Raising our little ones: Mud and Manners: Day # Depression? “Negative Nellie?”

I’ll be upfront and honest. If you’re looking for an encouraging upbeat post, you’ll want to read something else! I almost didn’t even write a blog post tonight, as I do not want to be a discouragement to anyone or a “Negative Nellie”. But today marks the 38th day of blog writing, and as I am still making our kids journal, so am I! Today was a hard, long day for me. A lot of emotional moments, tear bursts, and just thinking about so.many.thoughts.

Roger was working today, and I woke up feeling the tentacles of depression threading to sweep me down. Drinking coffee and sitting in the sunshine streaming through the window did help as well as reading my Bible all helped, but depression is pressing. Depression is often not talked about or discussed, but I’m willing to wager that most people struggle with it from time to time. In fact, I think depression can be used in a good way as it can force us to stop and think. Now then we must chose to reign in those thoughts with the Lord’s help and focus on things that are honest, true, lovely, of good report, etc. I am thankful that most of the time depression for me comes in like a wave but it’s not generally something that I struggle with for days or weeks on end. I would consider myself to be a pretty cheery person in personality, but there are moments!

I was very thankful for the sunshine earlier today and Emma and I went on a bike ride together. I was also able to stop and talk to our neighbor for a bit, and I do appreciate the opportunities that God gives us to interact with others. Our neighbor is older, but he said he was doing well. He’s getting tired of being at home, but he said that the noise of the children in the woods never bothers him. That’s a good thing, because these kids can be loud! Today the kids spent the morning outside blazing trails and making forts. The boys have been busy making a trail to go around our entire property, so they’ve been busy! Their ambition is to make the trail wide enough to ride their bikes on the trail. I’m happy that they are content to be outside yelling at each other, raking leaves off their trails, and playing together. Brothers can be the best of friends...at times.

I got a phone call this morning from a friend of mine and she was passing on some news to me. The news wasn’t exactly delightful, and I was already a bit “down”. I could feel the tears pricking the back of my eyes, and my voice must have reflected my dismay as she asked if I was okay. I would consider myself to be a fairly upbeat person most of the time, but today I did not feel like myself! She prayed before closing up the phone conversation, but I didn’t even bother to try to pray. I knew that I would just be a blubbery mess of tears. I’m telling you, it was a down day!

I love our children, and I don’t mind being home with them. I just like having the OPTION to go somewhere if I’d like. I like to visit with people face to face, and like everyone else I didn’t sign up for these past five weeks! I’d like to take a break from it all, but like everyone else, it’s not optional. Onward! I just keep having this running list of questions in my head....what will be the outcome of this? Does it matter if we quit school now? Will it be hard for our children to get back into the habit of going to church and Sunday school? Are they being encouraged through this? What will the summer look like? Are our children learning enough through all this? Am I being a good mom? Did we do enough or too little today? Did everyone read? Should I make a grocery list? Oh, more food? Dishes? Laundry? Jobs? School next year? Oh, focus on today? What? Where? Huh?

Finally, I just threw in the towel. I cried a lot, wiped my tears, went outside for another walk, made a cup of coffee, listened to some worship music, and continued on. I had grabbed a piece of laundry off the clean unfolded clothes on my bed to use to wipe my tears. Then I realized that I was using Emma’s Peppa Pig undies to wipe my eyes. Oh well!` Life does go on, and it will continue to do so until the Lord calls me home.

The only thing certain in life is death. It’s not how long we get to stay on this earth but whether or not we are ready to die. And I am. I’m not morbid, and I’m not looking for death, but I have absolutely no fear of death. Many years ago, I settled my eternal destiny. I asked the Lord to forgive my sins. I confessed Him as Lord of my life. I admitted that I was a sinner, and that I needed the blood of Jesus to take away my sins. And just like that, my eternal destiny is settled.

Maine news: This is in the little print, but I’ll announce to you that the number of recovered cases is GREATER than the number of active cases! That’s good news! It could totally change tomorrow, but I’m going to rejoice in that tonight. We had an additional death in our state, so that brings the total number of deaths to 36. We have 443 recoveries and 409 active cases.