September
I think I only want to say thank You.
Thank You, God.
Because September was the month I started participating in my own life again.
The heaviness didn’t suddenly disappear on September 1st. It started before that. And I won’t pretend that everything is perfect now.
But something changed this month.
I laughed again.
I looked forward to things again.
I travelled somewhere I had dreamed of seeing for so long.
I stood in the mountains and realized:
I’m here.
I’m actually here.
And somehow, in between all of it, I spent so much time with You.
You met me in a place where I didn’t even have beautiful prayers anymore.
I wasn’t always asking You to fix something.
Sometimes all I had left was:
God, I can’t do this anymore.
And You heard that too.
You heard the crying.
You heard the things I couldn’t put into words.
You heard the prayers of people who love me when I didn’t know what to pray for myself.
And now I’m sitting here at the end of September with a heart that feels completely different.
The heart that couldn’t seem to find rest is quiet.
There is peace where there was so much noise.
There is gratitude where there was exhaustion.
And I feel like my eyes are finally looking in the right direction again.
So before I ask You for anything else:
Thank You.
I’m not writing this because everything in my life is suddenly exactly how I want it to be.
It isn’t.
There are still things I long for.
There are still moments that catch me off guard.
There are still days when I can feel how easy it would be to fall back into old thoughts.
But I’m living again.
And that is something I don’t ever want to take for granted.
So if you’re reading this from somewhere I recognize
if you’re exhausted,
if everything feels heavy,
if you’ve stopped looking for the light at the end of the tunnel because you’re convinced there isn’t one
I won’t tell you to just be positive.
I won’t tell you to wake up tomorrow and change your life.
I’m just asking you to stay.
And staying can look very different from day to day.
Sometimes staying is getting out of bed.
Sometimes it’s brushing your teeth.
Sometimes it’s leaving the house.
Sometimes it’s calling someone and saying, I don’t know what to do.
And sometimes staying is opening your eyes in the morning, doing absolutely nothing, and simply existing for another day.
That counts too.
Please don’t underestimate what it means to keep going when even hope feels exhausting.
I know “it gets better” can sound painfully cliché when you’re in the middle of something that feels endless.
I didn’t believe it either.
But there is no place on earth where the worst storm imaginable continues every single day forever.
Eventually, something shifts.
The rain becomes quieter.
The wind settles.
And one day, you notice that you’re standing somewhere you couldn’t imagine reaching when you were in the middle of it.
I’m not at the end of my story.
I’m not even where I ultimately want to be.
But I’m somewhere I once couldn’t imagine getting back to.
I enjoy my life again.
I make plans again.
I dream again.
I hope again.
And if September taught me anything, it’s that I never want to forget how much of a gift that is.
So God,
thank You for September.
Thank You for hearing me when all I could do was cry.
Thank You for staying close when I couldn’t feel You.
Thank You for the peace I couldn’t create for myself.
Thank You for bringing me back to life little by little.
And to the person reading this who is still somewhere in the storm:
I know you might not believe me yet.
That’s okay.
You don’t have to believe everything will be beautiful tomorrow.
Just stay long enough to find out.