When I got to my therapist Karen I told her I was doing really well.\u00a0 I told her about looking at my life as though God had designed it.\u00a0 She said this time of feeling good was different, felt different to her.\u00a0 She said I wasn\u2019t immediately wanting to rush out and do things.\u00a0 In the past I would do that and then exhaust myself.\u00a0 She heard me being patient instead of pushy, willing to wait for the right moment, the right task, the right dog.\u00a0 I had been wondering about the painful times.\u00a0 While talking to Karen I remembered the truth that without PTSD and depression, I might have gone on the standard career track, become a science teacher someplace, and then sometime in my fifties felt dissatisfied and wondered what I should be doing instead.\u00a0 I\u2019ve learned a lot about compassion from being depressed, and it\u2019s forced me to see that taking care of myself is primary.<\/p>\n
Later I realized that, unlike other times when I have \u201cfinally got somewhere,\u201d this time I\u2019ve seen that I\u2019ve been in God\u2019s hands all along.\u00a0 That Spirit has been guiding my life from the beginning.\u00a0 This reminds me of another meaning of \u201cepiphany\u201d \u2014 it\u2019s when something that has been there all along suddenly becomes visible.\u00a0 Instead of rushing out to make things happen, I\u2019m willing to wait until the \u201cnext thing\u201d comes along.\u00a0 Gosh what a relief!\u00a0 I don\u2019t have to \u201cfigure out\u201d what my vocation is, all I have to do is look at my life.\u00a0 I\u2019ve handed my life over to God many times, and asked to be given a sign, and was disappointed when nothing happened.\u00a0 I was even disappointed when God said \u201cYou\u2019re doing fine,\u201d I wanted to be given a task, something big that would be visible in the world\u2026\u00a0 Well, you silly person, isn\u2019t Neskaya big enough for you?<\/p>\n
I also see that depression forced me to find the things that really fed my soul, fed my heart.\u00a0 When you\u2019re depressed, the brain chemistry makes it so that you are unable to enjoy things.\u00a0 If you can\u2019t enjoy things, what is still worth doing?\u00a0 For me, that was dancing ancient dances in a circle of people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I got to my therapist Karen I told her I was doing really well.\u00a0 I told her about looking at my life as though God had designed it.\u00a0 She said this time of feeling good was different, felt different … Continue reading