I was a hider. We lived in our current home for over seven years before I really began to make friends. I kept myself closed off and didn’t allow myself to show. The anxiety I battled and my struggle with keeping my home clean kept me mentally in a place of shame. The idea of letting anyone down or of someone seeing my home in it’s constant chaotic disorganized state made me keep up a wall.

What if someone asked me to do something and I was too sick to follow through? I would let them down. The thought of that kept me from showing any talent or capability that I had. I mean, what if someone asked me to cook a dinner for a family in need and I became too sick myself to do it? What if I had one of my anxiety episodes and it took me down to that place of not functioning in the world? There’s no way I would take the responsibility  of saying I could do something for someone when I felt that my anxiety could hit at any moment it chose to. If I didn’t let them see me, they wouldn’t ask me to do something, and I couldn’t let them down. No one would have an expectation of me and that’s the way I preferred it.

I felt awkward at places like church on Sunday. Isn’t church supposed to be a place to feel comfort and love? Isn’t it supposed to be a place where you find others with common values and goals? You’d think it would be such an easy place to make friends. Not for me. I was painfully shy. I thought there was nothing of value that I could contribute to a discussion. I felt my place was at the back of the room where no one would notice me. I didn’t step outside of my little comfortable space. I was nice to people, but I didn’t go out of my way to make contact. I knew people and occasionally I would go to a home party or a church activity… but I never felt comfortable there. Every moment I was self conscious. I was worried that no one would like me and at the same time I was afraid someone would.

What if I made a friend? When you have friends, that means you do stuff together. That means they might even show up at your house to pick you up to go out, or they might expect that you would invite them over to hang out and watch a movie, or have a playdate with the kids. They might even want to lean on you and ask you to take care of their kids sometime when they needed to go to an appointment.

A friend gets to know you. Gradually, as you spend time together, you begin to learn things about each other. I didn’t like what there was inside me to discover. I had mental problems. The depression and the anxiety… they would think I was completely nuts. Who would want to remain friends with someone like that? What value did I have? What would be their reason for sticking around? The inside of me was way too ugly and once they saw that, they would run away.

If I had a friend and they passed through my front door, they would think I was a total mess. My house was a total mess. My house is a total mess. They would actually see within me and see I was flawed. Deeply flawed. They would think I was a total slob. They would think I don’t care about my family. They would think I wasn’t the kind of friend they wanted. Once they saw the mess inside, they would turn away. They wouldn’t understand how I could live that way. How could I live in the mess? Why didn’t I have each room perfectly decorated, the floor vacuumed, and things put away? Why was there stuff everywhere? They wouldn’t understand that all those things didn’t ever really have a place they were supposed to go. They wouldn’t understand that I didn’t know how to make a permanent place for them and keep them there. They would think there was something wrong with me. They wouldn’t want to be my friend.

I was a hider.

Somehow, about five years ago, I chose to start showing myself. As I faced my anxiety and learned how to overcome it, I began to be more confident that I could do things. My arsenal of weapons against the anxiety grew stronger… I grew stronger. I slowly began to have victories over the anxiety.
I learned to look it straight in the face.
I learned to call it what it was.
I learned to put it in its place.
I learned to remind myself that I had come through a panic attack before.
I learned to remind myself that I did have moments of joy and that I would have more.
I learned to pull the anxiety in and hug it.
I learned to embrace it and tell it that it was okay.
I learned all people feel anxious sometimes.
I learned that God gave us a range of feelings and emotions so that we could grow and learn from them.
I learned that the anxiety was fed by negative thoughts.
I learned that it was okay to feel the anxiety.
I learned that most of the time the anxiety came because of the perspective I was taking in looking at something.
I learned that I had the power to change my perspective.
I learned that life is not supposed to be easy.
I learned that as I came through those hard moments I became stronger.
I learned that I had value.
I learned that my experiences made me who I was.
I learned that deep compassion came from the things I had experienced and the struggles I faced.
I learned that if I took those experiences and shared them with others I didn’t feel so alone. I learned that I wasn’t the only one who knew what that feeling, of feeling so bad you wanted to just die, felt like.
I learned there were others struggling.
I learned that if I showed my love and compassion to those people it made them feel better and I could not keep myself from feeling better.
I learned that as I took the focus off myself and how I was feeling, I could be a strength to others.
I learned that God wanted me to show who I was.
I learned that He allowed me to suffer so that I could love and support others who are suffering.
I learned that I am beautiful inside.
I learned that I am loved by God and that He has a purpose for me.
I learned that I have great power within me to touch the world around me for the better.
I learned that I feel the greatest joy when I lift another.

I’m still learning.

I am here. I am open. There’s no more hiding. I am exposed. I am a million pieces of different experiences all weaved together into a breath taking masterpiece. Everything the Creator makes is perfect in His purpose.

You are not alone in your struggles. I know your struggles are real and not made up. I know they are hard. I know that they can be overwhelming. I know that sometimes you feel there is no hope. I know that you feel like things will never be better… that you will never be better. I promise you, if you’ll take just the tiniest step outside of where you feel comfortable, you will begin to change. You know where your place of comfort is. You know where you need to take the step. It just has to be a step toward something new or different. Do it. You can do it.

The broken place was so dark and lonely. There was a stench like wet rotting boards. I kept hammering nails into them trying to keep them up sheltering me. I thought it was safe there. I thought no one could hurt me there. I just sat in the old. I was just surviving. I was breathing in and out. Light could not come in. There was a haze of damp air that hovered around me. I was exhausted. Staying there consumed me and I was starving for light.

This new place that I’ve found… you’ve got to come and find it. Loosen your grip and open up your arms and you will find something beautiful. It takes time. There is no rush. One tiny step.

Have you been wondering why I haven’t written anything in a few weeks? The truth is, I have written a few things, I just haven’t published them. I guess the frame of mind I’ve been in has been keeping me from thinking that it even matters. That’s not the best place to be in. I’m finally deciding to publish something today! Below you will find something I wrote on August 12, 2016…

I’m pretty sure I’ve been fighting some depression. I can’t believe I’ve gone a couple of weeks without writing anything here. Truthfully, I have written a few things… but I just didn’t feel like publishing them. I’m not completely sure why. I suppose that due to being in a hard place I just didn’t feel like putting any of myself “out there”.

Here’s one issue I have… I seem to be more motivated to do things for others rather than myself. Therefore, if I look at writing my blog as something for me… then it’s going to be hard sometimes to follow through. I know it’s one of the things I feel deep inside that I’m supposed to be doing… but sometimes I deny myself things.

The depression is a result of many things. Most of all, it’s the result of me feeling sorry for myself. It’s a result of losing my focus of looking outward and searching for the good in all things. I guess I’ve just felt bogged down mentally and physically. There are some specific things that have been on my mind…

I  know that every human on this earth faces personal struggles. I am no exception to that and I shouldn’t be. Every once in awhile I just let them all stack up one on top of another.

Why can it become so easy to focus on our flaws or struggles? There’s part of me that realizes this can be good because you can’t improve on something unless you recognize there’s a problem. But when does it become a flaw that isn’t really a flaw but rather just part of who you are? So much comes from the flaws and struggles depending on how we approach them. Sometimes I just want to smack them away… but sometimes I can see so clearly what a blessing they are.

What are some of my struggles that I haven’t even shared here or at least have shared very little?

How about adult ADHD? Not that I think I suddenly contracted that when I became an adult, it’s pretty obvious to me that it’s always been there. I remember being in elementary school and struggling with reading comprehension. I didn’t have any difficulty reading. It was a matter of content and if I found it interesting enough for my brain to grab onto it. My bedroom was always a mess. My mom used to say I was the slowest eater… even when I was a breastfeeding baby. I’d eat a little and then look around, then eat a little, then look around, on and on. I didn’t want to miss anything that was going on around me. I was distracted and fascinated by my environment.

Given the chaotic upbringing that I had, I received my diagnosis in my early 20’s after being treated for anxiety and depression. I know there are people that would like to shrug off ADHD/ADD as a made up disorder or that would say there is a lot of over-diagnosing of this disorder. My response to that is that it is real. It’s hard to know it’s real if you don’t personally experience it or have a close relationship with  someone who does.

Here’s a peek into my inattentive ADHD brain…

My home is a constant mess. This is one of the biggest struggles I have had to face on a daily basis. I have beat myself over the head repeatedly for having a messy unorganized home. Here’s the problem. There are a million more interesting things that I’m daydreaming about. I can think of so many different ways that something should be organized that I can never pick the one that would be the most beneficial. For this reason, things end up not really having a place that they belong. When I use something, I’m not sure if I’m really done using it, so it ends up getting left right where I used it last. If things are out of sight, then they are out of mind and I forget I have them or where they are. I have a hard time wrapping my head around things like folding laundry and putting it away. When I think about it, it seems like such a waste of time. I’m just going to wear it and it’s going to have to go through the wash again and then I’ll have to fold it again and put it away. It’s so much easier to just throw the clean clothes in a basket and grab what I need from there… no time wasted on that folding and going up and down the stairs to put it away. Most of the time I’m not even really that aware of the mess around me until someone says they are going to come over to visit. It’s like a person putting on glasses for the first time and they suddenly see crystal clear. In an instant I can see every little piece of everything and I freak out internally about what other people are going to think.

I’m highly creative and always wanting to try something new. I see something I like and I instantly want to try and make it myself. I’m almost always up for the challenge. I’ll impulsively purchase supplies and tools that I need to try a new craft or skill and then never even touch the bag sometimes until a year or two later. This is also why I can’t get rid of stuff. I’m seriously always going to work on that tomorrow. With so many ideas drifting in my head it is difficult to make a decision about what I’m going to do on any given day. There’s a war going on inside my brain between spending my time doing something that I think society thinks I should be doing as my role as a stay at home mom and what I feel passionate about doing. Even within those individual realms it’s difficult for me to make a choice about which thing to take on because there are so many options. Within those options I can rate the importance of them in so many different ways. There’s never a clear order to things… just constant ideas about how to rearrange them. There are so many ways to determine what is the priority. Do I use logic? If so, I still can’t decide because logically I can see the answer differently as I look from different angles. Are you keeping track of the layers of the thinking that goes into just deciding if I should do the dishes or go work on laundry?

Even within something like writing my blog… there are so many ideas swirling about.

Another element is boredom. I can totally get into learning something new and quickly become good at doing it… but then the newness starts to wear off and I see something else shiny catching my eye. Now I want to try the new thing. Sticking to a decision longterm feels impossible. If I don’t have a level of accountability to someone then I end up dropping things very easily. There’s so much information that I want to consume that I end up trying to consume many different things at the same time. I can have a pile of 5 books that I’m currently reading and never get completely through any of them. My focus dies too quickly or I get confused about where I should put my focus.

I have this hyper sensitivity to wanting to do the right thing or make the right choice. It’s a difficult combo when you can see so many right ways. It becomes debilitating at times and I just end up paralyzed. I spend so much time trying to decide what to do that I rarely complete any task from start to finish… or I rarely do it on a consistent basis. I can focus in on one thing and do really good at it for awhile, but as soon as I try and add in a new thing to focus on, I end up dropping the ball of the other thing I just mastered.

All of this is frustrating in and of itself if the only two things I had to think about were keeping my house in order and doing things I feel creatively passionate about. Can you imagine what it becomes when you factor in caring for five sons and a husband? What about the element of my health? Let’s chit chat about diabetes for a moment.

Type 1 diabetes is a disease where you have to constantly think about food. What’s in it? How many carbs does it have? How will those particular carbs get absorbed into my body? What will happen to those carbs if I do physical activity? How will my body react to any of a zillion different foods I put in my body depending on my menstrual cycle or stress level? What about the temperature outside? What about the exercise I did two days ago… how is that going to affect my blood sugar today? What if I’m sleep deprived? My CGM (continuous glucose monitor) goes off three times in the night waking me up and I have to eat sugar and make sure my level goes back up before I go back to sleep. Why did that happen? What do I need to change? Did I eat the wrong kind of carbs at the end of the day? Did I eat too many carbs or not enough? Does my insulin dosage during the night need to be changed? There are ENDLESS scenarios when trying to maintain blood glucose levels manually instead of your own body’s pancreas doing it automatically for you. Keep in mind, if you screw up… if you accidentally give yourself too much insulin or you forget to eat at a specific time you could go into a coma and die. That’s not an exaggeration.

Somehow in all this chaos going on in my brain… there’s another aspect of being hyper aware of other people. Their feelings, situations, remembering certain things about them. A certain person being triggered in my brain because of something I see that connects to something I remember them saying, or posting on social media, or something they like, or something they are interested in, or something they are going through, etc. Thoughts telling me to do something for other people. Thoughts saying I need to serve them. Thoughts telling me that I’m capable of helping with something and I should drop everything else.

The thoughts are exhausting. It’s constant confusion. There’s no order. It’s a big jumbled mess of awesomeness. I know I am capable of achieving incredible things… which makes it that much more frustrating to be stuck in confusion. There are specific parts of our brain that are supposed to guide us and help us navigate all of the tasks and options… those parts of my brain suck. The other parts of my brain are amazing.

There are obviously some things that I have been able to prioritize and follow through on. As a mom, I make sure my kids have food to eat, I make sure they get to school on time, I make sure they have clothes, etc. As a diabetic, I have to know what food I’m putting in my body and do calculations and know how much insulin to give myself, etc. These things that I have learned to prioritize, take a lot of energy for me to stay focused on, and keep at the front of my awareness. Sometimes I reach a point where I feel like I can’t keep doing it. I begin to lose my grip on forcing myself to pay attention. I’m so fatigued that I feel like I just need to come up for air. I need to focus on not focusing on anything. That’s when I’m in jeopardy of crashing… I start flailing around not grabbing onto anything and I become totally disoriented. Those are the moments I want to just get in the car and drive forever as if I can get away from myself.

Other things weighing on me… my responsibilities as a youth leader, dealing with the endless boxes of my mom’s things that have been sitting there for over a year now, being the only connection to any family that my older brother has now that our mom is gone, filling the void for my mom’s best friend who had a stroke several months before my mom passed away who has no close family… the list is endless. Some days I can let it go and some days I can’t.