after that. Oy vey.

Thankfully, she’s used to my melodrama and has even seen me at my worst, very literally.

“I think I’m depressed.”

I said that to my therapist (not to Holly), who simply said, “Yes, you are.”

“Do I need medication?”

“I can’t prescribe medication,” replied my therapist. “You’ll have to talk to your doctor about that. But do you think you need it?”

I was sleeping 10-12 hours at night. On the weekends, I was also napping for another 2 hours – neither was my normal. On weekdays, I couldn’t nap because of work. Instead, I cried the whole drive to work…and sometimes at my desk when my coworkers were elsewhere.

None of which I was really aware of until someone said to me, “I’m worried about you. I think you’re depressed.”

So yeah, kinda seemed like I needed medication.

“I think you have situational depression. Once the situation resolves, I think the depression will too,” explained my therapist.

I hadn’t realized I had fallen into a 6-foot-deep pit of depression until someone pointed it out. I knew I was sad but I was in the middle of a really sad situation.

Once I looked around and only saw darkness, I then looked up and saw sunlight and blue sky…and worked really hard to resolve the situation, to get out of the pit. Therapy, almost weekly. For a good 18 months at least. Attending Al Anon. Talking with my pastors. Learning to talk to God.

And sharing with Holly.

Who not only didn’t judge but said, “I have another friend going through the same thing. I need to connect you two.”

Ok, I’ll own how long I’ve known her, because 25 years is an amazing run for a friendship.

And it was part of how I went through the darkness of depression and walked back into sunlight. How I was able to come back to life on the other side.

So if you think you’re depressed – you see darkness but no sunlight – choose someone today and reach out: a family member, friend, coworker, neighbor, your or your child’s teacher, or pastor or priest.

Find a therapist or a treatment facility at Psychology Today’s website.

See your primary care provider or go to a hospital.

Contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness. The NAMI Helpline is available M-F 10 am – 10 pm, ET. Connect by phone 800-950-6264 or text “Helpline” to 62640. Click HERE to chat or HERE for a support group.

IN A CRISIS, CALL OR TEXT 988 OR CLICK HERE TO CHAT

Depression wins when we aren’t even aware of being in a 6-foot-deep hole. It wins when we hunker down in the hole, too ashamed to let others see where we are. It wins when we believe the lie that we are alone.

You. Aren’t. Alone.

“Girls Night Out. Tennis. ANDRE AGASSI! Ahhhh…”
Facebook post, October 1, 2011

Through

By Carrie

On 05/01/2023

In Lifelines

“The only way out is through.” That’s what my new temporary tattoo says…because it’s hard to read on my atrophied, saggy-skinned forearm. Ten plus weeks post-shoulder surgery and I’m 2-4 weeks slower in recovery than most people. I’m frustrated, angry, and ready to give up on PT – except then I’ll NEVER recover.

So I stocked up on these tatts because someday I WILL be through. Through the pain. Through PT. Through recovery.

May is Mental Health Awareness month. I decided to share a little of how I’ve gotten through situational depression, anxiety, and PTSD in my posts this month.

Today I’m simply reminding myself the only way out is THROUGH.

In the interest of not overwhelming you with emails this month, I will only post to Instagram. You can see these extra posts on ComeSoAlive.com or on Instagram – you don’t need an Instagram account to view it in either place.

Feeling winter

By Carrie

On 04/14/2023

In His Vast Strength (stroke), Lifelines

“…there is something sacred in the fall of snow… Blessings from the heavens, they sustain life. And if sometimes they create difficulties for humans, that’s not the fault of nature. The fault is in the nature of man. Humans…are far too focused on doing and not enough on being.”
William Kent Krueger, Fox Creek

I realize that the calendar says spring and most of the country is seeing spring but, until two days ago, I was still seeing winter. Big snow piles everywhere after a very long, very snowy winter.

To be honest, I’m still feeling a little winter too.

While Minnesota’s ridiculously long season of snow started with a bang (well, a blizzard) in December, my winter actually blew in the previous March. It began the morning I walked into my husband’s ICU room and learned he’d suffered a severe stroke after open-heart surgery.

Months later, on a glorious summer day, I ran into friends…and found myself barely able to tolerate talking with them. Anger at our situation overwhelmed me, frustration at them discussing things that seemed so unimportant in comparison. That was the day I realized I needed to pull away from others for a while.

My sister-in-law warned me not to isolate. But I had to isolate. I certainly was in no condition to be a good friend to someone else, and I had no energy at the end of the day to share what I lived through that day.

So, by time covid hit our house in November, I was used to isolating. It felt comfortable. And by the time I emerged from covid in December, true winter had fully covered our house.

Recently, as the calendar began to close in on spring, I found I needed just a little more time to feel winter. Just a little more focusing on “being.”

Even though

By Carrie

On 03/31/2023

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), His Vast Strength (stroke), Lifelines

Wish you could see
Wish you could know
Can you hear My voice
Through the winter cold?
Matt Hammitt, “Even Though”

Almost ten Decembers ago, through the winter cold, I heard a verse I’d never heard before from a book in the Bible I don’t think I’d ever heard of either. Our pastor asked our family to read this verse and light the candle on the Advent wreath at the start of the service one week. My husband read Habakkuk 3:17-19:

¹⁷Though the fig tree does not bud
    and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails
    and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen
    and no cattle in the stalls,
¹⁸yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

¹⁹The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
he enables me to tread on the heights.

The service was about six weeks after Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis, six weeks of walking in a fog from the diagnosis itself as well as lack of sleep from listening for nighttime seizures. (And it just dawned on me that the pastor maybe chose us to read this verse because of our new reality…I’m a little slow sometimes…)

Regardless of the intention behind it, I heard this verse and it grabbed me:

“yet I will rejoice in the Lord…”

A Superior rest

By Carrie

On 03/17/2023

In Lifelines

We had an amazing, restful vacation last week for the first time in four years. Four years where we’ve amassed two open-heart surgeries, a job loss, a stroke, shoulder surgery…oh yes, and a pandemic. We needed to rest.

Interestingly, I didn’t sleep well on vacation (shoulder pain post-op still and pain medication-induced vertigo waking me up).

But I actually felt rested.

That’s because sleep and rest are not the same thing. Sleep meets a physical need, a life or death requirement of the brain and body. You can’t live without sleep. I would have liked more sleep but I’ll live.

Rest, on the other hand, refreshes our souls, something deep inside yet not physically inside. You can be alive without rest but you’ll be dead to really living. To seeing and receiving soul-restoring peace.

Rest is being awake at 6 a.m. (not my normal), seeing a clear sky, and deciding to go take sunrise photos. In 23-degree F temperatures. (Really not my normal!)

Laughter

By Carrie

On 02/24/2023

In Lifelines

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
she can laugh at the days to come.
Proverbs 31:25

I had shoulder surgery last Thursday. On Friday, I sat down at my computer to write a blog post, thinking, “Wow, maybe I can write a post today!”

It didn’t go so well…

So, after deleting the incoherent words from last week, I thought I’d try again today.

I started the day of surgery by having my husband write a note on my right shoulder, the non-surgery arm. Because, one, you can never be too careful. And, two, it was going to be an unpleasant day – why not laugh a little.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Sing

By Carrie

On 12/10/2021

In Lifelines

What are you waiting for? I’m not saying that in a “get up and do something” way, but truly am wondering, is there something for which you are waiting? A diagnosis or treatment, a job, a renewed relationship?

I’m waiting, for several things actually.

I recently noticed daily Instagram posts from someone I don’t follow, but I liked them. It turns out they are quotes from this man’s podcast called The Place We Find Ourselves. There are 100 episodes in the series, and it struck me that in 100 days this season in which I find myself may be over, this waiting. Life will look different – or at least we’ll have a better idea of how it’s going to look.

I felt God telling me to create a music playlist called 100 Days and then wait for Him to tell me what songs to add to it each day. After seven days, I have 16 songs on it, many of which I had never even heard of a week ago. One of them was actually sent to me by the singer after I commented on Instagram that I liked a quote of his because it was exactly what God was asking me to do:

“When you haven’t a song left to sing, sing still.” ~The War Within

He said that became the basis for one of their new songs and sent me the link to How You Love Me.

Even if I haven’t a song left to sing
I’ll sing still
How You love me
Even if I lose every earthly thing
I’ll know still
That You’ve got me

I found that quote the day I started the 100 Days playlist.

Sing still.

Sing in the next 100 days of waiting and anxiety. In the unknown.

I’ve created this playlist on Spotify and YouTube and I hope you’ll sing along with me in your waiting too.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Gratitude…when you aren’t feeling it

By Carrie

On 11/05/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), Gratitude, Lifelines, Light and Dark, Pay Attention

Cody had a seizure Sunday night. His seizure-free period went from 51 weeks between seizures down to 10 weeks.

I’m not doing well this week.

I have so many things I want to write but what I finally decided on (what God recommended when I finally checked in with Him, maybe?) was a Lifeline post on gratitude. Because I’m not feeling very grateful right now.

Or maybe more accurately, I note little things here and there but I’m not really fully paying attention to them. And He wants me to pay attention to them instead of only paying attention to the sadness, frustration, and even guilt I’m focusing on instead.

Sadness and frustration about a chronic illness in your kiddo you can probably understand. The guilt is because my son is only having one seizure every 10 weeks. I know parents whose kids have that many by lunch. Every day. So, I feel guilty for feeling sad about something that in relation to others with epilepsy doesn’t seem that significant. Which of course I know my child having any seizures is significant but….and around and around I go.

So “gratitude” came to mind yesterday. Really focus on it. Watch for it, even search for things for which to be grateful. Not to pretend the bad doesn’t exist but to lift my gaze to the light shining all around me even in the dark.

Things like…

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Creativity

By Carrie

On 10/08/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), Lifelines

Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Mary Oliver, “Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”

Want to know the secret to how I write blog posts? I listen. I listen to the messages that I receive in sermons, Bible studies, poetry, even social media. And when I get the same message multiple times in a week, I pay attention – and then I write.

Pretty uncreative, huh?

I never really considered myself creative, certainly not creative enough to develop a website, write blog posts, and design social media posts! And yet, that’s what I’ve been doing for almost a year.

And I actually really love it.

I originally wasn’t going to set up an Instagram account for Come So Alive. But as I developed the website, I had something in mind I wanted to include yet could not figure out how to make it work. Then I saw the Instagram icon that could automatically feed to the website and I realized that was exactly what I needed.

Because it turns out, I was creating Instagram posts in 2014 before I even had a personal account.

After Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis that fall, I found myself sitting in front of the computer adding Bible verses and song lyrics to pictures I had taken, many from a trip to Cape Cod in 2006. It was my lifeline in the storm, a little insert of color into a really dark autumn.

Then last fall once I started planning what I wanted to include in Come So Alive’s resources, I immediately thought of these pictures and wanted to share them in case someone else needed to see some color, read words of hope.

I have a whole folder on my computer of pictures I did this with, partly needing something to cling to but more so doing it without really knowing why I was doing it, just feeling a compulsion to create in my grief.

LIFELINE FRIDAY – Honesty

By Carrie

On 08/27/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), Lifelines

A friend invited me to a daytime luncheon in a few weeks. It’s a weekday when Cody will be in school so I could actually attend it…but Cody will actually be in school for the first time in 18 months, and I just want to rest in my quiet house by myself.

I asked God if I should attend even though my initial response was “No.” The luncheon speaker was part of a recent collaboration called FAITHFUL of about 20 different Christian authors and singers writing songs and a book about various women in the Bible. I’m sure it would good; I liked the project and would love to attend with my friend. But 18 months of covid and Cody being home… So, I asked God if I should attend this event. And “Hannah” came to mind. Which makes sense because that’s the woman this singer/author wrote about and about whom she’ll be speaking.

The Hannah who said this:

“I am a woman with a broken heart . . . I’ve been pouring out my heart before the Lord.”
1 Samuel 1:15

And I laid on my bed and cried. Because that’s how I feel. Because I just used that verse recently on Come So Alive’s Instagram page so it was still fresh in my memory.