Whew! It’s been a while, sorry,

Oh well, I need to take it easy for a while anyway while my body heals.

Big news, I finally ended my therapy last week. I started it…what, 7 months ago now? I agreed to myself that I’d go for 6 months, and then see where I was.

It’s not that I think I’m done, in fact, I’ve uncovered way deeper issues and trauma than I thought possible, but my therapist and I weren’t on the same page. We just don’t see healing the same way, and it seemed it was no longer helping, so I will be looking into other forms of help.

For the time being, I’m trying to grasp the fact that I actually was okay with stopping and that I am not crazy for doing it, and trusting myself to make that decision.

Not that I make bad decisions, I just always think I will when it come to taking care of myself.

These past two weeks have been interesting for me.

Do you know why people don’t get healed? There’s a myriad of reasons, I know, but the most common has to be they just don’t believe they will be.

I have had trouble believing in it.

It’s true that healing is step by step for some people, my chiropracter and I discussed it. We both know of people who get healed instantly, mind, body, and soul…but so many who have to walk it out.

I have a friend who did get healed of depression and suicidal thoughts, but had to walk it out.

And I’ve had to walk it out. Literally.

It’s funny how my feet have literally been crooked, and I’ve been unable to walk in straight paths, like the Bible says to do. I have to practice walking a new way now.

My chiropractor also asked me if I visualized walking freely, and being able to just move and not be hindered by this, and come to think of it, my therapist asked me also what I wanted to be like at the end of therapy. I’m not where I wanted to be. But I wasn’t planning to switch therapists, it just worked out that way.

I had a hard time answering both questions. I’ve never walked straight or not had a crooked back, so I can’t imagine moving that way, and a lot of the discomfort of this process is that I move in the same ways, after each adjustment, I move a little differently, but I try to move the old ways and it hurts or nauseates me to do so. (You may know how nauseating cramped muscles in your back and stomach are).

If I manage to stay straight, the strain of it can also be painful, as I’m not used to it.

There are times this journey feels like hell, I won’t lie.

Still… one day, I have to believe it will be worth it.

God is my life coach. He’s never promised this will go away instantly, or that it will be easy… but that it will be done, eventually, and I’ll be okay.

There are days I get afraid that it will never end, and I wonder if I can make it… but I am doing better with that.

Here’s what I think though, no matter what you’re going through, you have to be able to picture the end. To see light at the end of the tunnel.

I think people succumb to mental illness because they cease to be able to think of a life without it. Mental illness is a whirlpool of your focus, it just swirls around and around on it, you’re obsessed.

I’ve had reason enough to be lost in that, with physical symptoms constantly. and emotional ones.

But somehow, I feel I am finally a little able to embrace the symptoms because they are a sign something is changing, something is getting better. They suck, but you can endure something if you think it’s for a reason.

I feel less trapped in my home now. Somehow, my attention has been shifted more onto “I must recover” and less to “I’m trapped.” I can no longer afford to be trapped.

What if the door to the cages we’re in as Christians, really is unlocked already? Jesus said He is the Door.

What if all the difficulty getting out of the cage is because we’ve spent so many years walking around the inside of it, measuring our whole world by what we can see through the bars, and we can’t even imagine an entire world out there beyond it.

Can I imagine a life without systemic depression and crooked feet? Only vaguely, like a dream that’s not very clear.

I have realized slowly how low my expectations for myself are, and how they have been for a long time, yet I’ve always dreamed of more. Haven’t we all?

I know, we just had an Election–are still having it–, those of us in America are on pins and needles. Whoever wins, half of us will feel like hope has gone out the window.

But somehow, life will go on either way, and it may not ruin ours as much as we think it will if it doesn’t go our way.

I don’t feel that wokred up right now, because I’ve realized I can’t conrol what happens. I’m one vote of millions, and evil people may tamper, and try to interfere, or maybe my country will just vote stupidly… People will vote for Biden just because he’s not Trump, and for Trump because he’s not Biden, and we all know that’s why, and we all know we can’t do anything about it.

So, why do we get so angry?

We feel out of control, we can’t control politics (not single handedly) and we can’t control COVID, and we can’t control the weather… so we’re so angry, angry at our neighbors who vote different, live different, and see things differently.

While I most certainly will never say anyone who is innocent who votes in Abortion and other atrocities, neither can I blame one single person for it all. I am leery of anyone who tries to do that.

Just as blaming one person or thing for my own problems turns out to be like quicksand. It’s just a trap.

If I had to pick one way I’ve matured this year, it’s that I think I blame people less than I used to. i’m tired of doing it. And when I don’t need to control things, I don’t need to blame someone when I lose control.

Of course I picked a job that also puts so much out of my control. This last one went smoothly, but their regualr caregiver returned early, nothing they could do, nothing I could do, it just happened. I have no control.

Either I am trying to frustrate myself, or God has led me to paths that teach me to depend on Him, not my own merit. I could be perfect, and it wouldn’t matter in this case, but that’s just it, I’ve always felt I had to be perfect and I always had a man putting that standard on me in my life, several men over the years. Women too.

It’s trail by fire to pursue things I can’t control, and some people have told me frankly it doesn’t make sense to them, but what can I say? This is what I’m good at. What I like doing. Even if I can’t depend on the results.

But maybe it will work out. Maybe I’m right to do what I do. How can I know? I feel there won’t be an end to the searching, but there has to be, right?

I was reading something earlier today, a Light Novel by the author of Naruto (yes, I hate that show, but the LN was actually better, maybe his style is more suited to novels or it could be someone else actually wrote the story) and his character said something interesting that I don’t quite agree with, but I think there’s some truth to it. That being an adult is giving up one thing, and finding another.

Essentially that we give up on our childhood dreams, we lose them, and then we find what we want as adults, eventually.

I don’t think that’s true for everyone. Even the author admits there are exceptions.

And I think that we have a purpose.

But I can agree that finding our Purpose means leeting go of our plans for ourselves to try to make it happen.

I tried to get into a teaching position for a long time when I was younger, and it just wasn’t happening, finally I gave up. Not too long later, I was asked to be a Sunday School teacher at my new church.

It doesn’t work that way everything, sometimes you do need to pursue things, some people are given the gift of being able to do that, but for me, most often, the best things in my life are ones that came to me when I wasn’t expecting it.

Christine Caine has a sermon analogy based on the story of Elisha, when Elijah calls him, and he has to drop everything he’s doing, kiss some things goodbye, and go on his way.

God often does not give us a lot of time to prepare.

And hey, you know hwy? Because we come u with really dumb stuff when we prepare. You’ve probalby had the expericen where something seemed like a good idea till you said it or did it, and then it was horriblly embarrassing or hurtful.

That’s happened to me, or things never play out the way I imagine they will because I have no way to know what will happen.

Like Shikamaru, I once envisionaed a life whereI could do hat I wanted. And like him, it’s not shaped up the wa I thought.

Unlike him, I wouldn’t say I’ve been forced into a career and calling I didn’t want, and don’t feel suits me. I feel I am still transitioning into adulthood and I feel no burden to give up on my dreams and just try to make the world better for my kids. I don’t see anywhere in the bible where it says at a certain age we should just stop living our own lives.

I’ve had people literally 4 years older than me talk to people who are 4 years younger than me, and say they already feel they are preparing for the next generation.

Me? No way. I mean, sure I’ll help, but I’m not done living yet. Catch up to me, kids.

My path of healing has tied into this in a big way, I’ve wuestioned everything about my life this year, I thik I’m not the only one. But I questioned less because of the lockdown than because of personal stuff.

You see, I’ve een fighting a battle with the demons that want to steal my whole life, and I’m walking away form it, however slowly, with the realizaton how rare I am.

It’s not rare to have these probleme,s but it’s are to walk out of them and be thinking “My life is not going to be stolen like this.”

The people who do come to that epiphany still have hard work ahead, but they have hope, and millions of people every year are not living with that hope.

I know that people my age and older feel they are the Walking Dead, it’s all over their fiction works and internet presence. People who are barely making it through life. Losers. People who live from anime episode to episode.

And I’ve been there, there are days I still camp out there.

I don’t claim to have it figured out yet.

But what I can offer someone like that is vision.

AS MLK jr said “I have a Dream.:

I am not just dreaming of my circumstances to change, but that how I feel and think of them will change.

Two days ago, I went for a walk around my street, I’ve had anxiety about doing that since I moved here, my dad didn’t help, worried about being harassed (And I live in a very safe neighborhood), but I walked around and I didn’t feel nervous. I didn’t jump every time I heard a car or saw someone outside. And I thought, with all the stuff I’ve been going through, I just don’t care as much anymore about petty fears.

I’ve also stopped caring as much if people are watching, I dance at church when everyone can see me now, who cares?

You see, I’ve lost enough because of what I couldn’t control, why give up anymore.

Maybe the depression has made me care less about some things, I dress up less often and do less make up, though that’s more because of COVID. But when I am around people, I don’t feel I need to impress them anymore, because it’s pointless. I need authenticity, or relationships to me are useless and just a repeat of my past.

I don’t know if that will go away when my spirits become lighter again and this stuggle ends, and I’ll have the same temptations as many, I somehow doubt it will every be a realll strong pull in my life again.

I’m young, but I’m already learned that it’s better to have a handful of people you can be real with, than thousands you can only be fake with.

Anyway, I think I got off the original point, I guess this post has been mostly about that I learned during 2020, and now it’s almost over.

Looking ahead, I am not going to be brainlessly optimistic and say next year will be easier, I hope my problems will be different problems, but I will have problems.

I doubt all the issues of this year will go away in January, but if I have learned anything else, it’s that change is a process and it’s okay if it takes longer than you thought it would, as long as you see it happening.

Like Shikamaru also, I think I am the same person I was before, just with less baggage, more awareness of the people around me, and a better understanding of sorrow than I had before.

I didn’t stop liking Skillet music, but I started liking Evanescence. If that works as a metaphor for someone, then you get me.

And with that, I’ll wrap this up for now, I hope you got something out of this, and until next time–Natasha.