If life is a highway
I'm packing for a night away with Blonde FunkNation and realizing the last time I used this overnight bag was when I checked myself into a hospital, hoping they would cure me fast of depression, then checking myself out 24 hours later. I'm learning there is no fast cure, but I am so grateful for how far God has brought me in a month. I am bored when I'm alone, and I think that is a good sign to be restless. After months of just wanting to stare out a window (the commercials for depression can be true, scarily enough)...I am missing life.
So next week is full of appointments and lunch dates and kayaking with my dad. But I haven't forgotten my hospital stay. Some people maybe have good experiences at pysch hospitals...I did not. Maybe if I had been instantly sedately and slept the 24 hours I was there... To think of it as a retreat equals sure disappointment.
When I arrived, everything I brought was taken away from me. Then half of it was returned to me in a paper bag. My room looked like a prison room, as I imagine it. Bare with two beds that had maybe 4 inch mattresses. Tiny sink, gym-like shower. Nothing decorative or nothing that could be pulled off the walls, which were painted a sickly green like everything else. I didn't realize I was being treated as suicidal like everyone else. No going outside. No shoelaces. No toiletries. No electric toothbrush...took me a while. Would I eat the batteries? Plunge it into my body? Still not sure. I hurt for the people I met who were there for longer than a day...a week...maybe longer. For the people who came in high on drugs at SXSW and flipped out. I won't forget the lady who was seated at my little table at dinner in our bare surroundings as she hysterically explained loudly she didn't shoot the man, as she violently stabbed her chicken. The attendant told me to move to another table. I had no reaction, unable to process.
I've been doing a bible study on David by Kay Arthur and Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer. During the first week, they talk about David's purpose and how he inquired of God along the way. Interesting to note it was 15 years between the time he was anointed as king and then when he actually reigned as king. Moses was 60 when he learned his purpose. Maybe I have a lot of years of knitting and paint-by-numbers ahead of me. Not that i am called to be a prophet to the nations. But even as I trust God to show me what's next, I wonder how much of my past callings will play into my future destiny.
I don't know. One of my friends said to me, you will know just as someone knows where they are going when they are given the ticket to get on the train. Waiting on that ticket for my train. Trusting God all the way...
So next week is full of appointments and lunch dates and kayaking with my dad. But I haven't forgotten my hospital stay. Some people maybe have good experiences at pysch hospitals...I did not. Maybe if I had been instantly sedately and slept the 24 hours I was there... To think of it as a retreat equals sure disappointment.
When I arrived, everything I brought was taken away from me. Then half of it was returned to me in a paper bag. My room looked like a prison room, as I imagine it. Bare with two beds that had maybe 4 inch mattresses. Tiny sink, gym-like shower. Nothing decorative or nothing that could be pulled off the walls, which were painted a sickly green like everything else. I didn't realize I was being treated as suicidal like everyone else. No going outside. No shoelaces. No toiletries. No electric toothbrush...took me a while. Would I eat the batteries? Plunge it into my body? Still not sure. I hurt for the people I met who were there for longer than a day...a week...maybe longer. For the people who came in high on drugs at SXSW and flipped out. I won't forget the lady who was seated at my little table at dinner in our bare surroundings as she hysterically explained loudly she didn't shoot the man, as she violently stabbed her chicken. The attendant told me to move to another table. I had no reaction, unable to process.
I've been doing a bible study on David by Kay Arthur and Beth Moore and Priscilla Shirer. During the first week, they talk about David's purpose and how he inquired of God along the way. Interesting to note it was 15 years between the time he was anointed as king and then when he actually reigned as king. Moses was 60 when he learned his purpose. Maybe I have a lot of years of knitting and paint-by-numbers ahead of me. Not that i am called to be a prophet to the nations. But even as I trust God to show me what's next, I wonder how much of my past callings will play into my future destiny.
I don't know. One of my friends said to me, you will know just as someone knows where they are going when they are given the ticket to get on the train. Waiting on that ticket for my train. Trusting God all the way...