#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 10, 2021)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi lovely blog friends! I’m so excited to be joining in on this week’s #WeekendCoffeeShare. It is newly hosted by Natalie and I’m so glad to see so many people have joined in already. I really need to write my coffee share posts earlier in the future, but oh well. At least I haven’t had my last cup of coffee for the day yet.

If we were having coffee, I’d share that the weather is pretty good here. At least for winter. It does drizzle a bit every now and again and yesterday the pavements were a bit slippery from the ice. I thankfully could still go for a walk.

If we were having coffee, I would proudly tell you that I got in nearly twice as many steps over the past week as my sister. I also broke my active heartrate zone minutes record, which was at 405 for the week of November 9, 2020 and is now already at 426. I plan on going for another walk later this evening, so I’ll add more to it.

If we were having coffee, I’d say that I’m planning on keeping a food journal from tomorrow on. I for now don’t intend on sharing it here and I’m not intending on consciously changing anything about my eating as of yet. It’s just so that I can be completely honest about the foods I eat and how I feel about my choices. I have some type of overeater’s journal and it appeals to me.

If we were having coffee, I’d like to ask my fellow Christian bloggers to pray for me. I’m struggling a bit with my faith in relation to my bad habits, including overeating. Basically, I’m stuck on the rules of Overeaters Anonymous and the like, such as three meals a day and nothing in between. I feel resistance to admitting I’m not in control, even though I know I’m not. I may not be making as unhealthy choices in my life as I was a few months ago, but I really need to credit God for this and relinquish my control over to Him.

In a similar way, I’m struggling with admitting I’m a sinful human being. Remember when, a few months ago, I wrote about grief? I felt like I was intensely wicked on some deep level then. Then I learned about Bobby Schuller and his book You Are Beloved and I wanted so badly to believe it, but the enemy keeps telling me I don’t need Jesus for this. I am struggling to realize that, before I believed in Jesus, I was stuck on feeling wicked. Please, if you’re a Christian, pray for my continued spiritual formation.

What’s been going on in your life?

Moving Beyond Shame

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve been struggling a lot lately. I feel shame over a lot of things. Then again, my husband said that shame is only useful for the one second you realize you should’ve done different. Then you need to move on.

I just read a part of Bobby Schuller’s book You Are Beloved in which he tells me that God’s love is the antidote to shame. Jesus, he says, did not act out of shame. Maybe he didn’t even feel it. He didn’t care about his reputation, inviting the lowest-status people of his time to eat with him. Schuller notes that eating with someone in Jesus’ time on Earth means seeing them as equals.

Jesus regarded people who didn’t believe they belonged, as equals. Of course, he is God, so we can never measure up to that, but we can rest assured that he loves us no matter what.

God, help me move beyond the feeling of shame towards an experience of peace. I know You love me for who I am. Please help me see this with all my heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This post was written for Five Minute Friday, for which the prompt this week is “Beyond”. I didn’t set a timer, but I think I did a pretty good job of doing this piece in five minutes.

Fighting the Depression Demon

Posted on by Astrid

I was in yet another crisis yesterday. When the extra staff was about to leave, I crashed and started crying. The staff felt somehow obliged to stay and, when she finally left, another staff tried to comfort me. I cried for like three hours.

Then today it seemed to start all over again. I decided to call my husband, who told me to push the depressive thoughts away. I was going to say I feel like a selfish monster for having even unconsciously made the staff stay yesterday, but my husband said that I need to push away those thoughts too.

My husband kept repeating that I’m not a monster and I need to stop those thoughts now. He said that these thoughts are destructive. I find it hard to understand, but maybe on some level I do. I mean, I feel that I’m wicked and that’s why I’m depressed and that’s why I ask for more and more help and that’s why people leave me and that’s why I’m depressed. I can see now that this is a vicious cycle. I’m not sure it isn’t true, but I remember from the little cognitive behavior therapy I took years ago that really it doesn’t matter. It’s non-functional. Or destructive even. And that’s what matters.

My husband tried to remind me that God loves me. I kept getting stuck on technicalities such as the fact that I wasn’t baptized. At first he told me: “So then get baptized if it helps you.” I can’t see how I could be baptized in this time of social distancing.

Then my husband started to tell me that I am at a crossroads and can take one step towards despair or one step towards hope each second. Maybe even if I don’t get baptized at this point, because well I can’t, I can take a number of baby steps towards hope. Towards God.

Lord, please help me take every second as it comes. Please help me choose each second to take that one step, even if it’s a snail’s step (or crawl, whatever snails do), closer to You.

Lord, thank you for bringing my husband into my life. Thank you for speaking through him and reminding me to live positively. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Now I’m totally clueless about the supposed format of prayers, so I have no idea whether this was a proper one. I trust God hears me whether my prayer was written properly though.

Grief

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s Five Minute Friday prompt is Grief. When I first saw it, I knew I just had to write on it, but I didn’t know what to write. In a way, I still don’t know. But let me write anyway.

I have been close to clinically depressed over the past few weeks. I don’t know whether this is grief for something I have lost. Perhaps my old, functional self.

Then again, that functional self was a façade. A mask. Layers upon layers of masks formed within those early years of my life, when I still functioned. On the surface, that is.

And here I am, in a care facility, waiting for the manager and behavior specialist and the funding authority to figure out if I can get one-on-one support. And now I grieve the loss of that façade. I am intensely sad. I worry that if I am truly myself, if I peel off all the layers and layers of masks, an intensely wicked, horrible monster will remain. I can almost literally picture the monster in my mind’s eye.

Everytime I think I’ve found the real, authentic me, and it’s a good thing, it turns out to be yet another alter. I wonder what remains if they all go. Will the intensely wicked, horrible inside of me seep through to the outside world?

I am not very religious, but I do believe in God. Especially in these hard times, I pray. I pray that God will help me remove the layers and layers of masks I’ve put up over the years. I however also pray that, beneath them all, the monster will turn out to be some kind of prince(ss) from Beauty and the Beast or whatever. At least not as wicked as I see it as.

Okay, this turned out very different than I had imagined. This piece does reflect my innermost thoughts. For those who haven’t read my previous posts, I do not see my inner monster as some kind of universal thing, like original sin. In fact, I am convinced that most people are both good and bad. The wickedness applies only to myself. And yes, I know I’m not some type of criminal, but I still see myself as intensely bad.