CONTENTMENT COTTAGE

WELCOME! In the midst of each life's chaos exists a place of calm and sunshine. I call mine Contentment Cottage. It is the place where I write my stories and find the peace of God. I've posted my "Ice Pick" reviews and will continue to add some of what I call my "Ice Crystals": poems, articles, essays, fillers, and recipes.

Monday, July 13, 2009

DECISIONS
The world spins--the Earth on its axis, the galaxy on its, perhaps the whole physical universe is spinning, too, as it expands. I'm not an astronomer, but I know that everything is in motion. I had a friend once--he's been dead many years now, funny how the years speed by--but as we talked of "shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings," he said, "You seem to be interested in everything that moves." And I answered, "And everything moves." We laughed. It was nearly true.

I've lost many of my early interests. Time does that to you. Not having children does that to you. The future folds in upon itself. And our decisions narrow the choices we have tomorrow, or even this afternoon.

We should make no decision carelessly. We all know that, but we do it all the time. And often pay the price. Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes not. And other times we study a decision to death and still make the wrong choice. It happens to everyone sooner or later.

And some of the most critical decisions seem to the be easiest--to take a shortcut that ends up being a longcut, to park the car here rather than there, to take the elevator rather than the stairs or vice versa, to step out the back door without boots in January not realizing the porch is covered with ice--and we end up paying for the rest of our lives. A single moment can change your whole life. We learn that over and over again, and it seems that we never learn it at all.

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Friday, July 10, 2009

MY FIFTEEN STEPS OUT OF DEPRESSION

Anyone who knows me well knows I've been struggling--I won't say "with," but certainly AGAINST depression. I'm tired of taking those surveys you see in magazines and newspapers that tell you if you answer "yes" to two of the following, you're depressed. I was starting to score ten out of ten or eight out of eight "yeses." Scary business.

So I made a list of fifteen common signals of depression and made them into "turn signals." I decided to try to handle them one at a time, one a day. Fifteen was a good number for a month. On the sixteenth of the month, I started over. And I continue to do this, day after day.

  1. sadness. I determined to be cheerful. Just for one day. Someone said "enforced cheerfulness is the highest form of courage." Maybe. It wasn't easy, but smiles are painless. And I discovered that when I acted cheerful, others responded to me with their own cheerfulness, and I did indeed feel better. More cheerful. "Fake it till you make it?"

  2. worry. I determined to be calm. Just for one day. When worries struck, I remembered my father's credo not to worry about crossing the river, because when you get there you may find someone has built a bridge. I posted his article on here December 14, 2006--check it out. I also remembered that St. Peter said to cast our cares on God, who cares for us. I did. And it helped. You have to keep doing it, of course. Over and over again.

  3. lack of interest in work or hobbies. I dug out my embroidery, picked up three books at random out of my pile of unread ones, went out and worked in my neglected garden. It was wonderful to get back to these things. It was a little harder to get back to my writing, which had always been my mainstay, but when I reread a few chapters, I began to get excited again. I had begun neglecting my morning Quiet Time, the words in my Bible and in Unity's Daily Word had begun bouncing off my weary brain. I used to change my Bible version every month, but hadn't bothered lately. But now I changed the Bible I'd been using and found that a new translation helped me find the words fresh again .

  4. appetite changes. When I'm REALLY down, I can't eat. But this nagging in-between feeling--depression, rather than despair--causes me to eat more. All the time. Candy, whatever. I already was eating a lot of fresh fruit and veggies. We never were big meat eaters. But the next time I went to the store, I avoided the candy/cookies/snack aisle and opted for whole grain bread and cereal, etc. My mother didn't like the little shredded wheat squares I bought for breakfast, but I found they make a great snack, plain, right out of the box. Has it helped? I don't know, but cooking was another thing I always had enjoyed, and I'm doing more of it. I'm also going out and bringing in Chinese food, which we love, but which I'd stopped buying because I didn't feel like going to the trouble of getting the car out and fetching it. I was really getting lazy, amongst other things.

  5. confusion. I determined, just for one day, to think clearly, to stop letting myself fall into giving up, spinning my wheels, and doing things like tossing aside mail I didn't understand--some of these things from banks and insurance companies just read like they're written in an extraterrestrial language. In my story-writing, I was stumbling in confusion about where I was, what I'd written (or not), and where the plot was going. Clear thinking I found is, to large extent, a result of slowing down, rereading, writing stuff down, taking the time to think about what you're doing.
  6. distraction. I determined, just for one day to focus on the task at hand, to try to stop multi-tasking and running from one thing to another, leaving things half-done. It wasn't easy. In fact, this was one of the hardest days for me. I'm a multi-tasker by nature, a juggler of tasks and opportunities. But for one day, I stopped racing around trying to be all things to all people. It was tough. People and cats don't like to be kept waiting. I even yelled at one person, which was NOT a result I wanted. At all. But no one said it would be easy.
  7. indecision. I determined to be decisive just for one day, to stop putting things off. This one hinged on clear thinking, on focussing. I could not have started making decisions, good or bad, without the foundation I'd already begun making. For I found that even though I was only trying to handle these things for one day, the effects were lingering. I was still trying to be cheerful, I was still trying to stay calm. I wasn't always successful--never will be. I'm human. But I'd been at this for a week, and I could feel the progress I was making. I was feeling a lot better about myself and about life.
  8. worthlessness. I sat down and thought about this one for a long time. My fundamental belief is that God doesn't make junk. I am a child of God, and my worth is in Him, not in how I feel about what I've done or what I'm doing now. Feelings are the least reliable of all indicators. If I believe that every person has value, then--like a geometric theorem (remember them things from high school? Ick.) --I too must have value. I have worth. All of us fail at some things and succeed at others. Our parents and friends may consider some of them to be worth more than others, but what is important to one person--money and fame--may be worth far less to another, who values spiritual growth and understanding. Wisdom may be worth far more than knowledge.
  9. hopelessness. For one day I determined to be hopeful. I began to repeat a little mantra I made up: "Hope is a rope. Hang on." That always made me smile. My faith in God gave me hope where I could see none here on Earth.
  10. guilt. This was another tough one. I know I'm not doing all I can for my mother. Her deafness and dementia drive me up a side wall. I know I'm not doing what I should. I can make you a list of all my daily screw-ups and failings. I can braid them into a whip and beat myself with it. But I have to reach for freedom. I have to try to understand that most of us do the very best we can at the moment. Most of us can then look back and criticize how we treated our kids, our parents, our siblings, our spouses, our pets, our neighbors, our friends, and our enemies. But we have to use those things and try to learn from our failings and resolve to do better next time. And then we have to follow through and do it. Good luck! This is probably my hardest task, but I have to learn to forgive myself and others.
  11. lack of energy. I found that I was spending a lot of energy worrying about things and trying to do too much. Some tasks can be let go and the house won't fall in. You can only do so much in a day. But I also found that I was being lazy about some things that I didn't want to do, and when I focussed better on what needed to be done and did it, I had the energy to do it and enough left over to do some of the things I really wanted to. It often came down to priorities as much as to not overloading myself with daily to-do's.
  12. fatigue. This is closely related to lack of energy. I tried to get more sleep. Eating better helped also. I found that everything I'd been doing was even more interrelated than I'd thought. Gradually, the terrible sense of fatigue lifted. I get tired--we all do--but I don't feel tired all the time. That's a huge difference.
  13. anxiety. I consider "worry" to be about specific things, where "anxiety" is more of a general feeling of terror. I smile as I write that. But I found that this was another very hard thing to handle. In the end I simply had to learn to trust God more. I'm getting there. Slowly. It's not easy. None of this really is. But whenever I realize I'm sliding into anxiety, I step back and try to "Let go and let God." Life seems to be either all downhill or all uphill. I'm never really sure which, but I'm learning to let Him guide me and not concern myself about it. "God give me, please, the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Amen to that!
  14. impatience. I determined for just the one day to be patient. With my mom. With my kitties. With my neighbors. But most of all with myself. None of those are easy. When you're stressed out, your temper grows shorter and your patience evaporates. But I keep trying.
  15. preoccupation with thoughts of death. Whenever I find myself thinking about my mother, whose health is failing or about myself, I try to replace those thoughts with thoughts of life. I concentrate on the good things. St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians, chapter 4, verses 8-9, tells us to think about the beautiful things, the good things, if we seek the peace of God. I've found that's true. You don't need to be Pollyanna, but lifting my mind away from the sad things has really helped me. When I cannot avoid thinking about death, I think about heaven. An "attitude of gratitude" has helped me immensely too. I give thanks for all the good and beautiful and wonderful things, the everyday miracles that surround me, and especially for the love of God, who cares for me and you. All the time.

I'm always telling other people to "snap out of it." Now, I'm finding out how hard that is. But I can feel in myself that with God's help I've turned a corner. When I take those surveys now and they ask if I've experienced unremitting sadness every day for the last two weeks, I have to answer, "No." Sadness, yes. But it comes and goes, and I'm experiencing a lot of happiness in between. And that feels just great!

Sadness builds on itself. But so does happiness. I started looking for the good things each day. Now they seem to come to me.

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