Day by Day

I’ve gotten to the point where I see the daily blogging that I used to do as a sign of weakness. It’s been seven years since I first started blogging. My world was so small and so dark that the only way I could come out and play with other people was if I offloaded much of what was cluttering up my mind onto the pages of my blog. When I prayed, it always seemed like my prayers were bouncing off an imaginary glass ceiling. Oh, God would answer a lot of my prayers, most of them actually… but he never seemed to answer the ones that really mattered most: please heal me of my mental illness, please give me victory over my sexual addiction, please heal all the rifts in my family…

The biggies went unanswered year after year after year and I drew more and more into myself. I had few people to talk to and all I did was keep journals. Lots and lots of journals. For a woman of many words who trained for public speaking in college, the silence was deafening. I needed an outlet for my words and interaction with other people and in 1994 God led me to Christianforums.com, a safe place where I could air all my laundry (no matter how clean or dirty) and I could just be me. That outlet helped me more than I can ever express in words that other people can understand. Personally, I think everybody with mental health issues should blog. Heck, I think everybody who read and write should blog. Ok. Maybe not. Nazis, child molesters, and people who talk during movies should not be allowed to blog. My point? Everybody has a story to tell and there are people who could benefit from hearing their stories.

God made me a Christian with a mental illness. That was my story to tell. I don’t actively struggle with it now (although the past few days have been really emotionally charged)… but when I did, I wrote about all of  it. And back in the early days of my blogging people responded to my blog because it was ministering to them in their struggle. One of my favorite verses in the bible, the reason I continue to blog, can be found in Revelation 11:12

They overcame him (Satan) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;
they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

My blog was my daily testimony of what Jesus was doing in my life to help me “walk out my salvation in fear and trembling.” Anonymous testimony was sure a whole heck of a lot easier than this cyber testimony. When did I begin to despise my own testimony? I’m not really sure… but when I look at people who have survived having an arm chewed off by a shark only to live and thrive for Jesus; or when I see somebody I know boldly overcoming obstacles while continuing to love and serve the Lord… I look at my puny little life and I get jealous. My struggles seem so petty, and yet, they are the struggle God has allowed into my life.

So much seems to be erupting on the landscape of my life since I started reading those counseling books and not in a good way. My issues are starting to flare up and I have no answers for what ails me. Last night I found myself crying over something I really shouldn’t be crying over until the tears washed away all the surface clutter and God showed me what was really on my heart. Writer that I am, when I feel something (anything really) I see it in my mind as a blog post. How can I express what is going on in a blog? I even start a post about it but  then decide that it is too revealing, so I don’t post it. Once you put the words out there, it’s really hard to take them back. I also don’t want to worry my friends who read my blog. I process my emotions by writing words. That doesn’t mean I’m in crisis or going to hurt myself. I’ve long since learned that when I am in crisis, blogging isn’t going to help me. For that I need to reach out of my bubble to real, live people. Actually, I need to reach out to God first and then blogging (if necessary) and other people when I’m able.

Some people need other people to help them process. They draw strength from them. They turn to people first. Me? People stress me out and drain me. I know that I need them, but I have no real clue how to interact with them and that in itself causes more stress, so I journal. I journal letters to Jesus in a hard cover journals and in a file on my desktop. I journal in the blog. I journal on that site for Christians who struggle with sexual addiction. I journal letters to people that I am never going to send because I cannot nerve myself up to actually talk to them.  I am amazed at the sheer amount of writing that I do and almost all of it centers on God and what he’s doing in my mental and physical health, my relationships with friends, colleagues, and family, and the church.

Sometimes I wish I wrote fiction instead of memoir material because everything in my life and that I write about seems so emotionally charged. When I blog I put my life on display for the judgment of other people. Fiction is not so personal. If I wrote fiction I wouldn’t feel like I always had to tie my blogs up with a nice little moral or warm fuzzy feeling. There isn’t a single fiction story cluttering up my mind. Damn. Today I’m not feeling particularly warm or fuzzy. I’m tired of the physical pain that I am in. I’m tired of being single. There are a lot of things that I’m tired of… and before some stranger who reads this accuses me of whining: YES. I know I’m whining. I could fake like I’m ok or I can be real.  The Apostle Paul did it and nobody accused him of whining:

⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. ⁸ We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; ⁹ persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. ¹⁰ We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. ¹¹ For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. ¹² So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.2 Corinthians 4:7-12

I’m opting for telling how I really feel right now… and I might even need to do this again later tonight because I’m tired of having all these feelings that I do not know how to handle. I’m also writing because I know God hears me and I know he cares.