As I waltzed through a three and a half week period of feeling really great during my healing from depression process, I was so happy.  I was just so thankful to finally (I thought) be through with the pit of despair, any change was welcome and this was a truly wonderful change.

I had the energy to do projects I hadn’t had energy for.  I had the get up and go to clean the Florida room and sell and give away items nobody was using.  I did a lot.

And mentally, I enjoyed it.  Life was purposeful and I felt hopeful about various potential future plans.  I wasn’t overthinking the future either; it was just there and I thought about it occasionally and it seemed like a good thing.

It only occurred to me later that it’s possible that what I experienced for those three and a half weeks is what other people live all the time.

I don’t mean every person, all the time, because obviously some people have more issues than I do, some have fewer.   Some people’s lives are filled with material and spiritual difficulties so far beyond what I experience that clearly they aren’t living the dream.  Life is rarely that simple for anyone.

I just mean that feeling good, having lots of energy, having hope for the future might be other people’s normal.

My normal has usually been more subdued and less optimistic than that.  And I thought that was normal.  Maybe there’s a way to be in hopefulness and make it more of a stay than an occasional vacation.  It can’t be the goal of my life to get there, because I don’t have the power to guarantee that outcome.

But what that knowledge does is show me my variables: I regularly have to overcome them.  If I have to get myself to the front edge of motivation every day, that’s an obstacle.  If I have to sweep together enough energy for the to-do list every day, that’s an obstacle.  Those are real challenges.  This knowledge dispenses mercy, mercy on me and on every other person who doesn’t have a full load of energy, motivation and hope.

He came not for those who are well, but for those who know they are sick.  So if you need the physician–take heart.  He is for you.

Things we have to find a way to make peace with:

Aging.

Our responsibilities to love and care for our children and help them toward adulthood.

Loving our children as they are, not as we imaged they would be or think they should be.

Years ago, before I started through this middle phase of life I thought I knew all these things were important things to accept.  It’s not like I’d never heard about these things.

Now I’m not so sure.  As in I’m not sure I accepted them nor did I know how hard it is to accept things that I can clearly see are right and rational.  Knowing something is true does not cause my mortal mind to accept it and move forward.  I know that I believe it.  I know that it’s true that these realities will happen and unfold around and in me and that they are in fact destined to do so.

But I still don’t truly know how to accept these truths.

That aging will happen, is happening to me and those I love.

(Not easy, still think I’m immortal just like a 10 year old does.)

That I had/have a responsibility to love my children well and help them an appropriate amount as they grown up.

(Not easy, because how the heck do you figure out what is truly needed for each child person you live with and what you’d better not even try?)

That I also have a responsibility to fully accept my children as they are, not as my foolish self thinks they should be.

(And not like I don’t love them and like them as they are, but I wonder if I must not fully accept them as they are, since my brain brings up sentences I could say that start with phrases like, “If you would just try…..,” or “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if you….,” or “Here’s how you….,” when advice is unasked.  Thankfully at least part of the time I don’t say these sentences, and remind myself that the particular thing I’m getting stuck on isn’t truly important.)

The second and third things make a great paradox don’t they?  I hope you noticed I have to make peace with my responsibility for my kids and my not responsibility for my kids.  Where’s the easy 1, 2, 3 step plan for that, please?  Did I miss the instruction manual?

 

Appearances can be deceiving.  Trite but true.

Over the last hundred years or so, image has become more important, more forceful in our culture.   Recently, of course, one of the main avenues for that is social media.

I’m thinking about this because I just updated my profile photo on Facebook.  We went to a friend’s wedding Saturday night and it was a cocktail dress occasion.  So I looked pretty good.  I wanted a photo of that because I almost never dress up like that.  I don’t usually wear makeup either.  So of course not only the occasion but how good I looked had to be commemorated by taking pictures.  Then once I had the great shot of me I had to use it on Facebook.

Well, I didn’t have to, but if you were 52, and you had a photo like that, and at that distance the wrinkles around your mouth were not visible, I’d lay money you’d have used the photo yourself.

So here’s the thing.  You get these compliments, and it’s nice to know that you look good.  But what’s inside?

At the same time that I managed to look pretty darn good, I’m still rolling through anxiety and depression, as I have been for the past 10 months.  It’s much better, yes.  But it’s still here and I’m still struggling.  But you can’t see that in the photo.

So how many of the other people out there that I think look great, either on their social media accounts, or that I see in person, and sigh because I can never, ever be as “together” as they are, are also struggling, suffering or silent?  Of course I’m never silent, but we’re not talking about me now.  Those other people you see every day.  Odds are I bet, they are fighting something.

…those “together” people.