Faith, Hope, Love, and Therapy

Eulogy

June 9, 2024June 9, 2024 jnjander

I really haven't written anything since he died. Maybe because he was the biggest fan of my writing, my biggest cheerleader. It feels weird to put anything out there knowing he won't read it, or give me feedback, or even just a comment to tell me how much he loved it. I want to curl up next to him with a cup of coffee and tell him about the books I've read recently, the chaos at work, the amazing things his grandchildren have done in the last two years. I want to meet him for tacos at his favorite Mexican place and debate philosophy and politics until they kick us out. I want to invite him over for peach cobbler, add vanilla ice cream to the bowls even though we both know its terrible for us, and listen to music together. I want so many things, but mostly I want to tell him I love him. Since I can't do any of those things, I'm sharing below the only thing I've written since he died. His eulogy

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The Midst and Momentum

May 17, 2022 jnjander

I have been here forever. In the midst of this season of sadness. According to the calendar its been 3.5 weeks, but depression lives in its own time warp. A Newtonian fluid of fast and slow – where you feel as though you have always been this dark, and yet surely it hasn’t already been more than three weeks since you first began to cry at the sight random daffodil blooms.

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One Full Year

March 10, 2021March 11, 2021 jnjander

I’d like to pretend that when I think back on the past year, that eventually I’ll think first of these silver linings - but I doubt it. I’m always the girl that remembers the sad, the hard, the hurt. But writing them down makes them tangible, helps me remember.

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Maybe It’s Grief

February 10, 2021February 11, 2021 jnjander

The life we had a year ago, the easiness we enjoyed, the routine and the normal and lack of fear, has died a thousand times. Sometimes daily, sometimes hourly. The tiny ways we work to rebuild normalcy, to find new dreams and goals, have been forged in a raging, hurried fire, and then broken again and again.

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Holy Week: Love to the End

April 11, 2020April 11, 2020 jnjander

He Loved us through our fears. Through our uncertainties and doubts. Through the times that we’ve turned away and cursed at Him. Through the times we have failed to love others. He loved us through all of those things, through His own pain and exhaustion, to the end.

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Into the Unknown

March 18, 2020 jnjander

It feels like a roller coaster right now for everyone. Every day is another announcement, another fear, another new normal to navigate. Each moment where we think we have something figured out, where we think we can breathe, is interrupted by a precipitous fall toward the unknown.

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Self-Care

February 19, 2020 jnjander

This fragile balance she has created, this magic teeter-totter of support and outlet, of mental work and physical strength begins to wobble and finds herself walking a tightrope no longer securely anchored.

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Weary and Well

January 25, 2020 jnjander

I don’t know what best describes this space I’m currently occupying. It’s easier to laugh, easier to see beauty, easier to breathe. But I still live in that weary space, waiting for the shoe to drop, expecting the gray to roll back in, the walls to begin to smolder and burn.

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Rest. But Do Not Quit.

October 11, 2019 jnjander

I’m so glad we are talking about it, so relieved my children live in a world where therapy is normalizing and stigma is being removed. So unbelievably grateful to attend a church where counseling and medication is not viewed as a flaw in my faith. 
And I’m so tired of being that woman who is still talking about it. Still fighting it.

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Voices

September 6, 2019 jnjander

Her voice made so much sense. Everything she told me sounded true. And no one else was saying anything to me to contradict her. And so I listened as she told me that I was unworthy, unlovable, broken, wrong.