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March 18, 2022
I know what depression feels like.
It feels like waking up every day with a weight of 100 pounds pressed down on your shoulders and still being expected to manage life.
It feels like standing on the outside of every circle where “normal” people live and dwell and move and laugh and can tolerate and navigate life well wondering why you can’t ever fit in.
It feels like aching to belong, longing to be asked to pull a seat up at the table, but never feeling you’re quite enough to be issued a real, lasting invitation.
Depression and loneliness feels like waiting to blow it. Waiting for the people around you to finally know and act on what you know about yourself – you can never be the person they need you to be or the woman you want to be.
But I also know what restoration feels like.
It feels like blowing it – saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, and expecting the people you love most in this world to disqualify you from sitting at their table – but miraculously, marvelously, looking up and see you are being served grace.
Delight. Laughter. Love. Warmth.
And seeing that my seat was still set at the table. My invitation still stood to sit down. My job in taking this Grace-soaked-Gospel-message of Jesus Christ was secure.
For so many years of my life, I wasn’t able to see a secure invitation of belonging, or taste it, or inhale the scent of it, or believe it. But when I hit the bottom, when I couldn’t manage my depression or frustration or anger (mainly at myself) or perfectionism or fear of failing anymore, grace rescued me.
God sent this little 17 pound wisp of a girl from the other side of the world, a girl who we wanted, and prayed for, and fought for, and loved before we ever saw her face or held her in our arms, to show me how much my Heavenly Father loved me. Not because of anything I did. Or the gifts I could offer. Or perfection I could maintain. But simply because I was His.
Restoration looked like adoption and settling into my identity as my Father’s daughter at the same time my daughter, Mia Grace, was settling into her identity as mine.
This is what Restore: Remembering Life’s Hurts with the God Who Rebuilds is all about.
It’s about Mia Grace and I both learning we had a secure place at the table. My place wasn’t despite depression, or around depression, but straight through depression into my Father’s arms.
So if you can identify at all with:
- Heavy days
- Dark days
- Days when it’s hard to breathe
- Days when anger is at the edge of all your words and lodged deep in your heart
- Deep disappointment in yourself
- Standing at the edge of things, never feeling as though you could ever have a secure place or invitation in
Then come and see. Come and see what it looks like to restore.
Hope and healing is waiting.
If you want to begin your journey before the release date on April 7th, the first chapter is my gift to you.
