Enough

Sidenote: I have at least twenty drafts sitting in my queue, and I fully intend on finishing and posting at least half of those. They're not current reflections of my life, but still, I'd like to post them.

[from April 2011]

Some days it just gets harder. Waking up with weakness and pain wears me down until some mornings I feel thin and stretched, too broken to even start the day.

At one point, I felt a strange, strong apprehension. Almost as if I saw depression, looked into the dark days ahead, felt the cold pain touch my mind. I cried in fear. I had faced this before. Please God, not again. My weakness crashed down on me - physical, emotional, mental - and I felt powerless to stop the depression. I wanted to choose joy, to see light, but I couldn't. Not on my own, not with this brokenness.

So I asked for prayer with a quick post on Facebook, which only a handful of friends could see. I quickly pressed enter, shut my laptop, and walked out of my room before I could delete my post.

I went outside and looked at the stars. Their beauty gave me clarity. I felt terribly small in the face of this terrifying and huge world. I lay on the concrete. It still held warmth from the forgotten sun. I felt small points of despair ebb away, and I knew joy would come in the morning.

That joy didn't wait for the morning. It came with the stars that faintly light up the LA sky, the chilling breeze that came through my window, in a peace that I cannot ever quite explain. The next morning, my pain was still there, but I had lost the sinking feeling of despair. But not the feeling of brokenness, I didn't feel whole, and still don't.

The miracle is - it wasn't my choice. I didn't choose joy, the way I didn't choose depression in the past. Joy chose me and sought me out in my darkness. It was the way the light filled my room, the prayers of my faithful friends, the text messages from classmates who missed me.

And for now, that's enough. Having joy is enough.