Tag: healing

More Reflections, A Year With a Bunny Part Two

One year ago, we adopted Mia from a local rabbit rescue. We knew life would change, but we didn’t consider how much we would change and grow from this experience. These are my reflections on how our little house bunny, Mia, has shaped us in our first year together.

Awareness

Today, I accidentally scared Mia. I came downstairs from working out, with music playing on my phone, distracted and not considering the little bunny, snoozing in a deep sleep. As soon as I looked up from my phone, I was highly aware of what my blissful ignorance hath wrought: ears standing tall, eyes wide, and body tense, ready to run at the slightest hint of danger. Before Mia, I was aware of what startled me, but with Mia and her own sensitive ears, it has challenged me to approach life with an even gentler touch. Today was a day I forgot, but with each passing month, these moments of unawareness are decreasing. Getting used to how aware Mia is of her surroundings was intimidating at first. I remember feeling on edge those first weeks, feeling like I was unable to relax – scared to scare Mia – a bit impossible of a standard!

I’ve learned to be quiet, internally and externally. The desire for quiet, for the little prey animal in our midst, has become a craving for quiet coming from a place inside me. What felt like a burden at first has become a blessing, because the awareness of the sound level, the peaceful environment I wish to create for Mia, has become a goal I desire for my own needs. The awareness of the quiet and the peace is something that I need, that Kyle needs. It’s healthier for us, but in this distracted and noise-polluted world, I don’t know if my awareness was going to attune to this again without Mia.

Structure

Mia has a schedule, possibly wearing a little watch somewhere under all that fur. She hops to her dinner spot around 5 pm, and waits for her breakfast starting at 8 am. She knows what time we should go to bed, with a precision I wish I could stick to. I’m not blessed with a sense of schedule. I tend to drift off course, but Mia is teaching me structure, and her needs are reminding me how comforting a schedule can be. Taking care of her is teaching me more about what I actually need to take care of myself in a healthier way. How is this little bunny so wise, so intuitive? The promise to care for her, every day, is a responsibility that I thought would feel heavy and burdensome, but instead, it is a way I have rediscovered purposeful living. I am grateful.

Letting Go

Detachment from physical things is the hardest lesson I’ve had to learn from living with Mia. Mia loves to chew my stuff. She has chewed holes in sentimental blankets, she has forever changed favorite pieces of furniture, and she will take a chunk out of newly made pieces fresh from my workroom. She doesn’t discriminate from store-bought items either – brand new overalls, my phone case, my Nalgene bottle. This has stressed me out. Mia has chewed the couch, a brand new coffee table hand-built by Kyle, the freshly painted baseboards, slippers, and I’m sure there will be more. I’ve gone through the stages of grief. I’ve had moments of intense frustration and questioning it all. But when I committed to adopting Mia, I told myself that I would remember that people are more important than things, and in this case, people and little furry members of the family.

The Floor is Great

I love sitting on the floor. I have always loved sitting on the floor; it grounds my mind – no pun intended. But dating and spending time at future in-law houses and not wanting to be weird, renting with worn wood floors, and moving into adulthood with busy schedules, changed my life from a cozy floor sitter to work chairs and collapsing into couches at the end of the day. Or sitting at my sewing table in a chair with bad posture. I stopped sitting on the floor. But with a rabbit, they like and need you to be on their level. I believe it is essential for bonding with your rabbit. At the beginning, it was hard. It felt unnatural after a decade of not being on the floor. The floor felt hard, unwelcoming. Even with carpet. But after a few months, I felt comfortable. My hips and back hurt less when I spend time on the floor. A year later, I am back to being a floor dweller. Without Mia, would I have ever gone back? I don’t know, but wow, my body feels more comfortable, younger even.

Slow Down, Be Present

The final thing that my rabbit soulmate has taught me this year is to be present and slow down. Mia is already four; she has an estimated lifespan of 12 years, which is not a lot of time when you really care about someone. I don’t want to miss any more moments with her. Kyle and I celebrated 9 years of marriage this year, 11 years together. Time feels like it is flying, and I want to be more present in my relationship with him. My mom and my stepdad are also getting older, and I want to be more present. Mia is teaching me that. Where I can, when I can make the choice to pause what I am doing to spend time with her, and I challenge myself to do so. That has been a challenge. I tend to hyperfixate on projects, which burn me out, but a difficult bad habit to break.

This year, I have created less, but I am feeling the balance being restored to my life. Without Mia hopping over to spend time with me, who knows if I would be shifting my perspective to a healthier state of mind? I can feel my mind and body feeling less stressed. Mia naps a lot, and that is another piece of the slowing-down puzzle that I am learning to accept without guilt. Rest is important. Rest is necessary. Slowing down is good for us. But we resist, because it’s tough to go against the grain. Rest is seen as lazy, even though our bodies and minds get burnt out. Living with Mia is helping me reset those misconceptions and take better care of myself.

Final Thoughts

I would 100% recommend adopting a rabbit if you have been thinking about it. Adopt any pet, actually, or volunteer at a local animal shelter. Do your research and get involved; it will change your life for the better. Animals are so calming. Mia has helped me open up again, in ways I thought I was closed off for good. It’s helped me understand my neurodivergence, my sensitivity, my trauma. She just gets me. She listens, she is there. She has become a best friend, and don’t we all need more of that in our lives? And what about Mia? Well, I’m honored that we got to provide her with her furever home. She has a big space to zoomie around, endless hay, and pets. She gets to watch TV, explore the couch, and have all her toys and treats to herself. She is the center of attention and trusts us. It’s amazing to know a prey animal trusts you. It challenges you to be the best person you can be.

#66 – Pies, C-PTSD, and Learning How To Move Forward

It’s been a complicated week. I had plans to start blogging every day, to clean my house in one day not over several to prepare for hosting Thanksgiving. I also thought my pie crust would roll out with ease. Nothing went to plan.

It started with the couch breaking. One evening we noticed the leg fell off the mid-support but instead of buying a new one (Have you seen the price of couches lately? Yikes. Dubious quality to boot.) we opted to fix it. Improve it really. That was a bump in the road, the couch is stronger, and we have storage, but then we hit a pothole.

It’s like our rescue rabbit Mia unbonded to us. She became irritable and aggressive and would thrash around her room. She bites at us, growls at us, and won’t let us do normal things like sweep out her area. This whole situation is discouraging because how will we be able to properly care for her if she won’t let us? I never experienced this with my previous rabbit, Midnight, or with my family dog, Sully.

I was thrown into a murky mental pool. I have some deep memories from childhood of my dad that terrify me when loud outbursts happen. How could this happen? This rabbit I was so excited to adopt and give a loving home, was suddenly a source of triggering panic.

Cleaning ground to a halt. Kyle’s woodworking is uncertain. Walking through the office and living room tense, uncertain, scary, as the furball held us in her grip of territorial fury. She began to destroy the floor filling me with despair.

Every little part of preparing for the holiday felt treacherous as the C-PTSD clouded me from the reality of the tasks in front of me to the mountains of my mind. The craggy, inhospitable rock that has been too high to climb. I didn’t expect this random experience to cause such pain and confusion in my mind.

But the clock kept moving forward and things still needed to be done. This holiday we looked toward with joy could not become a thing we wanted to run from. It was our first holiday here.

Living as a human can be so tough. We are all broken and have hidden scars that can be reopened in the blink of an eye. What has been the most challenging part of this week has been where I find my pauses to take a breath. Finding opportunities in the chaos to recenter instead of giving up.

Making those pies was one of those moments of joy in the center of the storm. Cutting the Crisco into the flour is rhythmic. Feeling the sand become dough, stimming. Rolling out the crust and having it fall apart, is tragic! Finding the inspiration to make the difficult crust mold into the pie tin anyway, is a victory!

Seeing the smiles the pumpkin and apple pie brought to my family filled me with warmth. Yesterday, was a wonderful day. Yes because the food was delicious, but more so for the reminder that what makes the day special is being next to my loved ones and reflecting on the year and what blessings we received despite the chaos of life.

I hope you know that you are loved, dear reader and that you remember not to give up!

The Scarcity Mindset of Red vs Blue

It’s been a wild ride here in the United States, as everyone around the world has probably followed. As a U.S. resident the opinions, the reactions, and the culture have been like nothing I have seen before. Truly surprising. What has surprised me the most has been the personal ethics and scarecity mindsets I have observed, from my fellow Americans sharing on social media.

The Roar of Social Media

For a land of opportunity and abundance, there are certainly a lot of conflicting opinions on that statement. Some people are quite in touch with the struggles of inflation and the economy and others are participating in conspicuous consumption. Some are lamenting in blue and some are gloating in red, others are calling for retrospection and unity, but one thing has been the common thread – it’s a bigger knot of problems than I ever expected, and untangling this is going to take more time than I think most people are willing to give it.

There is impatience and aggression. A celebration of nastiness on every level that I am shocked by. How long has this nasty edge been living under the surface waiting for us to notice its venom? How does the simple act of Patrick Ta’s eyeshadow being priced at $42 become a hotbed of elitism and premeditated nastiness towards complete strangers on the internet? It’s bizarre and I can only guess it has nothing to do with eyeshadow and more with a deep level of dissatisfaction in our current world.

Loss of Gentleness

I saw increasing pressure from political ads this year to be afraid of what lurks in the blue and the red. The election is over yet I am still getting ads targeting this fear and exploiting our peace for the sake of agenda. It is maddening and disheartening to me that we are allowing our peace to be stolen. Especially the peace of those most vulnerable in society.

I’m observing responses from people I follow who are letting their fear isolate them. I saw a call to clear out friends lists “to control what you can” like burning bridges is healthy advice for all situations. It can be, but it can also lead to a lot of pain and loneliness. Acting on emotions is a shifting sand. When your emotions change how can your choices be healthy and stable in the long run? There is more chance of self-sabotage than true desire.

I have been a bridge burner and when I look back at what fueled my decisions, it was not a healthy mindset. It was one deep in crisis allowing the self-destructive nature to keep me from moving forward. I’m also not writing this to judge anyone. I’m writing this from a place of concern to keep others from making the same mistakes as me. Mistakes that I wish I could take back.

One thing I have taken from these last few weeks is the importance of gentleness and patience. We are fully capable of living in a community with others who disagree with us if we choose to be gracious to one another and respect healthy boundaries. Not playing on each others’ fear or looking for fights. That’s just plain mean and not how you maintain relationships. That has been the number one thing I have noticed through this 2024 election cycle, is the lack of focus on America being one community and learning how to work with each other in our differences.

Truth and Realignment

I’m not saying my culture needs to let bullies keep bullying or evil take root for the sake of peace. I think we need to kick bad out and leave room for the good and the truth to flourish. What I am saying is that I think we need to pause, take a breath, and be willing to try reconciling. If it’s bad and causes more pain, okay, then we stop and reevaluate, but I don’t think it would be.

I think my fellow citizens are weary and lonely. We need each other to embrace our differences to see that we have more common ground than we have let agendas tell us we do.

Thinking purple instead of red and blue would be a good start. Abandoning the scarcity mindset would also be a healthy move toward letting go of fear. Especially as believers, there is nothing to fear if we fully surrender to God.

This has just been on my heart lately, dear reader, and I hope I haven’t offended you. I’ve been feeling creatively off from the sheer amount of negativity being spread. It is draining as an HSP neurodivergent introvert who seeks to spread kindness and love yet can’t fix the pain of people in my community. I wish I could and maybe this post is at least a safe space to ponder and start new conversations? I’m trying to focus on the positive.

We will also be back to our regularly scheduled programming of sewing, knitting, art, Bible Study, and K-pop content soon. This just felt too important to ignore.

Thank you for taking time with me today. I hope you know that you are loved and worthy. Until next time 🫶

Reclaiming the Calm

As I mentioned in The Rewards and Scars of Setting Healthy Boundaries, I am on a journey to let go of the cortisol and tension I have unknowingly stored in my body. I didn’t realize I was doing this, possibly for decades now, because I don’t feel my feelings I bury them, which I’m working on. The only time I think I wasn’t doing this was during my sophomore and junior years in college when I was doing yoga practice, deep breathing, and trying to get to know myself. Which sounds odd, but was a great way to get through a broken heart.

Emotional Unintelligence

The hows and whys of the broken heart are a bit complicated but I was muddling through the after-effects of a situation ship. Why a situation ship? Well, I believe I was doing anything and everything to feel something, because I buried the heartbreak I felt at the end of high school, realizing my dad had missed my entire childhood and turning 18 meant that child support, the only string connecting us was severed. I didn’t know where he was and if I would see him again. It turns out I did see him again and would be moving to the same town as him five years later, another story for another day. Life is wild.

Anyways, coming out of high school the weight of that broken heart was so much I didn’t know what to do with it. There was so much emotion, so much tension and confusion, in my mind and body that I didn’t understand so my brain freaked out and gave me my first taste of anxiety, depression, and panic. It was a lot. During this time I also lost my ability to cry. I went totally numb which was unnerving, but at the time I was happy at least I wasn’t overwhelmed by my emotions anymore. The downside was that I felt nothing.

I’m Chuck Bass

I didn’t like that. I’m a highly sensitive person, an artistic soul, and feeling is how I understand the world around me. I wanted to feel like myself again. Here’s where the mess began – I decided to go into dating in college in this incredibly unhealthy mindset. These casual relationships were doomed from the start. It couldn’t grow into something real because I wasn’t emotionally available. Which opened the door for the worst relationship type in my opinion the situationship. It was the exact opposite of what my personality needs or wants but hey, I couldn’t feel anything so how hurt could I get?

Blown Up Life

Yeah, this blew up in my face. Once I came out of this situationship and this time of emotional numbness, I realized that I had completely blown up my life. Close relationships that I had from high school were not there. I had not invested in good friendships and community in my college life either by not seeking it out or ditching out on friends who could have been healthy supportive people, because I was scared of these friendships. It was a mess. I was so lonely. I had to get to know myself because there was no one else. I also didn’t know myself anymore. Who was this numb person I had been? Who is this new person who feels, but also feels lost and lonely?

There was so much I needed to understand about myself before I could be a good friend again or try dating once more. I didn’t know where I was going, or who I wanted to be as an adult. There was so much change in a short time. It was time to pause, slow down, and spend time doing the work to find this new person within the closed-off shell.

Meeting A Healthier Me

During this time I became independent for the time. I started going to the coffee shop by myself and learned to be okay on my own, which was wild. This is a skill I’ve forgotten how to do. I let myself be alone with my thoughts, it was a rough road to get there. This time alone started with a season of insomnia, where there was no choice but to be by myself, and now I realize spent time alone with God even though I wasn’t focused on this at the time. I discovered new shows like Fruits Basket, Trigun, Firefly, and Vikings. I also began thinking seriously about what I wanted in life with this new scenario. I didn’t end up going to fashion school or doing the Fashion Business major I was supposed to create with my advisor. I found myself drawn to fashion history through the creative sandbox of one cool professor who gave us the freedom to explore our interests.

I also started doing yoga and learning to train my mind and my breathing to keep going when my body and mind were tangled up in knots from the stress and trauma of life. It was the first time I think I was doing exercise for exercise itself not for a job like paint crew or campus mail delivery for the mailroom, which were both pretty physical. My campus was old and full of hills and stairs, so many stairs.

2020s Version of Numb

As life goes on, things repeat. Life changed again and I got busy. I stopped practicing these healthy habits into post-grad and getting married which was dumb on my part. I got healthier but I don’t think I got wiser. So I find myself now relearning how to find healthy balance and healthy habits to rid myself of the tension and wild mind that has trapped me in a prison of my own making.

How do I find my way out? My plan is to reflect and discuss that process here as I go through this journey of self-discovery again because I think this is something we all face and I wish I had known more about emotional health when I was younger. There are a lot of things that kept that from being something I understood. We don’t always have the most emotionally mature parents and I think it’s hard to talk about. I hope you’ll join me on this little adventure.

Easter Traditions and Celebrating the Resurrection

For a while now, during Easter Week, I feel a bit like Charlie Brown, and like unsatisfied Chuck, I’ve been doing some thinking. Why does it feel like however I’m celebrating Easter that year, it’s just not exactly enough or appropriate for the gravity of what Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Resurrection Sunday truly represent?

Tradition!

Some of this feeling is my fault as I have changed churches a lot and gone through big moves and stretches of not knowing where to attend for a complex of reasons. That being said, I remember as a kid the feeling of joy and exaltation that filled the house from Palm Sunday on when I lived my grandparents. There was the music, a 1995 Easter cantata that my Grandma would play while baking tea rings, a Swedish wreath shaped pastry, for us and the whole neighborhood. It was a tea ring factory filled with music that told the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry, his walk to the Cross, his death and Resurrection, as told from different perspectives of witnesses.

My grandparents, I see now as an adult, gave me an example of balance for this holiday, because it wasn’t somber and it wasn’t trivialized into a holiday about bunnies and chocolate with a splash of Jesus. There was genuine joy, faith, and love for others expressed. Grandma would usually play piano at church on one of the Sunday services and Papa would help serve communion as part of his duties as a church Elder. He and I would enjoy the Easter chocolate after service and my extended family and friends would come over after church for a meal. There was usually a small candy egg hunt for me and my cousins too.

Since then two things have changed in my experience of Easter – the absence of family for those traditions and the absence of faith in our Easter celebrations.

When my mom got remarried I experienced my first Easter holiday where believing Easter was about Jesus was weird. My new family were and are some of the nicest people I’ve met and yet, this day was so weird because I’m not exactly sure what we were celebrating? As they grew up in the church but had moved away from the faith into adulthood and raised my cousins without any context of Jesus, it was an odd day, full of love and great memories, but a bit hollow? It was eye opening in a good way of the bigger context of the world and how not everyone believes the exact same things as you but you can still get along. It was a point of maturity for sure and put this ache in my heart for the old holidays with my grandparents.

The weirdest of these experiences for sure has been the holiday with traditions but without family. Do traditions matter if there is no one to share them with? It’s a weird place to think through because you don’t want to lose your family traditions, but like, you can’t help feeling like its dead without the rest of the family to share with. And this is not because my family all died, no just my grandparents did, and my extended family on that side lives within a 10 mile drive of each other. They simply have no interest in getting along anymore and have just dropped our family connection because of silly disagreements and its sad. Being on the receiving end of it it honestly feels like crap. There have been holidays I have absolutely dreaded because of this and its taken time to start to be okay with the new normal of being an island.

Love Your Neighbor as Yourself

Something that has helped me move forward to a new normal has been to focus on what the holiday is actually about – Jesus’s death and resurrection so that we can have salvation from our sins and become a new creation in Him. In doing this I found myself ironically back at the same problem, no matter how I celebrate this day it doesn’t feel like enough. Until yesterday while I was doing dishes and was daydreaming, I thought about something I think is profound.

I think the reason this holiday in the United States feels a bit flat is because this day represents a moment in humanity that is a bit bigger than just a day of remembrance. It’s a day where I want to give thanks to God for sending his son to do this amazing work of redemption. It was the ultimate gift that I have received. It symbolizes a new start and also a day of freedom and independence from my sin. It is essentially four of our major holidays rolled into one – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, and the Juneteenth/4th of July. Because of this I’m not sure if I will ever feel truly satisfactory with how I celebrate this holiday. I don’t think its possible and that’s okay. And potentially how the Reformed Presbyterian church (as much as my Wesleyan mind grumbles giving Calvinism the nod here) is right and celebrating the resurrection every Sunday is the most satisfactory.

So I guess my point here from all my rambling is that I miss my family, I wish they would come back but if they don’t its okay because there are others who love me that may not share my beliefs and the ultimate point of this holiday is not ham, candy, or pastry, it’s the resurrection and what we do with this fresh start. Giving in love of our time and our resources to bless others with what we have to continue what Jesus started almost 2000 years ago. He is risen! He is risen, indeed.

#47 – Goodbye February

This month has straight up stunk. It was a pinball of coming off those allergic reactions I mentioned in #45 – Allergy and Winter Winds, coming down with a cold or a cold, getting better, having an allergic reaction to my eyeshadow, getting another cold, discovering my body wash and loofah combo was giving me irritation, in the form of friction hives, and having to stop drinking camomille to get the hives to go away. I was stuck in this loop of discouragement and I definitely let it live in my mind leading to worry and feeling stuck, basically, like this gif when Kim and Ron switch bodies because of Drakken’s body-switching machine. It was one flip to another flop, nothing progressing, just stuck.

That is life, it kicks our butts, leaves us discouraged, and some days feel like a bunch of little things going wrong are going to give us death by a thousand paper cuts. But honestly, that’s part of the journey of existence. Life does not give us any guarantees that each day is going to be sunshine and rainbows, some days are like a tsunami, and other days are like tripping, repeatedly. I’m thankful that it was only a bunch of small little things breaking my focus, instead of one of those big things that shake us to our core. As a highly sensitive person, I can let the little things swirl around in my head until they are big, shakeable problems that tower over me. These little setbacks taught me something pretty important, I need people in my life. I crave it more than my introverted nature is willing to admit.

On those days, when I felt frustrated and down, lost in the worry of my own head, the thing that pulled me back to the light were people. They helped me remember that I wasn’t alone, but instead that I am loved and needed by others in return. There is purpose and worth in the person I am in being there for others in my life.

It was the small things, Kyle taking care of me when I was feeling really crumby, like asking if I had taken medicine or refilling my water bottle before I realized it was empty. Him doing the dishes, cooking dinner, and making me tea in the morning as I was super slow pulling myself out of bed. Those are huge when you are feeling sick and he is so patient with me. Or my neighbor, who texted me one morning because our Amazon packages got mixed up, remembering she is next door and always there if I need a friend. A phone conversation with a friend, talking about anything or nothing, but the connection of catching up after a while and spending time in that bubble together is such a refreshing reset. Having one of those low-maintenance friendships where she texts me out of the blue and we spend time catching up writing digital letters to each other until the conversation fades, knowing we’ll pick it back up later on. Admitting to my mom that I was scared because she was having complications from her surgery this past summer, saying the fear aloud and facing that I didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. A quick chat with my stepdad, talking nonsense but having a blast doing it. My brother-in-law video calling me out of the blue to catch up as we both cook dinner.

Those little moments of community, pull me out of the funk I was in faster than I realized. We really need people. This modern life is lonely. If nothing else, from this month, I learned how dissatisfied I am with the digital barriers there are to the community and how I don’t want to settle anymore. Because people matter and we need them even if we get peopled out easily. Goodbye, February, my relentless gremlin and ironically, the frank teacher I needed.

Living Without Him

What fears have you overcome and how?

One of my biggest fears was realized when death came knocking and was forced to live apart from my grandpa. He was such a big part of my life growing up, filling both the role of grandfather and dad when I was young.

In 1st grade, fresh from retirement from his role as an athletic director, he suited up he said for his most important job yet – picking me up from school. Every day he lined up his truck in the parking lot with coffee and newspaper in hand, chuckling to himself that he was the only “old guy” there in a sea of minivans and stay-at-home moms.

I got used to his presence, whether it was the car rides home from school with a serenade of his music, usually The Brothers Four, or another singing group he liked in college. Sometimes it was Willie Nelson, Vince Gill, could be Alabama. If there was a quartet performance coming up, he would practice his part as the high tenor of The King’s Men gospel quartet. After school, he might teach me how to hit a baseball properly or we would wash the car. When I got a pet rabbit in 3rd grade, Papa was by my side caring for the rabbit like it was his own. He built me a swingset and went to every chorus content, home volleyball game, art show, open house, jog-a-thon, etc.

As I grew older, and my mom bought her own house, our relationship had to change because instead of seeing him at the breakfast table and after school, I had to be intentional. I talked to him and Grandma after school on the phone. I’d visit them on the weekends and on breaks from school, I always knew I was welcome to be there. On Saturday mornings, we made a standing date to get breakfast at a local diner. We had a special order, he would order eggs, bacon, and toast with an extra plate. I ordered the pancakes and we’d split the lot. He taught me how to ride a bike, so why wouldn’t I look to him to teach me how to drive? It just made sense. Moving into college we had pizza lunch dates, where we’d discuss my classes and his current readings. In the fall, he was my football game buddy.

It was his opinion I cared the most about, from what career choice I made to the boy I started dating, and was getting pretty fond of junior year. When that boy asked me to marry him, Kyle became part of our little circle. I knew time existed, and the limitations of age and health would get us eventually, but when death came to take Papa away, I realized how scary it was to think of carrying on without him. It felt impossible. Unnatural.

Today is the third anniversary and I’m relieved that I feel okay, as weird as it is to be okay. I didn’t think I could find this place of being okay. Overcoming my fear took practice. When death happens you don’t really get a chance to prepare. The moment it happens there is no going back and it’s weird.

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
    nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
    and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
    and there be no herd in the stalls,
 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
    I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
 God, the Lord, is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the deer’s;
    he makes me tread on my high places.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 ESV

What helped me get through this fear the most was the support to keep walking forward, my support came from the Lord and my wonderful friends (and best friend, Kyle). I had to believe that God’s promises were good. Like the words of Tauren Wells’ song “God’s Not Done” I had to trust that there was more for me coming than the dead end, I felt stuck in. Fear is a liar, as Zach Williams writes, and pushing the fear back into its place was what ultimately helped me. But this journey has been three years of hard work and there are still moments where I feel like I’ve made zero progress. That’s when I remember Habakkuk 3:17-19 and Lamentations 3:22-24. It’s a tough road, but I am learning to feel the emotions instead of being afraid of them.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”

Lamentations 3:22-24

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