New Normals and a Crazy Awesome God

When you work with others for 40+ hours a week, you see a lot of different things. You see how the family cycle plays out. You see how mental health impacts a person but also their family. You see how outside influences can really help or hurt someone. And when I was working, it was not uncommon for me to take those experiences and use them to evaluate my own life. It also became "easy" to recognize signs of different mental health diagnoses and when a psychologist validated my suspicion, I always did a little fist pump. When Bren was born, I knew right away how highly susceptible I was to Postpartum Depression and PTSD. When I would recognize signs in myself, I would quickly ignore them. But really, I knew they existed. Bren was born in October and it took me till January to acknowledge that those things were there and to seek help. I believe it took me that time frame because I thought I knew what I needed to do in order to move past them. I mean, I had worked with people...

A friend texted me the other day and said, "I hear you and I see you". Those words meant more to me than most other words have. Hearing that someone hears and sees me was an overwhelming sense of peace washing over me. I don't need people to hear and see us in a "look at us and everything we do" kind of way. I don't need people to hear and see us in a "Oh, you poor things" kind of way. I so desperately want someone to come along side us and say, "This is hard. And it sucks. And it's exhausting. It's not what you expected and it's totally okay to feel whatever you feel". I want, no, I need people to come along side us and say, "I hear you and I see you". As I think back to that text, I cannot help but think of how God orchestrated that so perfectly. I so desperately want a human, someone psychical, to come along side me and say those things but God says them to me everyday. The fact that I felt an overwhelming se...