We cross the state border, drive hours away, and are hit by beauty.
Golden yellows, deep reds, bright orange, pops of still fresh green. The hills rolled with color. It took my breathe away, filled my heart, and yet made me simultaneously sad. A sadness that rose from the lack of autumn scenery in our own area. A sadness of discontent, with the fall around my home that was brown and blah.
Why weren’t our trees dying as well as … continue reading
Maybe it’s because the trees went from green to brown to fallen.
Maybe it’s the imagining of them soon stark brown, see-through, bare.
Or maybe- likely- it’s that when they were flower-filled and magical we were locked in on lockdown.
Whatever it is, I know that winter is bearing its teeth at me when it’s not even yet here.
I struggle with depression regularly and added seasonal sadness on a good year. When life is right, February is still long, … continue reading
My five year old does the funniest thing sometimes- he covers his ears, and then yells whatever message it is he’s trying to get to someone else.
He’s so desperate to get the words across, so hilariously cracked-up in his goofiness, or so deeply angry, that he screams or hollors or shouts whatever it is to whoever it is that’s the target of his outcry. But his own noise is too much for him, so he covers his own ears.… continue reading
And just like that, winter clasped its ugly hand over my mouth and stifled the words that would be.
“It’s been a long time since you posted anything,” Facebook notification reminds me.
I know. I know it has, but there’s two types of too hard- too hard that I have to write and too hard to write. It’s been the latter.
And I question why? Would I feel less restless if I had a reason?
But I see the “smaller” … continue reading
Christmas is over. The New Year has come and begun. The holidays daze is done and I’m left in the wake looking ahead at winter.
The decorations are packed back up and put away- all that is except the stray ornament that managed to hide in the hours of clean up and is now hanging out solo waiting to be worth the walk into the basement.
I’m waiting. Waiting for a call, waiting for big news, waiting for a life-altering … continue reading
The trees were all turning brown.
All just giving up, browning, dying, without even the attempt at color.
Too parched, too worn out, too long of a blazing hot dry summer to give way to one last heaving breathe of beauty before the fall.
Instead just brown.
I guess this is how I often feel- dry, defeated, crispy. Too worn out, too long of a hard hot season to give any color.
We were driving one day and I saw … continue reading
I grabbed my gratitude journal, the one I had been neglecting for the last few days, stuck in a funk, and, almost immediately, I put it right back.
The journal inside of a devotional explaining the importance of giving regular thanks. But in this moment all I can think is, what should I be thankful for? Mass shootings? A friend’s dad being taken too soon? Honeymoons turned nightmares? I leave the journal on my nightstand. Make a different mental list.… continue reading
There’s a sign in ASL. It’s the same as the sign for “scar”. But it’s done across the forehead. It’s the sign for “trauma”.
Because isn’t that where trauma lands? The deepest wounds, harshest scars. Right across the mind.
When everything happened last year, there was a distinct point when I realized it, I knew it, it was done. And I told it to my husband: “My mind broke.”
“Your mind isn’t broken,” he was quick to sweetly reassure me, … continue reading
I had to go to the doctor last week.
It wasn’t for anything major, and for most people, that wouldn’t cause a wave, but for me it caused floods of PTSD symptoms. A panic attack at work, and hours of battling catastrophic thinking and hyperventilating, I clung to the only help I could.
Jesus.
Isn’t it Him, always only Him, the Rock that is higher than I, the hiding place I have?
A few days later, the doctor ordered blood … continue reading
I remember too clearly, last June, sitting in a John Hopkins Urology doctor’s room, a catheter strapped to my leg and fear strapped to my heart. The urologist came in, briefly glanced at the computer, and then asked me, how did this happen?
In that moment so many scenes spun through my mind. The waking up to a wet bed, the too slow recovery from emergency surgery, all the ER trips- 4 in 6 weeks. Scenes of blood all over … continue reading