I’m sorry that so far my writing this year has been…weird. Or at least it feels weird to me. My year started out with some hard things, as I’m sure your’s might have as well. I’ve had “trauma brain” to be honest and that means that I haven’t been able to think clearly, I’ve been sleeping extra (which is kind of a big deal because I already slept a lot as my norm), and I’ve just had this feeling of “everything, just stop for a minute” yet of course, it doesn’t.
Regardless of why I’m feeling this way, when I come to Jesus with it all, He holds it and He holds me. I am positive I will come to a place of acceptance and we will be okay. But until I feel okay, I am genuinely thrilled to know it’s okay to not be okay.
I love my growing up years, and it was a very positive childhood. I think it was great in many ways that I was raised to not focus much on my feelings. But there is another side of that, too, and now I am an adult having to be persuaded that it is actually very important to acknowledge, and sit with, and accept, what I’m feeling. While feelings have to be balanced with truth, and thank God, feelings don’t get the last word, they matter. So these past couple years of growing in not feeling guilty for negative feelings or not worrying too much about confusing feelings has been incredibly life giving.
So, it’s okay to sit with the fact there will be days when every thing makes sense and clicks and moves forward, and there will be days when we just exist. Yay for that. Hooray for existence! Here’s what we can do, regardless of whether we can get to “okay” today or not:
We can choose to encourage someone, and we can seek encouragement from others.
We can read God’s Word and trust HIM to settle it in our hearts and minds, whether we feel like we can absorb it and assimilate it or not.
We can breathe. We can move our bodies. We can experience outdoors. We can feel grass under our feet, air in our noses.
We can make clarifying lists such as “Who do I need to forgive?” and “Who may I need to reach out to for forgiveness?”
We can give thanks and praise the Lord just for who He is.
We can pray the simplest prayer, knowing God loves us in every season and every stage.
We can drink water and eat food, really good food.
We can hug someone, even if it feels like it might bring on the tears or make us feel or just be weird.
We can take steps that don’t feel like much, but these things bring our human selves (and our spiritual selves) to life…
You don’t have to be okay. But you don’t have to stay exactly where you are today, either.
Praise be to God, who leads us in triumphal procession…
