Searching for Abundance
I’m out of practice.
This little cursor has grown intimidating in my absence. Blinking, waiting, maybe, for me to close the laptop and walk away altogether, as is my latest habit, but something even more persistent is rising up in me. Tenacious, even.
“Keep going,” it says.
And so I will, not perfectly, but purposefully.
Five months have passed since my last blog, and I have to admit I’ve thought of you (my reader) often. There were many days I felt like I was failing you by not showing up, but I’d like to be honest with you about why I’ve been hidden. Lately, life has felt like walking through a mucky swamp with too-big-boots on both feet; each step hard on its own, complicated by the fact that I’m trying not to let my boots slip off and disappear altogether into the muck.
Mental illness is a strange thing, poorly understood by many and often painfully subtle. In my life, it sneakily takes the things I love, things that are good for my body and soul, and convinces me not to do them or saps my energy so I feel like I “just can’t.” Ironically, it spends all its time convincing me to avoid what will help heal me. I’ve spent many days since I last wrote to you just staring at the ceiling above my couch, skipping showers and opting to work in my pajamas, or mindlessly playing games on my phone while watching a show I don’t even like (for hours) even though none of these things make me feel good. I’ve felt lonely and isolated and not good enough even though I know better. Maybe you can relate on some level, or maybe you can’t, but either way, I hope you can understand a bit about why I’ve been absent.
A few things happened last week that brought me back to this page to be here with you. The first thing, I started seeing a therapist, and after listening for a while, she encouraged me to write again, (and so did a few dear friends, thank you). The second thing that happened, I stumbled across some old sermon notes in my Bible from nearly 3 years ago next to Philippians 3:12-14 (ESV):
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Pastor Josh Hawk called this sermon “How to Live an Impossible Life,” and I only wrote down a few small things. However, this scripture and the notes I scribbled in the margins gave me a timely reminder that I haven’t made it yet, and yet, Jesus has made me His own - His bride, His daughter, His beloved. Jesus has called us all to live a life where our cups run over and over, a life of absolute, incomprehensible, and tangible fullness. We have permission to forget the past, leave it behind like a pair of old, worn-out boots, and fix our hearts on the promises of the future, stretching our fingers and toes towards those good things.
A gift like this should leave us kicking off the too-big-expectations of the world and running with passion into fields of abundance, into Jesus, but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes, mental illness can hide this goodness. That’s why we need people, why we need the Word, to help guide us back to places we once knew well, places we still know by heart but somehow forgot how to find our way back to.
I can’t make you a promise about how frequently I’ll write because I’m still finding my way back, but I can promise to keep searching. If you’re not in the muck, I hope you’ll take the hand of someone who is and hold on tight until their feet find the fields of abundance again, and if you’re in the muck, I hope you’ll promise to keep searching and fighting, too.
