Been thinking a lot lately. Here is my truth. It may be right. It may be wrong. You may agree. You may disagree. It is okay. It is just what I have been thinking.

There has been a struggle lately in my mind. The hardest part is that is has brought me some very deep depression. As a Christian, it is hard to know if I can actually say that. Will I be condemned because I am depressed? Will there be judgment telling me that I have given God authority over it? But as a Christian, I have been depressed. I was thinking today, if we would change the verbiage from depression to lamenting. Would that change how we look at it? I really don’t know.

Honestly, I was even wondering if that was possible. Could what I have been feeling more of a lamenting then a depression? Because it has been more of a deep ache, a mourning of sorts. A sadness for something that was, that is now potentially gone. Is that even the definition of lament? I should probably look that up. Can you continue to keep your trust in God, to look at his face, and still feel what I have been feeling? I don’t know, but I have been.

One day, I found myself so much in tears that it came from the pit of my stomach. Like I had for so long been holding it all in that it all just came out with just force, almost like a panic attack. But they were tears. A wailing. A deep cry, mourning. My whole body shook. And the words that I was putting on myself were nothing truthful but I couldn’t help but say them. “All of this is my fault. I am the problem. I am the problem. Everyone would be so much better if I were no longer here.”

Mind you, I do not take those words lightly, but I do not believe that I would be one to carry out such a sentence on myself, as well as my family. However, those heavy words were out of my mouth. They floated in the air, until the weight of them made them fall to the floor.

Soon after this, I started to think about why I had said them. What was making me feel this way, and I said another thing I am not sure Christians are suppose to talk about. Feelings. Emotions. Why is it that one moment it is okay to feel and have them. Then the next we are being chastised for having them. It is a crazy thing.

I begin to look at what was making me feel like this, and one of the first things that came up was that I am constantly trying to convince myself that everything is okay. I am okay, this situation or that situation is okay. When in reality, it wasn’t okay. It wasn’t okay or even normal as to what I was feeling. I wasn’t okay that the situations. I was not okay. So why did I keep trying to convince myself that it was okay? Why was being ignored, always looked down, or being told I am not doing things right most of the time, okay? Why did I have to keep this up? I have no idea.

Except, when I would talk to people this would happen. I would be ignored and told I was doing something wrong. There was never any help to work through it or anything. In fact, in one meeting that had me in tears the whole time, I was told I was unsafe to be around. I had never in my life been told that and had no idea that it was how people saw me. Or did they just say so I would back down and be quiet? Because that is exactly what I did.

Yet, everything was suppose to be normal. They had won. I was just suppose to once again go back to chanting “It’s okay. It’s okay.” When it was obviously not okay. Even though I thought maybe it could be.

But slowly, people have started to creep out of my life. People I thought loved me no matter what. People who I thought I could share anything with, only to find out later they have talked with others and not even told the whole truth. I was dealing with the consequences of it all. Maybe I really wasn’t a safe place like that person had said. Maybe I deserved to be ignored. You start to tell yourself these things. Agreeing little by little with lies that people have said over you. You just get smaller and smaller.

This is where it began. Bending over to the whim of others. Trying to please everyone. Hearing over and over how I was the only one in the wrong and it seems I would not ever be out of this. I began to see the same thing happening to my husband, and my kids. I thought well if I wasn’t here, if I was a safer person.

This is where the depression came from. My own character was attacked and began to believe that if I just did everything right, I would be loved. But I wasn’t. As I said, people began to leave. Oh it still looked good on Facebook. Every once in a while a string was dangled in front of me and like a circus cat I would cling to it until the next string.

Until one day, it hit me that I no longer what to live this way.

That pleasing people is no way to live a life, and clinging to bread crumbs do not satisfy anything.

I am tired of trying. You can’t make someone treat you better. You can’t make someone change their opinion of you. I can’t fix anything. You cannot force a relationship, friendship. You can’t making yourself someone you aren’t in hopes to be liked.

Which this realization, it has made things easier. I know to some it probably sounds simple and even like duh, but for me. It has been a painful, tear filled journey of letting things go. Letting God have a lot it, and keeping my eyes on Him. I don’t really feel like I took my gaze off of him but with trying to please everyone else, I really wasn’t looking at him fully. He was always kind of to the side, while everyone else was in front.

I think you can be depressed. I think you can feel your emotions. They were given to us for a reason, however, we must always settle them at the feet of Jesus. We must always be praying to God, asking Him to keep them in check and to not let them control who we are. I wish we could talk more about this, and not be so discounting of them.

I am not sure I have said all I wanted to say. Or if I have not made sense, I am sorry. I feel I am just writing to be writing. Though it sounds good as I am writing it, who really knows.

As I said at the beginning. It is okay if you disagree. All I know is that this what I am going through at this moment, and may God show me where I am wrong if I am so. I just keep praying that He keeps showing up, I keep praying that I keep showing up. Looking at Him, and trusting that He is doing something even if I cannot yet see what it is.

That is what I hold to.