My God, my Abba-Father,
I come before you in sorrow and repentance, and yet in the joy of the certainty of Your love and forgiveness.  You have blessed me so richly, given me so much, and most gracious of all, You have covered me with the righteousness of Your blameless Son, my Messiah, Jesus!  I should be eternally grateful just for that, for that is ALL.  And yet You have given me so much more, so far beyond anything I deserve.  How can I ever be bitter, or sad, or feel alone?  With You, I have ALL.  You are my ALL.  Thank You and praise You for Your never-ending mercy, and for the unfailing comfort of Your Holy Spirit.  Thank You for teaching me and training my heart and mind to depend solely on You for my physical, spiritual, and emotional well-being.  Thank You for Your mercies, which are truly new each morning.  Please, forgive my lack of faith.  I pray that You would fill my heart with Your Spirit and continue to mold me and shape me more and more into Your image.  You know how frail and feeble I am.  Please, keep working on me, keep bringing me back when I am so foolish as to turn away from You.  You have always provided for our needs; we have always had shelter, clothing, food, and water, and You have so graciously surrounded me with family!!  We have never lacked for anything, because of Your great mercy.  I thank You and I praise You, Lord God, for being our ALL.  May Your praises ring from one end of the earth to the other, may every nation know You and serve You, and may You forgive the sins of this great nation You have so richly blessed, and turn us back to You.  Thank You for Your Word, and the great promises it contains for us, Your people.  I praise You, my God, that I can come into Your Holy Presence through Jesus, Your Son, in Whose Name I pray, Amen.

Well, weekly posts, I suppose, are better than none at all.  I'm still just waiting.... sitting here, waiting for something miraculous to happen to me.  But I'm not doing anything to make it happen.  Just sitting here, waiting, wishing, wanting.....  Don't even know what I want, I just know that I don't have it.  I'm still just ticking off the days, waiting.....  for what?  Sunday after Sunday, I use the excuse that I don't have enough money to spend on gas driving so far to go to church.  And I haven't found a church anywhere close by to go to.  I know that getting out in the world makes me feel better, and I know that I need to congregate with other believers, but when I'm here at home, I don't feel like going out.  It doesn't seem worth the effort.  I have to wear decent clothes, put in my contacts, wash my hair, etc.  What a  stupid trap I have fallen into.  I hate work, but I hate staying at home all the time too.  I know I could do something better than working in a school cafeteria, but I'm not putting forth any effort to do anything else.  I know I could be having an easier time making ends meet financially if I finish the elaborate paperwork I need to do in order to get SSI for Jennifer, but I'm not doing it.  Wow, I think I will just go to bed.  Sleeping is my answer for most of life's difficulties.  Sleeping and eating.

Just picking apart my random thoughts....  I see a car drive by, and I think, "There go People with a Purpose, somewhere to go, somebody to see...".  I drive by a house, and look at it and think, "People with a Life live there."  I seem to be in a holding pattern - the same one I've been in for almost nine years.  My life is defined by "before" and "after" my divorce.  Of some pictures I'm viewing - "Oh, that was before."  Of an old home video - "Oh, that was after."
Twilight, for some reason, is the hardest time of day for me.  You'd think it would be at night, when I go to bed - well, not by myself, because Jenny sleeps with me, but without a husband.  But no;  as the day is dying, so am I, inside.  Is it because twilight is "coming home" time?  The time of day when all the family gathers together again after work/school/lessons?  And now, all the family that is left here  is me and Jenny.  I know, I know - that is not entirely true.  I have (and I am truly thankful for) all of my children still, either nearby or only a phone call away, and Jenny is a great comfort to me here at home.  It is just a stark contrast from the busy, crazy, bustling household I used to cook and clean and care for, with all seven kids still at home plus a husband.  And autumn is the hardest time of year for me.  Again, the time when the old year is dying.  I think it also has something to do with having gotten married in the fall - it was such a time to snuggle and be cozy with the one I loved, and the time when we often took anniversary trips up to the mountains to stay in a cozy, romantic cabin.  But those days are no more.  That was another lifetime ago.  So twilights during the fall I doubly hate.  A particularly beautiful, poignant, cool and crisp twilight in late October is so damn depressing.  It just makes me ache inside where I'm empty.  And there is a whole genre of music I used to love, that I cannot listen to anymore.  No more cool jazz, no more laid-back Norah Jones or Eric Clapton, Unplugged, and no more - ABSOLUTELY NO more Natalie Cole.  Two songs especially I can never hear again - "Too Young" by Natalie Cole, and "Come Away With Me" by Norah Jones.  The tears come as if they were right there waiting if I even think about either of those songs.  And another Natalie Cole song - "The falling leaves.... drift by my window..., the autumn leaves.... of red and gold..."  That song made me sad even "before", as if I had some presentiment that someday I would be bereaved of my love.  I never imagined that it would be like this, though.  That I would be bereaved through divorce, rather than death, the natural bereaver.  It was not that my husband died;  it was my marriage that died.  If it had been my husband, I could at least enjoy my memories.  I could look back fondly.  Now I am bereft of even that. 

Thursday was my first grandchild's thirteenth birthday.  It is so hard to believe that the time has gone so quickly!!  I so well remember the joy that accompanied the advent of my FIRST grandbaby.  There's just nothing like it.  And now Philip is taller than me!  And his voice has already changed, just recently, to the deeper voice of a young man rather than a child.  This is exciting, but also just a little sad.  How fast the years flew by!!
Jenny and I went over and ate dinner with him, his special-request birthday dinner of meat loaf and mashed potatoes, and sang Happy Birthday and had cake.
Friday, after a long day (and a long, hard week) of working, I did nothing but vegetate.  I think I even took a nap!  Saturday we had a birthday party for niece Caroline at Babyland General over in Cleveland.  Such a beautiful place!  Jenny and I rode with Joy and her three, plus Lily.  We had a great time, and I made some fairly decent pictures.  If I take a couple hundred photos, I usually get a few really good ones.  I also took some on Thursday at Julie's, and got several good ones.
Photography is another passion I have.  If only there was a reasonable way to earn a living doing something I love doing!!  I love photography, and particularly saving and restoring old media in a digital format in order to preserve for future generations.  And speaking of future generations, genealogy is another passion.  Several years ago I had the bright idea of creating a business, offering the preservation and restoration of old media - photographs, slides, negatives,  record albums, old home movies, and the like - but I lacked the fortitude (and some needed capital) to get it off the ground.  Now there are several business out there that offer these services - other people making a living off of my great idea.
Today is Sunday, the Lord's Day.  And here I am, at home, playing on my computer.  I did, at least, begin the day with three chapters in Genesis and my daily devotional readings.  I made the decision not to go to church out of fear, and out of plain laziness.  I could have gone to a local church (I didn't want to drive too far, as I am needing gas in the car, and currently have only $11 in my checking account).  My two biggest fears for the future are the lack of money and the lack of intimate companionship.  I miss that so much.  I don't have even a friend that is close enough to share deepest, darkest secrets with.  I have felt so lost without that sense of belonging, of home. 
As for my "gratitude attitude" - today, I am thankful for family.  I am incredibly blessed, and I realize this even in the midst of my depression.  I am literally surrounded by loving family, and I LOVE IT!!!!!  I get to talk to Joseph almost whenever I want, which is such a treat after the long months he was over in Afghanistan.  I am hearing from Josh once a week, and he is doing so great in the faith-based dorm!!  SO THANKFUL for that!!  And the other five I get to see fairly often (of course, I see Jenny every day!).   And having all FOURTEEN of my grandbabies nearby is an amazing blessing.  So many families are separated by distance, or by misunderstandings or grievances.  I also have both my parents, and all three siblings nearby, and we enjoy a good relationship and see each other fairly often.  This is a blessing and a privilege for which I am so thankful. 

Today

Today.  Many things are happening today.  In my life, which is relatively quiet, I went to work.  Today was the last day for a sweet and helpful co-worker, so we had cake and said a very reluctant good-bye to her.  Hopefully she will drop in and visit occasionally.
Today in the wide world, there are two candidates for President of the United States, neither of whom I can imagine filling the office adequately.  People are being killed for being Christian, or for being a cop, or for being black, or white, or for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It is a world increasingly filled with violence, which corresponds, surprisingly enough, to said world denouncing its need for the God Who created it. 
Today, I began the day with reading my three daily devotionals, and just one chapter in my (attempted) daily Bible reading - today it was Genesis 25.  I find that my day is usually better when I start out like this.
Today, I decided to put into action something I've been thinking about for some time - beginning (again) to journal my thoughts, hopes, disappointments, dreams, prayers, victories and defeats.  Not sure exactly what I hope to accomplish;  my hopes (and usually my thoughts, in general) are as scattered as wildflowers by the roadside - just not as pretty.  Some of them are certainly pretty;  they usually involve fantasies of a pleasant retirement somewhere by the sea.  But most of them are more like weeds.  Weeds with bugs on them.  If journaling helps me to marshal my thoughts or hopes into something useful, well, then I will have been successful at something.
Today, I acknowledge my absurd habit of depression.  I acknowledge that yes, I am depressed, and yes, it is absurd for me to be so.  I say habit of depression, because after so many years of allowing depression to hold me, it is now a habit.  Occasionally I will have a day, or at least a few hours, in which I feel an unbidden optimism;  the sky seems blue and bright, and my future doesn't scare the living daylights out of me.  It has begun to take me by surprise when this happens, because the times are so few and far between.  Depression is such a habit, that hope seems a stranger to me, and I don't know what to do with it on the rare occasion that it visits me.
Okay!  I've just had a (relatively) brilliant idea, so perhaps the possibility of organizing my hopes and thoughts is actually working.  I just realized that one thing I do hope to accomplish by this journaling is to remember how to WRITE.  Writing is something I used to love, and something for which I used to think I had a gift.  But when I tried to use writing as a means to support myself and my dependent children after an unpleasant and unwanted divorce, any creativity I once had just dried up.  Perhaps it was the pressure of NEEDING to write that did it;  I don't know.  I just know that I had nothing.  Stephanie Meyer and J. K. Rowling can do it - why not me?  I even had some fairly creative ideas.  But there was nothing there.  One thing I do lack, besides fuel for creativity, is motivation.  Okay, two things.  Two things I lack are motivation and perseverance.  It would seem that my need would be motivation enough, but it didn't work that way.  Maybe it will never work, I don't know.  But I do know that I have skills and talents that are drying up because they are unused.  I have the potential to do something more than the nothing that I am currently doing.
So, today, I am going to consciously be thankful for something.  In fact, I have much to be thankful for, and I do remind myself of this often.  I even feel thankful most of the time.  But it doesn't overcome the depression.  It is hard, after so much time, to break that habit.  But here is another hope that I acknowledge - if I continue to count my many blessings, name them one by one....  ♪ ♫  Seriously, if I name things that I am thankful for, specifically, I sincerely hope that will become habit and maybe someday, overcome my habit of depression.  So today, I am thankful for my Savior.  He knows me inside and out, and still loves me.  He doesn't leave me or forsake me.  He is always there when I need Him (which is ALWAYS).  And He paid the penalty for all my failures with His life.  Not only that, but He has given me HIS righteousness to offer to a just God, since I have none of my own to offer.  That should be quite enough, even if I had nothing else.  THAT is the spirit I hope to cultivate to drive out the SIN of depression.
So today, to borrow a worn-out phrase, is the first day of the rest of my life.  Thank God for that!!  My plan is to just jot down events, thoughts, hopes - whatever the day brings - and to list one thing to be thankful for.  And maybe someday,  tomorrow will be something to look forward to rather than something to fear.