Beat the Blues, Not Yourself

I've been beating myself about the mental bush for the whole week thus far. The same old, same old feeling that I'll never be successful, that I've made so many mistakes in my journey as a writer, that perhaps I'm one of those individuals with some talent who is doomed to fail, because we don't understand a secret ingredient that others grasp so completely in the quest for creative fulfillment.

Or perhaps just most people hate us. Guess I should go eat worms.

When you are hurling negative comments at yourself, cutting down hope with a wicked little hatchet, it's hard to be positive toward others. I apologized again to my husband this morning and asked, as he smiled knowingly back at me, if he thought I would be apologizing again tomorrow.

"Yes."

He's probably right. I hope for better. See? I'm improving; I'm hoping.

Funny thing is that the deeper you sink into your hole of dissatisfaction, the harder it is to pray for deliverance. And I don't mean crying to God, Please make me a professional writer! Please help me to understand what I lack. Please make other people help me somehow.

I mean the kind of prayer that my friend Dana prays with her family, that I found so inspiring when she confided it to me:

Father, thank you for all you've given us....for our health and happiness and our home. Please just keep doing what you're doing.

So I prayed it this morning, a variation.

Please help me to appreciate all that I have - our beautiful children, our home, all our food and especially our health...even our dog, Father.

Throw in a pickup truck, and it could be a country song.

It's about the joy that you embrace when you're down, a clarity of vision and patience, too. This morning at school, my nine-year-old Ana was hugging me at school and pointed to the sky.

"Look, it's a dragon fly, Mama."

I gazed up to see it.

"No, it's a hummingbird," I said with wonder, and we watched it high in the blue, higher than I thought it would go. I felt the gift of it's beauty after these days of selfish absorption.

Then I went to take my big, almost 11-year-old boy his lunch, and he met me by the basketball court.

"Give me a hug and a kiss," I said jokingly.

He looked around sheepishly from beneath his mop of hair, and then consented to give me a hug and a big smile to go with it.

And when I came home, I found an email from a dear, longtime friend who I had not heard from in so very long, and the email read like poetry to me.

So I see again today, God has been very good to me. I just hope I can remember it tomorrow.