Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I know exactly what I want to say. The words have been forming inside of my head for days. Begging to be let out. Keeping me up at night, until I can finally release them on to paper.
Lately, the words are stagnant. And if there is a spark, the words quickly extinguish. Leaving me feeling empty. Muddling around in a sea of gray. Many emotions that are present but not overwhelming. Life activities that are normal and not traumatic. Steadiness with my depression. Healthy thoughts. Good days beating out bad days. The medication working so I am able to utilize all the other tools I have to keep it under control.
I call it the middle. A place where my life is stable and steady. I am in a good place with myself. I have survived the legal divorce process. The months of separation. The first holidays and vacations away from my sons. I am not celebrating wedding anniversaries anymore but divorce anniversaries. I am being asked how I got through the early days and months of divorce rather than me searching out advice and support.
I continue to work on me. Healing from these past few years is complicated and slow. I am coming to realize that I may work on healing for the rest of my life. Divorce is not a one and done process. Especially when children and co-parenting are involved. I can’t just wash my hands of it. Pretend I am okay and happy with everything that has transpired. So I continue to go therapy, read books that focus on healing, rising strong, and self-love, and share my story. I plan trips. I go out with friends. I explore my city. I buy tickets to concerts. I keep living my life.
I pray. And continue to pray and speak to God and Jesus. They are my friends who love me and know and appreciate my worthiness. My relationship with structured religion is heavy on my heart right now. I don’t know where I need to more forward with it. So I pray. I listen to the God whispers. I react to the God yells.
I have been waiting to get to this place. The middle. After all the firsts and seconds. After clawing out of the deep dark pit of depression. After the yesterdays. Normal, ordinary days. Yet, I have always had a hard time accepting my normal, ordinary life. Here I am and I struggle to be okay with it. Especially when the past years have been living with something big all the time. Big hurts. Big emotions. Big events. Big traumas.
Now I have a pretty ordinary normal life and I feel stuck. In the gray, dull, boring. My heart yearns for something. What? I don’t know. A warm and firm hand around my waist. Whispers in the dark night. Love that doesn’t make me feel less and lonely. A day of motherhood where I feel like I didn’t just survive but was present and fulfilled. I was able to slow down and enjoy my children. An upcoming kid free weekend where I didn’t start panicking about no plans. One that I was at ease with. Alone time and friend time. Yet, here I am frantically feeling left out and lonely.
Waiting. I am waiting for something. And trying to be present in today while hoping for tomorrow. It is a balance act that I think I am failing. Waiting in the middle is breaking me down just as the gut wrenching early days of separation. I am having to dig deep within myself to find out more about who I am. What I am made of. How strong I can be. Where I want to go.
While waiting, I feel the urgency to do. To act. To be impulsive. To feel. Anything other than the waiting. Much like when I am surround by darkness. I frantically search for something that will bring the light. But I have to be cautious. For many things, people, and actions can bring about false light. I have to be true to me. My heart. My morals. My integrity. And wait.
Wait in the middle.
Lovely in the Dark 
those of us that live with the intense emotions of depression and Trauma and those that deal with bipolar having the Mania and any other huge extremes, seem to just feel dull in the middle.
I know exactly what you’re talking about wanting to run and do when I find myself in the middle. I want to feel again! Unfortunately there have been times when needing to feel meant self harm in the way of cutting or binge eating for me.
And a very strange way, my be still and know that I am God season right now has been caused by a very unique and painful surgery on my kidney. I went in with no pain and I am going into week 4 of nothing but pain because I made a choice to say yes to a surgery that removed cancer from my body. I had to say yes 2 laying around and doing nothing because I couldn’t even hold my head up 2 type on my computer. I had to choose to learn how to ask for help because I was too incapacitated to even carry a glass of water in the early days after the surgery.
What I’m saying is, God knew I needed this be still moment, but in his graciousness, he allowed me to have this pain so that I know that I am alive! I know, I would not have chosen to spend this time not putting my foot into several things that have occurred since high had the surgery. I would have not been able to be still in face of several crisis situations that have come up in our extended family. I have to look at this timing, at this pain riddled timing of this 8-week long recovery as God’s hand saying I need you to be still, I need you to stay out of these things, and I will make sure that you do, and if it takes pain to make sure that you know you’re not to be there, I will allow it.
I pray, that I am learning the lessons. This blog that you struggled to write, spoke straight into my heart and I could hear the Lord saying you are going to have middle times and you need to recognize those as times of quiet and patience and being still in me, not as times for you to go out and try to make something happen.
I have been learning a lot through this surgery time, and I knew about that middle feeling, but until I read your blog today, part of the lesson God it’s been trying to teach me had been missed buy me still making too much noise, involving myself into too many things, even from my bed or my recliner. In fact, I actually had to publicly apologize to someone today because I put my two cents where no cents were needed. I should have just chosen to be still.
Thank you for your transparency! Thank you for sharing so that the Lord could speak a little clear to me!
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Thank YOU for this! ” I could hear the Lord saying you are going to have middle times and you need to recognize those as times of quiet and patience and being still in me, not as times for you to go out and try to make something happen.” I think this is what I need to be doing right now too. And I didn’t know that until I read this from you. I am sorry that you are going through so much pain but like you said, maybe this pain is serving a greater purpose. Thank you so much for sharing.
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I appreciate everything you shared here and can relate in many ways. Having battled bi-polar for decades, sometimes the weight and angst of thick emotions feels ‘easier’ to settle into because you can’t get away from the tangibleness of it all—as strange as that sounds. These middle moments can feel so empty for all of us–regardless of our mental health because silence can be deafening and like a free fall of sorts. I love what you said about being “present” in the now because that’s been the key for me. I’ve learned to embrace the in between for the open space that it is–trying harder and harder to trust God is working and just needs me to look for LOVE everywhere. Both the love inside me and the love surrounding me in others. Doing so brings me abiding peace until God’s greater vision for each stage of my life comes into focus. Prayers and blessings to you, friend.
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Yes too all you said. Thank you and all the love right back to you.
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