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No, You’re Not Losing Your Mind

I may not know you but I think I know something about you.

I know that these days you’re close to breaking down. I know that you live always pushing back tears, always fighting away relentless anger, forever hoping this is a dream you’ll wake from—and that these are the good days.

I know that for you the bad days are far worse. On the bad days you think that it’s you. On the bad days you question your very sanity. On the bad days you believe you may be losing your mind.

This is what happens when the world gets turned upside down, when the natural equilibrium of the things you knew and counted and found comfort in, is so disturbed that there seems no solid place to stand anymore.

Right now very little seems to offer respite:
Your family may have become hostile territory,
Your church a source of wounding,
Your religious tradition a stranger,
Your neighborhood a place of alienation,
Your friendships an awkward silence, 

Your marriage a battleground,
Your news feed a war zone—
and because of all this, your own head may not be a place you feel all that comfortable in anymore.

If there’s one thing I could tell you today; if we could sit across from one another and I could place my hand on your shoulder and look into your eyes—I’d tell you that you’re not alone—and you’re not losing your mind. I’d tell you that it is these days that are crazy, the times that are insane, this place that is unstable.  I would reassure you that you are grieving and outraged and disheartened—and that these are all signs that you are very much in your right mind.

Many of us need a sanity check right now, and maybe this can be yours.

You’re not losing your way, you may just have to walk it alone right now—or with different people than those you once expected to join you.
You’re not losing your faith, you’re probably just realizing that God has outgrown the box you used to try to contain God, and there are growing pains.
You’re not losing your mind, you’re just trying to comprehend a level of malice and acrimony in your neighbors and family members that you really didn’t want to believe was so prevalent. You’re trying to make some sense of inherently senseless things.

And so in some ways the bad news, friend—is that it isn’t you. Things are fairly jacked-up. You are right to be close to breaking down, right to be pushing back tears and fighting away anger. You are correct in hoping this is a bad dream and wanting so badly to wake up. 

But the good news is that you have awakened. The good news is that you are in a place that has in many ways gone quite mad—and you are seeing it clearly. You are in your right, decent, rational mind—and that is why you are so damn angry right now. These are the appropriate responses of good people like you, to very bad days filled with very bad things.

So let your sadness and your frustration and your profound not-okayness, be a source of comfort right now. Let them be welcome reminders that you are not broken or unwell.

In fact, these disturbances in you are the reason you are being and will keep being, the sanity in this world. You are the compassion and the goodness and the love that we so need to heal this place.

Keep going, friend. You are not alone—and you’re not losing your mind.

Be greatly encouraged.

 

 

 

 

 

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