Thankful for my struggles

Have you ever wondered what direction you were heading in life? What your destination was going to be? What was going to be the end result? No? 🤔 Maybe it was just me because I am an overthinker. I’ve been this way all of my life. Maybe because I am a Pisces. Or maybe it was because of my depressive state. Either way, sometimes my mind is in automatic overdrive.

It is 1:38 a.m. and after a 2 hour nap and dinner after church, my body doesn’t want to go to sleep. So here I am… thinking. I am reminiscing about how my life was until about 5 years ago. I was a homebody. My life was my kids. I struggled financially … robbing Peter to pay Paul … just to make sure we had a roof over our heads and food to eat. There were times when I would not eat, just so my kids didn’t go to bed hungry. I couldn’t afford cable anymore, so I cut it off and the kids and I would only look at DVD movies. Cash advance cashiers knew my face every time I walked in the door. It was kind of embarrassing, but I had to do what I had to do. I felt like a failure in every sense of the word. I wanted to throw in the towel so many times. I was drowning, my head barely above water, suffocating in my own despair and self-pity. But when I saw those smiles and heard those ‘I love you Mom,’ I got that extra boost of ‘You Can Do This’ energy I needed to push on.

I am thankful for my struggles. Struggles are life lessons that teaches us that our lives will not always be on the straight and narrow. There will be bends in the road and divided pathways that lead to unknown destinations. Our journeys are not known by us. So if you believe in our Lord and Savior, you already know that HE will direct our paths. All we have to do is trust and believe in Him.

I can honestly say that I never thought that my lifelong journey with depression would lead to me to write a book. In fact, I never thought I would make it this far in life. It was my ‘purpose’ to go through all of these trials and tribulations just so I could let someone else know that it’s ok to say you are in a state of depression. It’s ok to say you have a mental illness and not be ashamed to say so.

In my prayer to God, I said if I could just touch ONE person with this book, I would be blessed because my purpose was served. I didn’t write this book so I could get rich. Nooooo!!! I wrote this book to serve God’s purpose for me and through me. And my prayer was answered – repeatedly! So if you are at a place where you feel like you are going nowhere on your life’s journey, trust me, you are. You just don’t see the purpose yet. Just hold on until that change comes!

Until next time … be blessed.