Don't Rock the Boat

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The month of June was a little more stable for me. Even with going home to Iowa, which caused a minor homesickness break down, June was pretty good. I am still not back to doing everything I know I should or even want to because it scares me. I was explaining to Eric that right now I am floating but stable in a tiny little row boat. I know if I put the oars in and start paddling I will make more progress and go where I need to go. But I am scared that in the process of getting my oars ready and starting to move that I will rock the boat and start to sink again. It isn't the best way to think but that was the only way I could really explain it.

Eric and I have a really big decision to make about a job in the next six to eight weeks and I know I need to get back to reading scriptures and praying so I will be able to be in tune to what the Spirit tells us about the job.

It is time to start rowing.

Changes Part 2

Last month on my husbands 31st birthday I wrote about all of the changes that had happened in the last year. Today is my 31st birthday I am thinking about the changes I need to make.

When I lived in Iowa my stake (a group of congregations in a geographical area) did a special Sunday night meeting about depression. One of the speakers came and spoke about his experience dealing with depression and also having a leadership position in the church, a large family, and demanding job. He told us that when things got nitty-gritty he focused on six things; three spiritual and three more physical/temporal.

Saving Six:
1) pray daily
2) scripture study
3) Attend church meetings and go to the temple
4) Eat a balanced diet that also includes enough water
5) Sleep appropriate amounts
6) Workout daily

My goal the next year is to focus on these six things when things get nitty-gritty and also to help prevent things from going down hill.

Hope

I think one of the hardest things about depression is hope. Depression for me goes in cycle; I call in my ferris wheel. When I am on the top top I am hopeful that this time the depression won't come back or at least stay away for a long time. Then
                                            down
                                                            I
                                                                              go.


The depression comes back. I cry. I tell myself I am not going to get hopeful. I go back up and the hope returns. Round and round and round I go. The dissapointment that comes when the depression comes back is very exhausting. If there was no hope there would be no expectations and thus no dissapointment.

On this round of depression the hope hasn't really come back. I also have been fighting it a bit as well. I almost don't want to allow myself to go back up because the pain of coming back down is a lot to bear. Whenever I think about my depression in this way I remember the movie "Bounce". In the movie Abby is left a widow after a plane crash and her friends tell her that "only the plane crashed, you have to bounce" to which Abby replies "... so that's what I've been doing all this time, bouncing... it's like crashing, except you get to do it over and over again". That is how the depression feels sometimes. I just go up and down, hope and crash, happy and sad over and over again.

Still a work in progress

Last night I attend a weekly depression support group that my church hosts for women. While we were we talking the topic switched to dealing with grief. While the group was still uplifting it was more somber than it had been in the past couple of months. When I got home I was met by dirty dishes, unfolded laundry, and wet sheets I forgot to put in the dryer. Eric had been working all evening trying to catch up on logging patients since his co-resident had been sick for two days. I felt myself sinking into a "woe is me, my life isn't perfect" mentality. While I was getting ready for bed I felt myself getting more and more black on the inside; anger over nothing, frustration with Eric over made up things, self loathing for not living up to my idea of perfect, etc, etc. As soon as my face was washed I was in my bed on my knees praying my heart out.

In the past praying was not the direction I would go in these situations. I would take it out on Eric, cry and let the blackness envelope me like a cloud. When I found that the desire to pray was the first thing I wanted to do I felt HOPE. Hope that maybe this change will truly be permanent and not just a phase. Hope that I am finally understanding what I have been taught and also taught to others for twenty years (I wasn't baptized and didn't attend church regularly until I was ten). Hope that I can be a better person and a better wife to Eric and a better mother to my future children and the children I work with at church every week.