Becoming

At this point in my life I was hoping to be able be able to say “I am who I always wanted to be.” I’ve always had my ideal self in the front of my mind, but it has always been just shy of attainable.  I’ve made promises to myself and others of the resurrection of a triumphant soul but it has never quite come to pass.
I always have an image of triumph to hold onto in the eyes of my 15-year-old daughter.  My pregnancy and her birth and a short period of time after her birth were the most comforting and magical times I have experienced.  Unfortunately, my lack of coping skills and recurring depression make for a bitter struggle to recapture that contentment with life.  I probably shouldn’t say “lack of coping skills”.  More accurately, it is my own failure to put the coping skills I have learned over years of therapy and rehabilitation to use on a daily basis.  However, getting down on myself and dwelling on my shortcomings is not going to be productive in any way.  Just looking at my handwriting at this moment reinforces in my mind the effect that negativity has on my spirit and my resolve.  
Positivity, Positivity, Positivity!! What is going to keep my mind and heart focused on this goal of contentment with my life?  I truly believe it is going to be building my own personal relationship with God.  I saw God and I felt God in my complication-free pregnancy with Type 1 diabetes.  I saw and I felt God when I stopped breathing during my C-Section and then came out of it.  I saw and I felt God when I held Katie and brought her home happy and completely healthy.
I don’t see and feel God anymore, haven’t for a very long time. Or, again more accurately, I have moments when I think I see and feel Him but somehow, for some reason, I convince myself that it is not Him I am seeing and feeling.  Believing, getting your hopes up time and time again only to have them dashed is debilitating.  You don’t want to hope anymore.  You don’t see the point.  It is easier to stay down.  You want to make things easier.  The fall and then clawing your way back up is exhausting.  I liken it having a low blood sugar.  Repeatedly bringing yourself out of a low blood sugar, returning to that healthy reading, clearing the fog, sometimes seems like more trouble than it is worth.  Why not just stay a little higher and avoid it altogether?
But I always, always, always want to return to that contentment.  I want to know the presence of God.  I want to believe it.  I want to have faith.  Where is lasting faith? How do you obtain it? That is my journey.  I want that to be my fixation.  I want to have the physical and mental stamina to push the negativity aside, to squash it when it reappears.  I think that wanting it my first step.  Caring about it is my first step.
I am working on my daily relationship with God.  Moment to moment I am inserting Him into everything I do and feel.  His word needs to be everywhere if I am to feel triumphant again.