I had a bout with depression this fall. I ignored it. Shockingly, ignoring it did not make it magically go away. I down played it. Also a poor choice. It is hard to tell someone it is not a big deal when you are sobbing uncontrollably over the milk on the floor (you are literally crying over spilled milk.) So I prayed that the Lord would lift the fog. Some would say I did not pray loud enough or hard enough. I did not want the anxiety gone badly enough. So I did what I was once instructed to do. I named, I claimed it, I believed it and received it.

I named it, with the help of my family telling me this was not okay, I did not have to live like this. This thing I was feeling, the way I was going about life, it was depression. I was depressed. It was a chemical imbalance, a physical misfire. Just like the glasses I put on my face to correct my vision before I can drive safely, I needed a correction in the way I was perceiving life and coping with it. I did not have to live in a world that was cloudy and gray all the time. It was unacceptable to live with anxiety chasing you down.

I claimed it. This depression, it was mine. I had fought the battle before and it was time to fight it again. It is one thing to say “Some people struggle with depression, and it doesn’t make their faith less, and it doesn’t make them less.” and another to own it saying “I struggle with depression, and that doesn’t make me less of a christian, and it doesn’t make me less of a person.”

I believed it, the idea that God can help you in all different ways and sometimes medical intervention is the way He chooses to intervene, and that isn’t bad or less, it just is the way God works sometimes.  I believed that being healed by a pill did not negate my belief in miraculous healing, I believed I was not believing in a lesser God if I tried medicine to make the anxiety go away.

I received it. I went to GNC and bought a bottle of herbal supplements for 18 dollars a bottle.  I received the second bottle for half off. I forgot my supplements when I flew to New York for my Grandfather’s funeral and received the blessing of an over the counter solution for sale in every town in America. I receive three tablets of St. John’s wart in the kitchen after work, the Peanut asking me if I am taking my gummies every day. I receive the support of my family, check ups from my sister, my mom, my husband occasional inquiries have I been taking my meds.

I named the depression, claimed it as my own, I believed in the healing and receive it every day after work. Hallelujah. To God be the glory.

*As with all my posts about depression, I am only writing about what works for me. It is a slippery little beast, but nothing to be ashamed of. Don’t just try what works for me, go talk to your doctor about how to help you. 

My grandmother tells a story of when she was a little girl.

Her father left for town and promised her that when he got back he would have for her a very good gift. My grandma has always had a sweet tooth, and she was just sure that he would bring her something from the candy counter. She spent the day dreaming of peppermints and chocolate, debating the merits of caramel and fudge. Her father came home with a smile on his face, a hug for his oldest daughter, and his very favorite candy in his pocket for her. It was the only kind of candy she did not like. She says to this day he felt worse about it than she did.

When we talk about God sized dreams I start to get a little nervous. I know that God has amazing things in store for us, but I don’t always know if we recognize them when they are staring right into our faces. I’ve spent weeks and months praying for the Lord to show up in a difficult relationship or situation, for something amazing and miraculous to happen, for someone to have their very own Damascus road experience, for me to have my very own Damascus road experience only to have the Lord say nothing.

When I look back I can see that He was quietly holding my hand in the dark, and the faithfulness, the grace, the love despite all the difficulties, that was where He was showing up, and in some ways perhaps that is more miraculous than a supernatural experience and a wham, bam thank you ma’am change.

This is not to say I don’t believe in the supernatural experience, the miraculous and instant change. I have seen it, I have experienced it. I know that God still does that. This is not to say I do not believe in dreams only God can fulfill. I still believe that the Lord will bring me the children he has promised me, the ones that are already mine.

Those aren’t the only dreams I have, aren’t the only ones that have been spoken into my heart. Those aren’t the only dreams my Spirit leaps up to meet. In the sixth grade at church camp, the speaker said maybe God wants to use your voice, and the Lord told me audibly “yes!” That one was mine. In the same conference where the Lord told me to begin writing, He let me know that my sisters and I having a ministry together was not just a fun what if, it was a possibility, it would please Him, bring Him glory.

So, if we are talking about God sized dreams, I guess I have a few:

1. That God would use my voice, this year. I have a Facebook page now and a goal of 500 likes. After all my family liked it (thanks guys!) I have 71 (I have a lot of cousins). I have no idea how God is going to do the rest. I also want to start speaking in front of Christian audiences. This one is scary because I don’t know how it is done. I was on a speech team for 8 years I know how that part works, but I don’t know how to get a gig booked.

2. That this would lead to a bigger ministry, with the 2 best friends God gave me at my birth. I don’t think this one is for this year (but hey God, if you want to!) but my heart won’t let me leave this one. It is perhaps, what we were made to do.

I don’t know what this is all going to look like and I know longer want to spend the time guessing. Perhaps the audience the Lord is asking me to speak in front of is the 100+ students that come flowing in and out of my classroom every day. Perhaps I end the year with 69 likes after my political opinions alienate some family members, but I impact the lives of those people, they know God just a millimeter more. I wonder if that isn’t the greater miracle, the God sized dream.

I don’t know what a God sized dream looks like, but when my Father gives me a gift, I don’t want to be disappointed in it. So I will dream big this year. I will be unashamed of the desires I have, but mostly I will seek a God shaped heart, and I may learn that the biggest dreams are the ones that no one notices.

I start second semester off with Romeo and Juliet. The girls look forward to it all year, and their enthusiasm catapults us right into the middle of February. This has worked well for me in the past, however, my first period after the semester shake up has exactly 29 boys and one very demure girl. Even with my significant help (my colleague calls my teaching style “squirrel on crack.” I embrace that.) the enthusiasm was not going to carry us even as far as today.

When I announced to the class that we would be reading “Romeo and Juliet” they all groaned. So, I shot straighter than I ever have before. “Look, I don’t know who told you that Romeo and Juliet was some huge romantic love story. Really, it is a story about two people who really want to do it.” Starting the 2013 classroom year with my first period full of football playing boys cheering me was a lovely way to ring in the new year.

I don’t know if you remember Shakespeare’s most famous tragedy from your reading of it in the ninth grade, but when I described it to my first period, I wasn’t lying. Isn’t that how it always is? We remember things for how they are described and spoken about, and not for what they really are.

I have been reading through Isaiah. It is beautiful; the imagery is crisp. It is deep enough to dive straight in and never find the bottom. And it is totally confusing to me. There are so many times that I wish the Bible were clear and concise. But it isn’t. There are times that I want my God to answer me completely clearly, but he doesn’t, not always anyway. And yet this is my God, and the Bible is his word.

As I have started walking with my new found unashamed posture, I have found that there are things that I shape to the way I want them to be, rather than the way they are. I don’t even realize I am doing it. Romeo and Juliet is a great story. It is funny, and dramatic. It is tragic in the best way and the words are, of course, strung together in the most beautiful ways. But it isn’t a remarkably romantic love story. Presenting it as such turns it into a lackluster story, an unimpressive addition to an already full genre.

The Bible is not simply a list of instructions, my God is not a magic genie. If they are those things, then they are confusing, and only do their job about half the time. But if instead I am reading a love letter, a collection of writing that points to the heart of a wondrous and loving God, even if his ways are beyond me….well I suppose that is another story all together.

Last year I stumbled upon the One word 365 community. With a 2-month-old, a not-yet-2 and my maternity leave ending I didn’t think it was the time for turning over a new leaf. This appealed to me. I chose the word grace, what a gift it has been. I learned so much about what grace really looked like, that grace with strings attached isn’t grace at all. But mostly, I learned to rest in God’s grace, to extend the grace that I was so willing to give others to myself. I learned that God’s grace is abundant, more than just enough to get by, enough to rest in, luxuriate in even. Grace was like a present that I opened all year long.

This year my word is unashamed. In many ways I think it took a year of grace to get me to the place where I could choose to embrace unashamed. If grace was a noun, a present I carried around, unashamed is an adjective, a posture I want to adopt.

It isn’t that I have a lot of shame in who I am or the choices that I make when I think about them, but somewhere along the way it became my natural posture. I second guess, I keep things quiet, I am embarrassed by my desires, I don’t want to have needs. In real life I am a chronic apologizer. If you call me out on it, I will tell you I am sorry. And I cover it all up with a thick layer of oh so confident, isn’t that funny.

This is the year that thick layer of oh so confident, isn’t that funny seeps all the way through to the depths of my heart. This is the year I will stand tall before my friends, before my family, before myself, before my God.

2013 is the year that I learn to fully embrace who the Lord has created me to be. I will walk the path the Lord has for me without apology or excuses, not because it is the road for everyone but because it is the one He has laid out for me.  I will unabashedly nurture and share the gifts I’ve been given. I will not be ashamed that sometimes this takes promoting myself. I am proud of the things the Lord has given me to do. I will not apologize when those things aren’t what other people think I should be doing. I will stand unashamed, in the choices I make, in the person I am and who I am becoming. I will bare my soul, shrug off my covering and expose my whole self. I will stand soul-naked and unashamed before my God.

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One word 365 is a much bigger community than this space right here. I know many of you don’t blog, but I would still encourage you to choose a word and let me know what it is. I would love to encourage you in it.