I wrote a few weeks ago about my depression. I have been taking my meds and getting more sleep and yet here I am, Monday morning, grateful that my friend now waits for me at the train station because I needed the extra moment to propel myself to school this morning.

It gets better, and it gets worse. There are days when I feel like my soul has been sitting all day in the chilly bleachers of a drizzly November mid-western football game. You know how your butt gets all numb? Yeah. Somedays my soul feels like that.

This Sunday it felt like my whole self (all parts of me that aren’t physical) came to church naked. I spent equal time trying to pretend I was dressed like everyone else and hoping that someone would notice I was in fact naked and throw me a blanket or jacket or something. At the end of the day you are a little cold, a little embarrassed (though no one made you feel shame specifically), a little confused. Did no one really notice?

The anxiety is for me, what is exhausting. Every time I check my email, my phone rings, my phone doesn’t ring, I have to feed someone, I first convince myself that it is going to be exceedingly difficult and also that I need to do it anyway.

I know that these things are not from the Father. I know they aren’t. They are joy killers, love stealers, peace inhibitors. But I also know that all things work to His good, if we just hand them over, if we just let Him have it.

Yesterday, during our last hymn you could hear me sobbing under the music, again. There I was, again, soul-naked at church. Somebody get that girl some clothes. When Christian came to wrap his arms around me, pray for me, I admit to him that it isn’t my money, my time or my voice that I am witholding. It is my shame, my fears, my certanly not enough.

I know that this isn’t just something that God asks me to give him as a fringe benefit of faith. I know that the Lord actually requires me to give them to him. I also know he is patient and gentle with me as I figure out how my hands got re-wrapped around this stuff in the first place.

So this week I am praying for Pixie Dust. I got to read the first couple chapters of a new book called Wonderstruck. It comes out on Christmas day and will be loaded into my kindle before Santa comes. Because in the first chapter this is what Margaret Feinberg prays, and it is exactly what I need.

I want to see God where I know him to be…but have not felt him for awhile. I want to stumble upon holy moments, holy musings, holy ground. I want to have an accidental devotional so often I cannot catalogue them all here. I need to exist once again in the realm of the extraordinary as I walk through this ordinary time.

I feel so much like the muggles in Harry Potter, the adults in Peter Pan, the villagers in Beauty and the Beast. There is something I am missing, just beyond my grasp. I am praying for Pixie Dust, and the heart to embrace it.

Seriously, go to amazon and pre-order this book. It is going to be exactly what I want to start the new year with.