He Heard My Call

"Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again." (Psalm 71:20-21 NIV)

 As soon as I finished writing my entry last night, I immediately sensed the lifting of a burden from within me. Pouring my heart out to God never returns void, and where darkness was ruling, He sent His love to penetrate through the many walls I have continued to build. I noticed myself singing as I drove in my car and it took me a while to realise that the pent up feeling of pain and frustration had been temporarily relieved. My God heard my call and He came to comfort me. I lapped up the love like a young child and realised the importance of my continuing to follow His plans for me. He really does care, He really does listen and He really can help. "Thank you Father, for finding me in my misery and shining your all consuming love into the darker recesses of my tormented mind."

Today I was back to feeling the same hopelessness and frustration as I usually feel in the morning. My mornings are always greeted by the promise of a new start, but then immediately quietened as my resistance to actually get out of my pit and engage in the real world is nothing short of a major battle. I will myself to move from the comfort of my covers, staring down at yet another list of 'ideal day' items I would like to accomplish over the next twelve or so hours. This sadly, does not work to motivate me. Instead, I close my eyes and pretend to vanish, disturbed sleep and crazy thoughts capture my every attempt to break free from the bed and it was 10:40am before I had finally bullied myself enough to get up and face the day. Since then, things haven’t actually been that bad. I got on with it and did thirty minutes exercise, tidied the house, hung out the washing, had a shower and shaved (an activity that rarely surfaces) and had a really intense meeting with my occupational therapist. Today I have worked meticulously through my list and as the time approaches 7pm, I feel I have achieved more today than I did in the whole of last week. Where no strength resided, the Lord has filled me back up.

I am by no means healed, my constant demands of perfection for every area of my life, my crippling paranoia about what people think of me and my inability to feel genuine positivity about seemingly any area of my life, are still with me today. But instead of drowning in those thoughts and realisations, I got up, dusted myself off and fought the enemy of procrastination and self sabotage to actually achieve some goals. I have also started reading Jill Austin's book 'Dancing With Destiny' which so far has been an inspirational insight into my relationship with the Lord and how I can pursue it further into the full realisation of my destined life in Christ. Whilst I may be feeling far from the Lord because of my depression/addiction/isolation, my spirit still refuses to be stopped. The spirit side of me knows that there is a life that I can be living where I don't feel trapped in a prison of my own making. Last night I believe my spirit was truly touched by God, because today I felt that small glimmer of hope for my future creep back in.

I have chosen to try and write on here more as I recognise that my mind is afflicted every minute of the day and without letting out some of the emotions, they stay within attacking all opportunities to grow and keeping me far from my ability to have a future. I want God to see that I am trying and that I am willing and wanting to follow Him home, no matter how hard that journey may be. With each corner there are new lessons to learn, more weapons to use and harder challenges to face, but the relief and love I felt last night as I cried to Him for help, reminded me that this is worth fighting my life for. I have chosen this path and the Devil, no matter how many times and ways he tries, will not succeed at taking my life. I am a child of God and I am loved more than I could ever imagine. Just because I don't always feel it, doesn’t mean it isn't so and that’s what He tells me all the time. It's just up to me, to make sure I continue to believe Him.

Love Always.x

Please Save Me Lord

 "Search for the Lord and for his strength; continually seek him." (1 Chronicles 16:11 NLT)

I am swimming around in the all too familiar sea of depression yet again. I feel like I have been swallowed up by the darkness within me and the fact that I am still breathing is either a miracle or a cruel trick. I do not want to participate in life today. I thought I started the week off relatively well; wrote on here, started Weight Watchers, attended my drug and alcohol counselling. But as the week has gone on, no matter how many spliffs I smoke, sedatives I take or sunshine I sit it, I can not rid myself of the feeling that I am drowning in a sea of bitter pain and overwhelming frustration. Added to this, I seem to feel ill all the time. I am tired, irritable, lacking hope and worst of all I feel I am moving away from the closeness of God. I feel like I do not deserve His love, His patience, His support, when I am still unsuccessfully trying to sedate myself from the world around me and haven't attended a prayer gathering/worship night in weeks. Slowly but surely, I can feel myself slipping back into the shell from whence I came and this time, I worry, I haven’t got the energy to crawl out again. Why, why why does my mind seem to hate me so much? I feel completely out of control, my emotions and feelings whirring around with no sense of any stability or optimism.

I am aware that many people who read this may assume that this life of mine is only made worse by the fact that I am still continuing to use cannabis as a form of coping. However, although I am wise enough to accept that there are side affects which can also cause depression, I am past the starting point when it comes to full blown hate for myself. The cannabis at the moment, is the only part of my day where I am able to feel a short sense of relief, a break from the continuous onslaught on terror of my mind. I am so lost at the moment, I cry out to the Lord pleading for answers, for help, for motivation to change what is making me miserable and to accept the things that I have no control over. I apologise every day for being a sinner, but this feels empty as I continue to then smoke/swear/spend and isolate myself from my spiritual family. I feel I am failing Him and this belief, rather than encourage me to go to more  prayer gatherings and to seek help from those in my spiritual family, is making me retreat more into the depths of my seemingly bleak existence. Happiness is an emotion that seems so short lived and superficial for me recently, that I wonder if I have exhausted the capacity to feel joy at all. I am in a hole yet again and can almost hear the Devils applause at yet another day he has won me back into his arms again, desperately seeking an outlet for my pain.

I am trying to assess where it has all gone so horribly wrong again. My medication has been increased so by rights, I should be as happy and manic as a child who's just scoffed an entire bag of Haribos and is let loose in a toy store. This sadly is not the case. My boyfriend has even been home as He has a couple of weeks off work, but rather than making me happy, this has unsettled me further. Having someone else around me all the time, in my close surroundings, in the comfort of my own little cave, I become a psychotic control freak, barking orders at him and refusing to be enthusiastic about his attempts at 'getting me out the house.' I am the evil girlfriend, who screams, cries and insults him. Subconsciously I seem to be working my hardest at pushing the only man who has ever had enough patience to stay, further and further away from me. Whilst he's here, I feel even more useless and out of control, as if my space is invaded and acutely aware that his/my assumed expectations of me, are far to high for me to ever possibly meet. These expectations merely being the willingness to engage in activities that don't sedate me, a smile rather than a frown as he wakes every morning and just someone who doesn’t fail so expertly at keeping the house tidy, maintaining an acceptable level of personal hygiene and beauty and generally my continuing to be the most fickle minded, useless creature he could have ever ended up with.

I am unsure of where to go from here. Tomorrow is a new day, a new week, another fresh opportunity to live a life consistent with my God destiny rather than fuelled by the enemies lies and attacks on my soul. Will I be strong enough to wake up and face it head on? Can I learn to lean on God more, to really let Him in, to really trust His voice and the words of hope He has spoken through others over my life? Can I learn to control my obsessive nature, my controlling spirit, my addictive pursuits and my continuous ever evolving methods of self sabotage? “God I really need you to help me. I pray Father, that you will guide me into the destiny you have created me for and that I have the insight to remain strong and true, no matter what the circumstances in my outside world and my afflicted mind. Teach me to recognise and follow your voice Lord, for I am struggling and I call to you for help. Please save me from myself. Thank you Lord. Amen.”

Love Always.x

Base Camp Believer

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:22-24 NIV)

Life for me is anything but predictable. The last few weeks have been a mix of highs, mid lows and extreme depression. My desire to change my life is sadly not matched by my ability to make it happen. Willpower is something I seem to have very little of and the reality of this situation has really hit home in the last few weeks. The annoying thing is, I want to get better. I want to live a beautiful life before God, loving my neighbours and also loving myself. I want to feel a sense of belonging, a purpose, a reason to live. I want to treat my body as a temple and nourish it with good food and regular exercise. I also want to learn how to use my over analytical brain and obsession with personal growth and understanding, to be used in a positive way, rather than as a cruel tool to taunt my lack of ability to fulfil any of the above desires. They also, sadly, do not stop there. Since my teens I have made a habit of daily compiling lists, some for immediate needs for that day such as cleansing my skin, hoovering, appointments etc., to the more elaborate and some what larger, life wants/desires list. I still do them to this day and sadly a lot of the 'life' things I want to achieve are as basic as eat healthy, exercise, stop self abuse, but yet I find myself unable to do them. The last two weeks all of my hopes and my fears of failing at this life have come to disturb me and several of my days have been spent camping out under the duvet for fear of facing another non productive day.

I am lost again and this is no uncommon ground for me. In fact, the land of the lost seems to be where I have spent much of my life, but this times its suffocating me. I don't want to be lost anymore, God found me down here ruining my life and He saved me, but there’s only so much He can do if I am unwilling to offer myself fully to Him. The problem I have you see, is that I find real, actual life too difficult to embrace. So in the past I have created characters to allow myself to fit in to what I believed school/work/society needed me to be and whoever the real me was, was slowly but surely pushed into the darker recesses of my mind. I spend most of my life living in my head, not experiencing the reality, as if this sobriety to life would actually damage me more than I already feel I am. When not writing lists or reading books aloud, I am faced with the option to deal with life head on, to get out there and achieve something, to come closer to God, to improve my health, to live fully. But this terrifies me. Instead I reach for the nearest form of sedation, be it alcohol, prescribed sedatives, drugs and marathon TV watching. All activities that allow me to step outside of the world I am in and somehow not feel the full impact of what is going on in and around me. This is life as I know it and it has to stop.

Since the major melt down last year, I have found faith in God and I also have been given a lot of help and support from my mental health team. Not only do I have the most high Father, but I also have psychiatrists, councillors, occupational therapists, psychiatric nurses and attend self help groups to deal with my anxiety and depression. No one can say I am not getting enough support. I am forever talking about my feelings, coming to terms with my habits, my ways of thinking and my self sabotaging behaviours. This is no easy journey let me tell you. The more I uncover, the harder the climb to happiness and peace seems, so I run back to the safety of a sedated life and try to forget about the mountain that looms ever closer before me. I am still at base camp and I recognise in myself the desperation to cut off the chains that are keeping me here. I can assure you, this is not through lack of trying. I am always optimistic about the start of a journey, but after the first step has been taken, I retreat back into my shell, unfamiliar with the prospect of actually freeing myself from the life that keeps me back from really living. Its not only exhausting, but the more I fail at achieving the freedom I want, the more I can remind myself of how useless I really am. Its being trapped in a web of my own making and this you may think, would mean that I know the key to get out of here, but I don't. If I did, I sure as hell would have been using it.

I am ready for my life to begin. I want to really live, really experience life, not feel the need to escape and sedate at the mere sniff of reality. I need to break out of the smoking weed cycle I have somehow fell back into, a cushion for life that hangs over my every evening, sapping me of both motivation and hope. I need to challenge the belief that I am nothing and never will be and turn my focus back to God, who has shown me a new way of life that can be mine. The ups and downs as they have been recorded along this journey seem cruel and unfair at times, but they are me, they are my life. I almost wanted to stop writing on here for fear that whoever reads it may believe I am merely rewriting the same story over and over again, but I want to be honest and show that although I may not be there yet, I am at least learning along the way. That’s the beautiful thing about all this. Even though I seem stuck in a year long rut of depression and self sabotage, I am growing. Not albeit at the pace I would like, but there is growth none the less. I am not the same girl who started writing on here and the recognition of that fact is what will keep me getting up in the morning and trying with all my might to face another day. I am desperately seeking freedom, willpower and above all; faith. Not just faith in God, which is growing by the day, but faith in me, in who I am, in what I can do and be. Without faith, we are merely spectators in this vacuum of time, watching as life passes us by, unable to feel any real emotions except the ones created by your minds view on who you are. I may not be there yet, I may still be down here at base camp, but I am not giving up. I am putting a smile on my face and offering myself again as a living sacrifice to the Lord and someday soon, I know He'll help me get the courage I need to face my future and live it. Really live it.

Love Always.x