Each year I try and pick up a phrase or picture that helps me focus on something through the year. Sometimes these things are planned and thought hard about and other times it’s only when I’m in the middle of something that a phrase sticks out and I find it useful to cling onto.
A few years ago now, it was ‘Jesus saved the world so I didn’t have to’, which still makes me grin. It may seem greedy but over the last year there has been a few which have grown to be important as things have happened. The one I started the year with however has come back to mind over the last few days. It was from a poster that Jen Lemen sells from her Etsy shop and reads.
Today is a new day!
You can start fresh, wipe the slate clean and begin again.
Today you can embrace kindness
Practice Compassion
stand up for justice
talk to strangers
ask for help, offer hope
Listen with your whole heart
Work for the common good
Love well
You can be the change you wish to see in the world.
I like lots of it! But because I am lazy and have a mind that floats around like a butterfly I’ve tried to live with one particular line (granted slightly altered) ‘ask for help to offer hope’. I’ve never been great at asking for help and that has meant I’ve fallen over in a heap – in all senses – when it has not been necessary. I think I’ve got better at asking for help this year and I think asking for help has empowered others to realise that they have skills they didn’t realise and allowed them to use them. I realise there are some situations where it is not best to give people power over you because they will abuse it, but for the most part I think it is a good thing and has helped me, hugely.
If you know me well or have read my random mutterings on here often enough, you’ll know I have suffered from depression and have to work hard at looking after my mental health. I’ve never kept quiet about it but this year I have talked about it more honestly with more people than normal. Lots of people suffer or have suffered from depression and yet so few people talk about it. I know it can be a really painful and personal thing so I understand why some people choose not to.
This year I have spent a lot of time talking to someone whose relative is in a really nasty bought of depression, assured them it’s not their fault, shared coping advice, told stories about what depression and it’s treatment was like for me and I hope offered some hope that you can get better from it.
I’d never met the relative who was suffering from depression until Christmas eve when they came to a Christmas service and asked to talk to me afterwards. Unknown to me all this chat had been shared with the person sufferring and they wanted to thank me for my honesty and said they had felt encouraged to know other people had depression (even ‘Church’ people), and had done all the crazy things depressives do (like bursting into tears when the window cleaner arrived), and was still standing at the end of it. I came home and cried happy tears that sharing stories had benefited someone else so much. So if you’d experienced something difficult or painful think about whether you can share it with others. But be brave enough to say you won’t right now, if that’s the right thing to do.
