Learning in the Trenches

Learning to live with depression is a lot like trying to swim the ocean while during a storm. Sometimes you can’t feel under you. You can’t see what’s in front of you. Mostly you look behind you wishing you’d stayed on shore. Fear is all around you. Hope is hard to feel. You’d look to see the beauty but you just can’t. So you see the worst possible scenario. — and you’re ALWAYS expecting  the enemy because he likes to show up when you’re weak. 

I sit in therapy once a month. Trying to dig through a ton of problems that stemmed from a tough past, and being passed down depression through genes. My therapist says I can cuss, yell- anything I need to get the pain out. I haven’t cussed yet. But I have yelled. I’ve cried. I’ve felt like it wasn’t helping to talk about my heart. Mostly my depression makes me feel like I’m nearly invisible- like my feelings don’t matter. I don’t have anything important to say or do. Depression robs. Therapy is just plain hard. What you see on Instagram isn’t what’s all there- I struggle every day. I struggle to see blessings and beauty because I fear one of two things will happen- I’ll finally see the light and then everything will fall out from under me, or I can’t see the light and I feel better being in the dark. 

Progress, even if small, if meaningful. If you’re in the trenches. I’m there too. One day I’d like to be out of the trenches. But for now, I’m learning in them. I’m learning how to change my thoughts, and change my life- even in the smallest of ways. I stopped looking to the right and left of me. How others and running and the race- and I focus on my own race. I am very gentle with myself because for 30 years- I’ve cut myself to shreds. I’m learning to rest. Real true biblical rest. Heart and soul. I’m still learning what that means. 

So friends, here is to 2018 💕

May it find you well, and know you are loved. 

Ashley