COME SO ALIVE

Finding breath and beauty amidst the storm

Category: Light and Dark

Reaching out

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On 03/01/2024

In Light and Dark

“Hello darkness, my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again…”

Is the melody to that song stuck in your head now? If you read my posts, you are probably old enough to know those are the first lines of “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel.

We’ve had some darkness descend recently and I’ve needed a break from reality. Thankfully, I signed up for a $.99/mo. Hulu special this year and discovered the show “Only Murders in the Building.” (We’re behind the times, what can I say?)

In one episode I watched this week, Manhattan loses power and the characters find themselves in the dark. At one point, two characters start singing “The Sound of Silence” with the windows open. Other residents of the apartment complex hear them and soon everyone in the building is singing, “Hello darkness, my old friend” together – even if they are physically alone.

Not surprisingly, this song has been stuck in my head for several days now. Partly because of the song, but partly because of the imagery. Hello, darkness…again.

I texted a friend an update earlier this week and she wanted to know if I needed a coffee date. She offered Friday morning. And if that didn’t work, she offered Saturday afternoon. And if that didn’t work, she’d get her work schedule for next week soon and we could plan something next week. She wasn’t taking “no” for an answer.

I accepted Friday morning – and then spent the next several days talking myself out of getting together. I didn’t have the energy. I’d be bad company. Maybe even I just wanted to pout in the dark, alone. I really should just cancel, I thought.

“Silence like a cancer grows”

Those words are also from “The Sound of Silence.” And while I didn’t have them playing in my head this week, a similar thought kept floating around as I contemplated canceling.

Ultimately, I did decide to take the hand reaching out to me this morning. I showed up for the coffee date and shared. Because I might be in the dark, but I don’t have to sit there alone.

“Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you”

Through darkness to sunlight

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On 05/05/2023

In Lifelines, Light and Dark

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

When the waiting ends, part 2

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On 06/24/2022

In His Vast Strength (stroke), Light and Dark

I saw a picture this spring that a pastor took in the silence of his church before the Easter service started, of spring flowers and stained-glass windows glowing in the sunrise. What I noticed most in that picture though was a space between – the dark, emptiness of the sanctuary between the flower and the window. A space of waiting, of peace and calm. A space to just sit and be.

Photo credit: Edward Goode, imagoscriptura.com

I guess that is what spoke to me because that’s where I have frequently found myself in the last several months. In the in-between space. In limbo. Not here or there. Not at the beauty of the flower or at the light breaking in at the window. But in that dark pew, just waiting.

To use a highfalutin term, I’ve found myself in a liminal space. Not in one space or another but between spaces. In waiting spaces. After Chuck’s stroke, I could see his ICU room window from our hotel and the other way around. But it took me ten minutes of walking to get from one to the other.

Walking, usually alone. In hallways. On elevators. In more hallways. I wasn’t in real spaces. Not where people live, where life happens. Not where I wanted to be. I wasn’t in the hospital room with Chuck nor in the hotel room with Cody. I was in no man’s land.

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Punching a hole in the darkness

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On 01/28/2022

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), Light and Dark

Live where you are planted.

That was my takeaway from a Bible study called Stepping Up that I started almost 12 years ago.  It actually took me almost four years just to finish the study!  When I first started it, Cody was a few weeks old and I didn’t get very far – shocking, I know.  But one of the things I underlined was “The psalmist meant that he was a long way from home and from where he wished to be – that he felt like an alien.  Can you relate?”

YES!  I could relate.  We lived among mostly families with much older children than Cody and didn’t have any close friends in our own town.  Within two years, we decided to move to my hometown to at least be near family…a decision we tried to make a reality for another two years until we finally accepted it just wasn’t going to happen.

I started the Bible study again, randomly it seemed, and wrote words of the same theme:

“I am living in the wrong place.”

Yet within a few months, I wrote,

“I am where God wants me.  He wants to prosper me here.  My part is to live and serve where He has put me.”

Fast forward almost eight years and “Live where you are planted” has regularly popped into my head, not as a reminder of what to do but as I’ve seen the outcome of choosing to live that way.

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

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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…

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In the morning

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On 10/15/2021

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

I am weary with the pain of Jacob’s wrestling
In the darkness with the fear, in the darkness with the fear
But he met the morning wounded with a blessing
So in the night, my hope lives on

Andrew Peterson, “In The Night“

“It’s so dark out! 😩”

I woke up two days ago and texted that to a friend at 7:13 a.m. And yes, I used that actual emoji.

October. Beautiful leaves. Bright orange pumpkins. Shorter, darker days.

And on that particular morning, it was not only predawn dark but pre-all-day-rain cloudy. Thus, very dark.

“Colors 10 minutes ago,” my friend responded 10 minutes later along with this picture.

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May His face shine on you

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On 04/06/2021

In Light and Dark

Easter Sunday. Resurrection. Walking out of the tomb of sin and death and looking forward into new life. That’s what we just celebrated, right? But a notice about one of my posts from a year ago popped up on Facebook yesterday, and, after reading it, I thought we also need to look back and celebrate what we have survived. Not celebrate in a party and streamers sort of way, but at least mark it somehow, like a funeral celebrates a life.

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When the stars shine brightly

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On 01/12/2021

In Beauty in the Storm (epilepsy), Light and Dark

I learned that I stress shop.  I learned the hard way by stress shopping and then realizing what I did.  Cody went ten months from a febrile seizure and a middle of the night ER visit until his second seizure.  Then he went four months from the second seizure to a third one and an epilepsy diagnosis.  At that point, we decided not to start daily medication for seizures that occurred only a few times a year.

Ten days later Cody had another seizure.  And my brain was in a fog all day as if the electrical storm had been in my head too.  I sat in my bathrobe and listened to the same song – all morning.  I replayed and replayed and replayed it.  When my brain wouldn’t work and I couldn’t do anything else, I tried to praise.  I thought, “I can sing.”  Loudly.  Off key.  Crying.

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When I made thick darkness its blanket

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On 12/22/2020

In Light and Dark

Morning breaks after the longest night of the year, which seems a fitting time to write about darkness.  As we have descended into the darkest month of the year, we have had to face a long winter isolated from others, mourn the way it should be right now, and envision a new Christmas season. 

A Christmas that looks nothing like how we anticipated it would.

Where schools and businesses are shut down.  Jobs are lost.

We are scared and frustrated.  Mourning separation from loved ones.  Mourning loss of loved ones.

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