October 5, 2017: “Today was a better day. I met with JR tonight and shared with her, as I did with CM, the past 7 months. Like CM, I think JR is both fascinated and tired just by listening to me talk about my anxiety, depression, and obsessive thinking.

I find myself jealous of women like them, and my mother, who have never experienced sever depression. To be a factual and faith-filled thinker rather than a figure-er, fixer, and fixator would be so… liberating. Can one have multiple thorns in one’s flesh? Jesus has whispered to me that I will always battle a control issue. Dr. L said it aloud.

But sometimes, no, all of the past 7 months, I have felt it such a curse to be a deep thinker. Is it beautiful? Is it the way God made me, to see life from a deep, multilayered perspective? But that isn’t what I am seeing when I am ruminating over a matter that I am trying to reason into a black and white grid.

So am I a deep thinker with a beautiful mind or an OCD, over-analyzer, struggling to maintain control? How about both? From every affliction comes a blessing because His strength is made evident and real and active in my weakness.

On the other side of this valley is a mountain, and causing this shadow is a light, and I am just so grateful for my lightsource.