Hello there world. Sometimes I forget that other people read this (even though that is the exact reason I hit “publish” and not “save draft”). So, after multiple private and public checkups in the last twenty-four hours I feel the need to add some things to yesterdays post.

First, if you did contact me, thank you. Seriously, thank you. Just knowing you see me, really see me is a treasure, a gift. I know I don’t have to go through this without any help. I am seeking help. I realize now that it sounded like praying for pixie dust was the only way I was dealing with this. That is not the case. I know that God can heal me miraculously and I am praying for that. I am also seeking out some sort of chemical that can be my miracle every day until I feel like maybe I don’t need it anymore. I am extremely weary of doctors (bad experiences in High school, getting told to my face there is nothing wrong with me etc.) but I have asked for some recommendations from people I trust to find a general practitioner who can either help me, or point to someone who can help me. But I appreciate your concern and care. It means a lot to me. Also, have a doctor who is great at listening in the Atlanta area?  I would love that contact info.

I write-through this thing because it helps. Putting words and faces to shadows and echoes of fear unnamed helps me to see these things in their true dimension, rather than the dimension I project them when they are only in my own head. When I put it in words I see the shadow puppet, where as before I thought the shadow on the wall was the reality. It helps me to explain it in metaphors of temperature and clothing.

I write-through this thing because it makes me feel less alone. History of depression on both sides of my family? Who knew? Now I do. But also, in my friends, in my church, in my Facebook acquaintances. I don’t have to think I am the only one doing this, and they don’t have to feel like it either, and that helps.

I write-through this because this is where I am at right now. It may sound super pretentious to say that you think God called you to write out your story as it is happening, and yet here I am, saying that. This is where I am, and this is the space that I have to tell that, and explain it, and that needs to be okay. I think there needs to be spaces for the dark corners too. Because God sheds light in the dark places, and how are we going to see that light if we aren’t willing to go into that corner?

I write-through this to explain, so that people who don’t do this can understand, so you won’t roll your eyes at the girl crying at church….again. I write-through it so you have words when your friend seems off to you, when she seems unable to return your phone  call.

But mostly, I write-through this because when I do, the shame falls away. When I choose to share, the secret doesn’t grip me, the lie that I should be better than this looses all of its power. I write-through it because it lightens me, leaves me unashamed of who I am and what I am struggling with. I write-through it because the shame does not stand up to the light of day, the anxiety dies down when everyone already knows. The truth shouts louder than the lies.

I write-through this because the truth of it all is setting me free. Sometimes in the writing, sometimes in the comments, sometimes in the private messages. The truth has been finding me and it has been freeing me. I promise it has.

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.

Today I pray that you would feel like enough. At work, at home, in the traffic in between. With your co-workers or clients, your children and spouse, your best friends you are enough. I pray that you would lean into the enough of God and trust that He is not only enough for you, but He is enough for everyone who needs something from you. I pray that you would sense the completeness of God and rest in His promise of enough.

I pray that you would live in the tension between work and home, feel each side pulling and allow it to not turn your head back and forth, but instead up toward God. It is hard sometimes to leave your baby and hard sometimes to leave your job. I pray that you would   rest in the tension between the two, knowing that God has both for you in this time.

I pray that you would not feel lost. As you change from professional you, to mommy you, to  wife you and back again, know that you are enough simply as you. You are seen by the one who made you, you are more than the sum of your parts. There is a soul in there that was crafted in the image of your God.

I pray that you would know that God has this for you, right now, in the midst of the babysitters, and the day off because of a fever, in the midst of the milestones you feel like you are missing at home, and the things you feel like you can’t do at work, in the midst of the mommy guilt I pray that you would know with everything you are that this today is what the Lord has for you today.

It is hard, but it is good. May He meet you there today.

Four years ago I voted for one guy then wept with joy when the other one won. Amidst the confetti and the crying and the adorable family, I was proud to be an American.

Maybe I wasn’t as hooked to social media. Maybe it was my first year being registered to vote in a decidedly unswingable state. Maybe  I am remembering it all wrong. But I don’t remember it being this heated. I don’t remember it being this mean. Maybe it was me. Maybe I wasn’t as emotionally invested.

I tell the same story in my personal life. If I can see the benefits of both sides I am happy to let God be in charge. It is when I am sure that I am right that I get all up in arms. I get defensive, I roll my eyes, I call names. It makes no sense to be right with the law but not right with God.

I have traded righteousness for rightness more times then I even know. Rightness is a shny box with emptiness inside. It needs to be defended against and closely guarded. It promises but it never ever pays out. Not like righteousness, not like the homely, steady pace of doing the next right thing for our God., only to find yourself humbly before him, resting, complete, fulfilled.

I don’t know if I’ll stay up to watch the election. If I don, it will likely be by twitter and not by television. I may instead go to bed and guard my heart against the rightness it wants to grab onto. I may just hold out for righteousness instead.

Who is in charge of the revival? she asks. We are talking about religion again. It seems like we talk about God a lot, seeing as only one of us believes in Him.

The Holy Spirit. I respond, laughing. The Holy Spirit is in charge of the revival.

She calls this bullshit and I am not offended. I want a more clear-cut answer too. I would love for the person in charge of the revival I am longing for to have an email address and a twitter handle. Some way I could get a hold of him, the person in charge of the revival, maybe get an eta. I could use some revival around these parts.

tomorrow, when we vote, I pray we will remember who is in charge of the revival. I hope when the votes come in and we all know the answer (and please Jesus no repeat of 2000) that neither victory or loss would make us forget who is in charge of the revival. I pray we pray for that revival to come.

I remember singing in the choir in the seventh grade with people I would describe as “my mom’s friends.” If there is a choir, mom is going to sing in it. These women had taught my pre-school Sunday school classes, been there when I was dedicated. I remember the patience these women had for me. The way they encouraged me, the way they quietly prayed for each other. I remember them laughing a lot, in a comfortable way. You could tell they had been singing together for a while. They were so patient with me. Even when I was 14 and had no idea how obnoxious I was.

I remember taking piano lessons. I probably would not have gotten to, but our piano teacher was a woman from our church, and just as we could no longer afford them she approached my mom at the Christmas Eve service and offered to give them to us for free. My oldest sister is now a music therapist and she, at least partially, has this woman to thank.

I remember being a little intimidated by her big house and her grand piano. Her huge TV in the basement that I sat in while I waited for my sister to finish her lesson. I remember the gummy bears behind the ice cream bar that I was allowed to help myself to. Very specifically I remember the time she knew that I did not ask for the sticker I wanted when I had done well on a song. I remember it had glitter on it. She told me that sometimes girls didn’t think that it was okay to ask for what they really wanted, but that it was important to speak up. It was good, to ask for what I wanted. She was the first person that saw that weakness in me, I don’t think I deserve what I really want. She was the first person to gently speak the truth to that weakness.

Later, when I got diagnosed with the middle-aged lady disease at 17, the same one she had, she encouraged me in ways that no one else could. She saw my soul again. I still have the cards she slipped me in church. She knew, she made me feel less alone.

I remember another woman who played the piano as I walked down the aisle. I remember singing in the choir she directed when I was 5 or so about how all God’s creatures have a place in the choir even if  “some just clap their hands and their paws and anything they got now.” I remember learning the songs she wrote for our moms on mother’s day. And I heard that when my mother approached her about payment for playing for my wedding she scoffed, “Kathleen, I know you aren’t talking about paying me. I thought we were friends!” Then, she arranged some extra flute pieces for my cousin Rachel between the rehearsal and the wedding, simply because she recognized serious talent when she saw it.

I was continually blessed during Christmas eve and Easter services by the same woman finding instrumentalists and arranging music. I loved the Sundays with the full orchestra. I remember a few choir directors and the time in between.  I don’t think this woman was ever paid for all she did. I think she just did it.

There are so many women, and men too, of a certain age and station that make up the strongest memories of my church experience growing up. The Sunday school teachers, the choir singers, the nut-sale organizers. The women who complimented my grown up hair cut and new contact lenses when I was still awkward. They made me feel beautiful. They were proud of who I was becoming. They told me how proud my parents were of me. I believed them. They spoke truth.

At 29 and 30 my husband and I are solidly in the older half of our church. College students and young marrieds, beautiful mid twenties women (seriously, Christian men, if you are not going to 1027 church, you are missing out!) that is our population. These are the people I worship with. I love them, and they are Jesus to me in so many ways. But I can’t help but miss the over 40 crowd. The way over 40 crowd.

I think they have truth that we could use. I want to know that there is nothing new under the sun, that the Christian life is hard sometimes, but at 60, 70, 85….it is worth it. I need the steadiness of people who have already quibbled over worship styles and done all the quirky Bible studies and abandoned the gimmicks but remained holding on to Jesus. I need the steady call of “this too shall pass” even as my youth (what little left I have) shouts obnoxiously that no one could possibly know, this time is different. I need their forgiveness for my youthful folly.

I think my kids need them too, these surrogate grandparents. They need to see that Jesus is the answer at every stage of life. They need to see that it is possible to fall more deeply in love with our savior every trip around the sun. They need to see someone who is excited to see them when mommy and daddy and all of their friends parents arrive to church exhausted by the effort it takes to get everyone there every week.

I think we need to learn how to serve them, us young whipper snappers need to step out of the rushing around of our little ones and budding careers and serve people who have come before us. We need to be reminded that we are not the first, and will not be the last, that there are a long line of saints (many still living) that have paved the way.

They think they are being sneaky. I let the kids start sitting where they want to when I finally cleaned out the extra desks and he chose since then to sit behind her.

It was the catalyst of homecoming that finally brought it all to the surface. He had to ask someone. He joked he was going to ask me. I told him he could bring me candy, and I would accept that, but I could not go to homecoming with a ninth grader. We laughed at how funny it would be if I did. I could pick him up in the minivan.

Shortly after he brought a dozen roses to school to “officially ask” (it is a thing here, I don’t get it either). I saw him before she did and he laughed as he held out the roses to me “Mrs. Norman, I, I have something to ask you!” I enjoy the occasional running gag with my kids.

Since that week, that asking, that dance, I have noticed he sprawls across the front of his desk in a way he never did before. His arms stretched as far as they can go, making an acute angle with the desk, his shoulders and back curved forward. Even his neck stretches toward her back.

Every time we turn the page he has to re-calibrate this desk stretch, and after every page turn he does. It is so he can touch her. He maintains this quasi-casual contortion so that he can touch her. Just on the arm or elbow. She crosses her hand across her stomach and their fingers intertwine.

It was not the strange posture of him that clued me in, but rather the soft smile on her face. Like she was keeping a pleasant secret. Like she knew something special. Like she was something special.

For now I let them think they are being sneaky, just the two of them holding hands, a world where only they know. And me, and now you too.