Now here’s a subject I know a bit about – not being able to function. By which I mean not being able to engage in normal activities like writing or cleaning or answering emails or having conversations which require saying something other than “uh huh”, “you don’t say” and “I need to go lay down for a little bit”. So, my apologies for the long silence. And double apologies to those of you whose emails I haven’t answered. I’ve been too focused on enduring to figure out things t

Ugh, I’ve been struggling to figure out how to write this post for several days, but no clever ideas have come to me so I suppose I may as well just dive in and vomit it out.  The last you heard from me, I was going to go curl up in the fetal position. Which wasn’t hyperbole. I was probably a couple of days out from complete nervous breakdown. As regular readers know, the last few years have not been kind to me and my family. It all culminated last summer with my husband leav

Of course, sometimes life can overwhelm even our best coping mechanisms and I can feel that familiar lack of energy creeping in.  And I fight back the best I can.  I see my doctor and take my medicine and exercise and try not to spend too much time in bed and maybe even drink more water and eat less sugar.  I push myself to keep moving even when I don’t want to.  I make myself talk to people.  I try to be kinder to myself and everyone around me. But every once in a blue moon,

What a foolish, arrogant promise to make to God, I thought.  Forever is not in our ability to promise anyone, much less God.  Even wedding vows are only promised until death.  Not to mention that it is foolhardy at best to presume that your faith is so sure that you will not waver in it, much less abandon it, for all eternity.  That’s just asking to have your faith put to some terrible tests.  (And I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that’s pretty much how God works. 

This was a very hard thing for me to learn.  Somehow I had deeply absorbed the idea that being excessively harsh and critical of myself was part of being a good person.  But while struggling to overcome a serious bout of depression, learning this lesson became a matter of life and death.  For a while I would force myself to write down a list of everything I did that was at all positive each day without criticism or commentary.  When things went wrong before berating myself, I