revisited, vol. i
There are only about ten weeks left until the one year anniversary of this blog. :) I'm almost a toddler! lol It's been on a couple of different sites (360 still has my heart!), but it's always been there....growing with me. So I figured that at least once a week for the next ten weeks I'm going to repost a blog from the past year that was significant to me...starting with the oldest and working my way to today. It's amazing to me to look back and read these and seeing just how far God has brought me in the last year. A year ago I was still in a horrible depression among many other things. It's nice to see the progress of walking through the valley...and coming out on the other side. :)
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10-22-05 3:47 p.m. Depression....
I was reading over my all the past entries in this blog and one thing I've noticed is that as the days go on... the entries get longer and longer. You can almost see my progress and how much better I'm feeling. I'm more willing to talk, be social...just care about life. I've been waging a spiritual battle against depression lately. I have to say.... the other side almost won a couple of times. I've gone through a couple of depressed times in the last decade or so.... but not like this. This was rock-bottom, everything's black, snapping-at-everyone, hateful, angry, lonely, don't want to talk to anybody, could care less about you me or them, can't fall any further down depression. As is typical with me....only those closest to me knew about it because I'm pretty adept at hiding whatever I'm going through. I just put on my game face and get to work. But when the spotlight was off... so was the smile. Those closest to me actually noticed it first. I couldn't sneak it past them. My poor kids...yikes....I can only imagine how horrible I've been to live with! My friends were noticing that I hadn't been calling very often. For the first time in my life I've actually been letting calls go to voicemail...something I've NEVER done. I'm always on the phone...checking on people, talking for hours. My friends all know that they can call me anytime....day or night...at least until I started turning off my ringer most of the time because I just didn't want to be bothered. I wish I could've seen myself with eyes other than my own. I always thought I was hiding it rather well (at first I didn't even recognize anything wrong with myself though) but from what I've been told plenty of people noticed something was wrong. They said the "light" was gone from my eyes, I was more antisocial, my joy seemed to be totally gone... all the polar opposite from what I normally am.
So what happened? Well, the details are for me and the Lord for right now... but suffice it to say that I haven't been as close to the Lord as I should've been. I've been blatantly disobedient in alot of areas... and I guess the wages of sin are death. Not necessarily physically but emotional, spiritual, fellowship, joy.... all of those things suffer. The light in my eyes that everyone always saw was never me.... it was Jesus. The joy that they saw was never me... it was Jesus. Every good thing that people say drew them to me....was never me... it was Jesus. So when I step away from him all I'm gonna be left with is me... rotten old me. I'm sure the death of my Dad didn't help any either. It's funny how when this happens we usually don't even notice it sneaking up on us. In the movie Prozac Nation she describes depression as coming on really gradually then all of a sudden. That's so true. It will creep up closer and closer and then all of a sudden it snatches you and drags you down. Well sneak up it did and down I went.
Luckily for me I have a few friends that love me enough to not just let me go. They didn't just stand back and scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders when they noticed I was missing in action. Trust me... there were some that did exactly that.... but I thank God for the ones that didn't. They were the crowbar that the Lord used to pry me out of my situation. One in particular had a bit of an "intervention" and drug me out of my hole kicking and screaming and took me to lunch and said "what is wrong with you??? Where did you go???? If you don't go to the doctor... I'm calling him for you and driving you myself!!!" God bless him. I mean it. God bless him. This is a person who has so much of his own stuff going on...family life, working a ton of overtime, battling cancer for goodness sake!!!! But yet he let his eyes and his heart extend further than himself and his own situations to me. I'm not someone who asks for help very often. I'm uncomfortable with it...never want to bother anyone, but I will if I really need something. But sometimes in life we find ourselves in situations where the undertoe grabs us and drags us under before we can scream for help. It takes someone who has their eyes on you to notice that all of a sudden you're gone. You've slipped under the waves and struggling and your screams are muffled. Sometimes no matter how strong we normally are we need another pair of hands to help us stand up. That's one of the downsides of being someone that others view as "strong"... they think you never need help.... but even the strongest warrior is a child.
So after my "intervention" I went to see my doctor and got on some antidepressants.... back off Tom Cruise!!! lol It's been about three weeks now and slowly I can feel the clouds lifting. I notice that I'm laughing more often, I even caught myself flirting with someone the other day! :) Now you know it was bad if Veronica isn't flirting with someone!!! haha
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10-22-05 3:47 p.m. Depression....
I was reading over my all the past entries in this blog and one thing I've noticed is that as the days go on... the entries get longer and longer. You can almost see my progress and how much better I'm feeling. I'm more willing to talk, be social...just care about life. I've been waging a spiritual battle against depression lately. I have to say.... the other side almost won a couple of times. I've gone through a couple of depressed times in the last decade or so.... but not like this. This was rock-bottom, everything's black, snapping-at-everyone, hateful, angry, lonely, don't want to talk to anybody, could care less about you me or them, can't fall any further down depression. As is typical with me....only those closest to me knew about it because I'm pretty adept at hiding whatever I'm going through. I just put on my game face and get to work. But when the spotlight was off... so was the smile. Those closest to me actually noticed it first. I couldn't sneak it past them. My poor kids...yikes....I can only imagine how horrible I've been to live with! My friends were noticing that I hadn't been calling very often. For the first time in my life I've actually been letting calls go to voicemail...something I've NEVER done. I'm always on the phone...checking on people, talking for hours. My friends all know that they can call me anytime....day or night...at least until I started turning off my ringer most of the time because I just didn't want to be bothered. I wish I could've seen myself with eyes other than my own. I always thought I was hiding it rather well (at first I didn't even recognize anything wrong with myself though) but from what I've been told plenty of people noticed something was wrong. They said the "light" was gone from my eyes, I was more antisocial, my joy seemed to be totally gone... all the polar opposite from what I normally am.
So what happened? Well, the details are for me and the Lord for right now... but suffice it to say that I haven't been as close to the Lord as I should've been. I've been blatantly disobedient in alot of areas... and I guess the wages of sin are death. Not necessarily physically but emotional, spiritual, fellowship, joy.... all of those things suffer. The light in my eyes that everyone always saw was never me.... it was Jesus. The joy that they saw was never me... it was Jesus. Every good thing that people say drew them to me....was never me... it was Jesus. So when I step away from him all I'm gonna be left with is me... rotten old me. I'm sure the death of my Dad didn't help any either. It's funny how when this happens we usually don't even notice it sneaking up on us. In the movie Prozac Nation she describes depression as coming on really gradually then all of a sudden. That's so true. It will creep up closer and closer and then all of a sudden it snatches you and drags you down. Well sneak up it did and down I went.
Luckily for me I have a few friends that love me enough to not just let me go. They didn't just stand back and scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders when they noticed I was missing in action. Trust me... there were some that did exactly that.... but I thank God for the ones that didn't. They were the crowbar that the Lord used to pry me out of my situation. One in particular had a bit of an "intervention" and drug me out of my hole kicking and screaming and took me to lunch and said "what is wrong with you??? Where did you go???? If you don't go to the doctor... I'm calling him for you and driving you myself!!!" God bless him. I mean it. God bless him. This is a person who has so much of his own stuff going on...family life, working a ton of overtime, battling cancer for goodness sake!!!! But yet he let his eyes and his heart extend further than himself and his own situations to me. I'm not someone who asks for help very often. I'm uncomfortable with it...never want to bother anyone, but I will if I really need something. But sometimes in life we find ourselves in situations where the undertoe grabs us and drags us under before we can scream for help. It takes someone who has their eyes on you to notice that all of a sudden you're gone. You've slipped under the waves and struggling and your screams are muffled. Sometimes no matter how strong we normally are we need another pair of hands to help us stand up. That's one of the downsides of being someone that others view as "strong"... they think you never need help.... but even the strongest warrior is a child.
So after my "intervention" I went to see my doctor and got on some antidepressants.... back off Tom Cruise!!! lol It's been about three weeks now and slowly I can feel the clouds lifting. I notice that I'm laughing more often, I even caught myself flirting with someone the other day! :) Now you know it was bad if Veronica isn't flirting with someone!!! haha
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