It's an "In My Feels" (does anybody even say that anymore... or just us old dad dudes trying to stay cool?) Friday for me today. This weekend we get to see my son in some seemingly normal homecoming activities as he crowns a new king and takes another step toward closing out his college experience. For this... I'm feeling excited. But you wanna know what else I'm feeling on this Friday? A heavy heart for some of my friends.
After Tuesday's post where I was maybe a little too honest about my struggles with the old me resurfacing... the resurrection of parts of me I thought I had buried a long time ago... I heard from a few friends who were having some hard times of their own. These weren't just Facebook friends or social media "follow backs"... these were friends I have known for a long time who just needed to be honest about all they were facing that weighed them down to the point of extreme fatigue and feeling buried under weight of their burdens. It was my reminder that we all walk around with backpacks full of bricks, at times. We pretend that everything is fine... at least that's what we say when others ask how we're doing. And then... when we think no one is watching... our shoulders fall and our smiles fade and we find ourselves having a hard time dealing with all the stuff we carry around. One thing on top of another on top of another isn't an equation of simple math where things add up... they compound to the point where one more pound in your backpack might as well be a thousand because just one more thing is more than you can carry.
I listen to a lot of mental health "stuff" and I do so for several reasons; the first of which being... I need to feel like I am not alone. I need to hear of others who are struggling and I need to hear the counsel they are given so that I might extract something useful for myself. Some of what I have learned I have been able to pass on to my friends this past week. And if I've learned anything this year, it's been this...
Find a friend whom you trust who will let you be brutally honest and completely transparent about how you feel. Their job isn't to validate your feelings... or to judge them... but to simply listen to you let out your feelings. Right or wrong... you feel how you feel and you need to feel free to be honest.
Find a counselor (a good one) who can help you work through your feelings. It's important to have someone who doesn't know you personally and can ask objective questions to help reveal blind spots... identify issues that people who know us too well might overlook. This must also be a judgment free zone where you can say what you need to say. About whatever. Until you are willing to bring the dark into the light, it will continue to haunt you when you try to go to bed at night.
Learn to lean on Him in everything... not just when things get hard. His Word tells us, time and again, that He is over "all things"... that no thing is impossible with Him... and without Him, we can do nothing. I have learned this to be true for my life. Without Him... I can do nothing.
So whatever your need today, cry out to Him. Wherever you are, be honest about how you feel and find people who can help you work through it. Friends (preferably not the kind Job had) and Counselors who will point you in the direction of biblical truth are an important part of moving forward. And on this Friday, I pray you would find some rest in His faithfulness. He will carry you. He will shelter you. He will lift you up in due time... if you will let Him. "In my distress I called up on the Lord, and cried out to my God; He heard my voice from His temple, And my cry came before Him, even to His ears." - Psalm 18:6
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