Striking a Blow to Depression

Recently I discovered what other people were born knowing. The joy of waking, of getting out of bed, of laughing, or being together, of speaking without fear or anxiety. Of deciding firmly and strongly and not looking back.

Two months ago, I wandered into my doctor’s office. I knew I was hurting. I’d been hurting for some time. I’ve been treated for depression on and off for most of my life. I’m okay with that. I accept that taking pills is part of my reality. This is fine with me. I realize that if I were diabetic or had heart disease I would take the same steps.

So, I walk into my doctor’s office and I want to try something new. I have my little speech prepared. I’m ready, because I don’t want to cry. I simply want to ask for what I need and get the hell out of there.

He asks me a simple question. It’s always the simple questions that unravel us. “How’re you doing?” But he doesn’t just ask. He’s not just making conversation. He looks at my face, into my eyes. He knows why I’m there and he waits patiently for an answer. He watches my face contort as I try to control the coming tears. I am powerless. I begin to weep, unabashedly, uncontrollably.

“I feel like crap.” I confess. He listens. He nods. I pour it out. All the symptoms, all the hurt, all the torment. And in the confession comes a release. There is constantly a tight, grey fist curled around my heart, at the very center of my person. I can feel it squeezing me, bruising me, crushing the good to a pulp. What’s left is fear and anger and insecurity. It oozes out between the stone fingers and pours into my life, into the lives of the people I love.

But in the confession, I conquer just a little bit of that fist. I shove back against the constant arm wrestling happening inside me. I tell that fist I don’t want to live like this. Without sleep. Without joy. Without love. There has to be another way.

My doctor is amazing. He spent an hour with me that day. We talked through the many answers, including ones that are not strictly medical, but spiritual, physical and relational. Those are the ones I control. The chemical stuff? Yeah, I got nothing on that.

So he prescribes a new medicine. I’m skeptical but relieved. At least I’m doing something. Moving. Trying. Talking.

Two weeks go by. I start waking at 5 or 6 am. Not tired. Not anxious. Not worried about jobs or kids or the organization of the day, or whether the spoons are put away in the right places. I wake up feeling rested. I think, “Okay. That’s...weird.”

Then, I start wanting to run. WANTING to run. Again weird. And the more I want to run, the more I run, and the more I run the better I feel. And the better I feel the more I want to be with my kids and talk to them and hear them and love them and be their mom. And the more I respond to them the more they respond to me. This is quite lovely.

Other delights happen, too. I asked my husband, “Is this how you feel all the time?” I’m shocked. Amazed. Humbled, thankful and overjoyed. I have never, in my life, felt as good as I feel now.

I keep trying to put my finger on it. I feel like if I can’t explain it it will change, or worse, stop. Or if I don’t put words to it those closest to me don’t know exactly how much better I feel. And I want them to know. I want them see who I am. That tight fist clamping my chest was actually just one part of the crushing pain I lived with. A hard shell surrounded me, feeding me lies about my worth, coaxing insecurity and embarrassment into my heart, like a plume of foul fragrance. Leading me to think I had to fit into a certain ideal in order to be of value. That shell got shot to pieces. I feel, if not invincible, then definitely like I could kick some ass.

I’m not saying I’m cured or healed or perfect. I’m saying there are always options and choices and another avenue to try. I’m saying if you’re hurting tell someone, tell me, tell your mom, tell anyone. That dark grasp can crumble.

Like Attracts Like

This year for Memorial Day we told our daughters, ages 12 and 10, they could each invite a friend to come with us to the lake. I admit, I may have had an ulterior motive besides just being the coolest mom ever; I knew they'd bicker less if they were preoccupied with their own selection of people to hang with. Which meant the odds of me being able to read, alone and quietly, on a sun-drenched deck on the shore of a glorious lake, would increase.

This is to be encouraged.

Today we took four giggly girls and the 6-year-old brother on the lake for some boating and tubing. The perfect plan: the boy doesn't really like to tube and the girls each prefer to tube a different way. As each set of girls boarded the tube and held on, I was struck by the types of friends my kids make. They have chosen well and wisely and in sync with who they are, inwardly, on their deepest levels.

The eldest is a talker and thinker. When not tubing, she peered through binoculars identifying birds and explaining to anyone in earshot what they were, what they eat, why they live in Oklahoma. She says things like, "That would be preferable," when asked if she wants to go slower. When we tell her we can go faster she says, "Be that as it may..." the ellipses meaning, "Don't you dare." Her friend's preferred method of tubing aligned directly with hers. They wanted moderate speed, few bumps and really just a pleasant ride. Kind of like two 12-year-old Miss Daisies.

Younger daughter is a straight up thrill seeker. Girl loves to run, jump and play. There is little intellectualizing about her life. She just loves to be. She is almost always happy, she gathers friends like fallen leaves. Her heart is open and alert to everyone. And the friend she brought with her? Same. They giggle and tease, they kick the soccer ball, and they can't go fast enough or high enough on the tube. They wanted to hit the biggest waves, hurl around the most severe corners, jump and flip and finally to fly off into the water.

What parent doesn't love to watch her kids enjoy life? Sometimes, I think that when we get to the lake, leaving "real life" behind, we see a distillation of our kids. I caught a tiny glimpse of this today as they navigated their way through the waves. I am thankful for their differences, for their emotional capacity to befriend and to love, and the vigor of their lives.

Serendipity

I ran into one of my favorite people on Thursday afternoon at a middle school track meet. I hadn't seen her all school year; our kids don't seem to be in the same circles. Doesn't it stink when your social life is dictated by the hormonal whims of your kids?

I was standing alone, not in the bleachers, watching the track meet and my other two kids run wild in the early spring glory. Other parents milled nearby, but none I knew. Then, my friend walked past. I was so happy to see her I blurted out her name, knowing she was on her way to watch her own daughter at the opposite end of the field.

She patiently stopped to talk to me. I think we chatted so long she missed her daughter throwing the shot put, farther than the boys. You go, girl.

My friend has been through a few rocky years but seeing her, she looked poised, confident, happy, and just settled. She's buying a house. She loves her job. She enjoys every moment with her kids. She used to come to a Bible study I taught. Now she was teaching me.

I shared some struggles we'd been having this year and she listened. She gave me a challenge, she told me it works out. She said all the right things.

I have many acquaintances. I know lots of people. She is the one who had this just-what-I-needed message for me.

Messenger Bag

Bag for B:

Putting the Sweet in Sugar Lake

The Lake. Sugar Lake. A tiny little patch of happy in Pennsylvania where our family has had a cottage, this cottage, for 109 years. I can still see my bare feet, blackened from the hot tar from the road, running up those stairs, a stinky hot mess of a kid loving her summer.

When I'm there, when I think of it, images float into my mind. This is what I see.

• Playing Trivial Pursuit on the screened porch
• Tin cups in bright colors
• Fighting over who would get the turquoise towel
• Carving our names into mushrooms Grandma found with us.
• Wearing my first bikini
• Swimming in the lake, standing on old inner tubes, playing king
• Eating all my favorite foods, nary a thought to my waist line
  

Makes me smile.

Now I live 1000 miles from this childhood idyll and being there is worth ever hard earned mile. My joy comes from two sources. The first is simple remembrance. Some people who have enjoyed the cottage are no longer living, some I haven't seen in over 20 years. The whole family doesn't always get there every summer but no matter who is there, we still, ALWAYS play Trivial Pursuit. Walking in the slamming back door into the kitchen is entering a family museum. My dad's high school art work, my aunt's books, old fishing rods. Even the curtains, made by hand by my great grandmother, still hang.

I'm awash and downright glowy with nostalgia. I've smeared vaseline on the lens of history and only the beautiful remains. But whatever.

Because the second source of joy in being there is watching my kids. Five of the seven cousins scrambled around the yard all day and well into the night on July 4th. The ambled from one activity to the next; from art on the porch to swinging, races in the yard, smoke bombs, fishing, bug catching. The whole bit. They wake up and play. All. Day. Long. And they go to bed tired.

It may sound like I'm romanticizing a pile of wood and glass and nails. Maybe I have. Nothing wrong with a little childhood idyll.

Lessons from the Boat

Kids are profound and detailed observers. They see things I might never notice but for their attention. I found myself thankful for their perspective this Sunday morning, when we, like my friend Kristin, skipped church for the great outdoors.

A stiff wind blew across Grand Lake o' the Cherokees as we loaded up the boat for a quick morning jaunt. Now, Oklahoma is not mountainous terrain, so we take our hills and turn them into mountains in our imaginations. These imagined mountains rose up around us, the boat chugging out into open waters. Once out past the white peaks that formed near the dock, the boat settled into a rhythm perfect for this kind of kid observation.

I watched as my kids and their cousins craned their little heads around, trying to absorb everything. The shape of the clouds, the color of the water, the Blue Heron and the big fish. Their eyes and minds darted over the surface of the lake, scanned the horizon, interpreting their world, their fingers pointing at all they saw.

Someone turned on the boat's radio and I rolled my eyes. I would have preferred the relative quiet. But a song was playing with lyrics that reminded me of my exact spot in the world. It's refrain proclaimed "from sunrise to sunset, I will fix my eyes on your glory."

I took a short moment, I didn't want to get all preachy up on them, to say that everything they saw was made by a God who loves them. Now, it could have been just me, puffed up that I was giving a lesson, but it seemed like their eyes changed, their necks lengthened, their focus sharpened.

They see the hilarious creativity in a God who gives the Heron its funny color and long neck, who makes a fish slippery and scaly, whose trees bow in the wind and whistle His name. I said, when something does what it was created to do, it shows God's glory." Here endeth the lesson, but I watched them watch the world.

"So, birds always do what they were created to do," one of them wondered. I agreed. More thinking.

"So, they always bring glory to God." Yep again.

Not only are kids observational geniuses, they are also perceptive. They knew what I was getting at. They knew that this idea applies to them. When His creations are doing what they were created to do, it reflects Him.

I observe my kids as intently as the observe their world. I don't know all they were created to do. It will be an amazing journey to find out.

LaRue's New Digs

We call our daughter B Fifi Larue. Her little brother started calling her Fifi out of the blue when she was in Kindergarten. He must have been 2; he could say her name, he just chose to call her Fifi.

The name has taken many variations over the years. Fee, Feef, and now Fifi Larue and its short form, Larue. (I just discovered there is a performer who goes by the name Fifi Larue. Did not know that.)

Larue told me she likes it when I call her that. I will do pretty much anything to make my kids smile and so I call her Larue. Larue plays soccer and Larue likes bling.

I made this shirt for Larue by placing a bajillion tiny swarovski crystals around a soccer ball pattern and applying them with heat to a shirt we already had. She is happy; another way I can make her smile.