Thankful

Last week when I was flying home for Thanksgiving, I realized something that I hadn't recognized before that moment. I have been happy the past few months. No, it's not even that I've been happy, but rather that I have been living these past few months.

I have felt more alive. More normal. More like myself.

Sophomore year I wrestled with Depression. It wasn't the more normal melancholy that I so often cycled through during Middle School and High School, but a heavy, deep, and dark depression. During the course of the year I lost myself. I lost my being.
I was a shell of a person, just an empty gray shell.
There was no enjoyment in life; I lived through each day just to get through the day.

I don't know when I actually came out of this depression, but its effects were lasting.
I still felt as if I were largely going through each day simply to get through the day. I still felt like I was just the empty shell of the person I used to be. While it wasn't that I had no enjoyment in life whatsoever like before, it still was not much enjoyment at all.
Nothing really made me laugh, nothing really made me excited, or happy.

It's hard to describe it fully, but basically I still didn't feel like I was living. I was merely existing.

But as I sat in the silence of my flight, thinking through the past few months, it dawned on me how much I have been enjoying life. I finally feel like I'm not only existing, but I'm living.

And for this, I am so thankful.
These past few months have been so sweet. It's been a time of healing in my life. A time of being filled. And it has also been a time of learning.
I am learning from things of the present (like my injury) as well as learning from things of the past. I feel like God has been connecting the dots between my past and my present. He has been revealing little by little, his work in my life.

I found a letter a little while back, stuffed away in my backpack. It was a letter that I had written to God while I was coming back from a sports ministry trip in Costa Rica. At the end of the letter I asked God to put me in a situation that I would have to learn to be totally dependent on him.

A girl on my trip had shared with our group about how she had prayed that very prayer, and shortly after had major issues with the bones in her shins. I don't remember the details, whether she had to have surgery or not, but basically she was unable to play soccer. It was even painful at times to just walk. Soccer had been her outlet her entire life, the thing she turned to when she was upset, frustrated, or stressed. It was her release, and her comfort. But shortly after asking God to put her in a situation where she would learn to be completely dependent on him, she was unable to play. She was unable to turn to the very thing that she had been dependent upon before.

Maybe I am reading too much into this, it's fine if you think that I am, but I wonder whether it is a coincidence that a few months after I very seriously asked God to put me in a situation that would make me wholly and completely dependent upon him, I had the hardest and most miserable year of my life... That year wrecked me; it temporarily destroyed me. I was unable to depend upon myself and didn't care or want to depend upon anyone/anything else. And while I wouldn't say that I was completely dependent upon God during that year, I would say that there were moments in which I learned how to be more dependent upon him than ever before.

I'm not claiming that all bad things that happen to us are from God, or a part of his "perfect plan". I know some people believe that whole heartedly and would even criticize this claim of mine that some bad things happen for no reason at all. I do, however, believe that God takes the bad and uses it for good. Always. And I do believe that there are instances in which he allows, or dare I even say causes something that may initially be bad or hurtful. I think that there are times that he does this to challenge us, to teach us, to strengthen us, to help us grow, and to prepare us for things to come in the future. Sometimes the hard times are the only times we really truly pay attention. Or for those of us who are a little oblivious, it's only after the "hard times", when we finally take a moment to reflect, that we realize what has been learned or gained.

Anyway, as I flew home for Thanksgiving I reflected upon this (and much more that I do not have time/room to write about but would help explain all of this in a deeper, fuller way) and I was overcome with thankfulness. Thankfulness for the life that has been restored within me. Thankful for the faithfulness of the one who restored it. Because to be honest, I had given up on the hope of ever finding joy in life again.