Again

Standing in the midst of another cold and gloomy January it’s hard not to feel like life is on repeat. The possibilities of new beginnings, that the new year promised, have faded. The blank pages of new chapters have now been written on. The burdens we tried to leave behind in 2019 have had time to settle on our shoulders again. For good or ill time is moving relentlessly forward.

Life for me currently feels like an extended exercise in going round in circles. The same ups and downs, familiar clouds lingering on the horizon, the same long wait for breakthrough. My prayers tread the same paths, repeating questions that I have yet to find answers to but can’t let go of entirely. Faith is feeling like an act of endurance and when I look at those around me I feel like I’m doing something wrong.

I am reminded again if the lyrics of the song ‘Do it again‘ by elevation worship:

“Walking around these walls
I thought by now they’d fall
But You have never failed me yet
Waiting for change to come
Knowing the battle’s won
For You have never failed me yet
Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness, faithfulness
I’m still in Your hands
This is my confidence, You’ve never failed me yet

I know the night won’t last
Your Word will come to pass
My heart will sing Your praise again
Jesus, You’re still enough
Keep me within Your love
My heart will sing Your praise again”

The realm of faith can be uncomfortable. Its sitting in front of mountains trusting they can move. Trying to keep a picture in your mind of how things will be, rather than how they are now. It’s living in the gap between your hopes and reality, the valleys littered with broken dreams and lost possibilities. It’s feeling like you have nothing left to give but knowing you must go again anyway.

Faith is trusting an unseen God with every facet of the reality you’re experiencing. It’s trusting that one so intangible can intervene in tangible ways. It’s believing you have a different identity, one untainted and precious, despite the words of this world that stick to you. It’s trying to live life with one foot on the earth and the other in eternity.

Faith is clinging onto all the stories of God’s provision. The times He intervened in your life. You chart a course for the future fuelled by the hopes of the past. Those stories may seem frail and fragile in the shadow of the darkness you’re facing now. But their words can feed the embers of a weary heart.

The one thing that can seem universally true is that pain will come. It’s easy to measure life by that pain, to weigh it’s value by the volume of our heartache. We forget how the sun felt as soon as the rain clouds come into view. Doubt grows like a weed in the shadows of our hearts. We struggle to believe that either God is able or that He wants to help us. We make our beds in the wilderness because we can’t see the green pastures around the corner.

The truth is God is always bigger than our problems, no matter how many times they seem to repeat themselves. If He provided for you then, He can do it again now. If He showed you the way when there seemed to be no way, then He can guide you again. If He gave you the strength for each day then, He can do it again now.

I don’t know how many times I must walk around these walls before they fall. Or how long till the trumpets sound their victory cry. I don’t even know what the end game is, yet alone the timescale. I may never see the answers. But I know we’ve been here before and that this is the same God who saw me through last time. I have to trust that my God is a way maker, that He can bring forth springs in the desert and that one day the walls will come tumbling down.

Waiting in the Twilight

We stand on the verge of not only a new year but a new decade. It’s the time for making resolutions and reinventing yourself. A time to look to the future and reflect on the past. It should be a time of new beginnings, fresh starts and renewed hope.

But I’m struggling to connect to any of it this year. I can’t erase my flaws and struggles with reinvention. I don’t know how to look forward when I still feel so beaten down from the past. Hope is the embers within a bruised heart, which I wearily fan, unsure when or even if they may burst into flames.

It’s been a tough year. The kind of year that looks okay from the outside. I’ve done all the right things, got out of bed, gone to work, kept putting one foot in front of the other. But depression has been nonetheless suffocating me from the inside. A quiet but unrelenting battle. The days have been dark and gloomy, with very few breaks in the cloud. Every time you think the storm has passed a new one descends seemingly without warning. You are at the mercy of currents you can’t see and are failing to control.

And I don’t know where God has been in all this. At times prayer has felt like one long open ended argument. Other times shouting at a brick wall, which will neither answer nor embrace me. Sometimes faith has been the anchor I have clung to. Other times it has felt like an empty mocking word.

I know God is there. I know He is good. I know He loves me. But I also know He is allowing me to walk a path that is testing every ounce of my strength and determination. I know His good plans are still soaked in pain and struggle. I know He has the power to banish the clouds, that healing could come in a heartbeat. But He’s choosing not to. And at times that is hard to reconcile.

I don’t know how to go into the new year without anything other than apprehension. I am struggling to quieten the rising feeling of panic that the future brings. Can I really expect next year to be different? Can I bring myself to hope again, to trust again? Is there ever such a thing as a new beginning?

I sit here in the twilight of another year. I don’t know if the dawn is approaching or yet another night. But here in this half light dwells uncertainty. And maybe in this uncertainty there’s hope. Hope that perhaps the dawn is coming. Hope that the pages of this new year haven’t yet been written. Hope that time can bring light as well as darkness.

Maybe the dwindling light is a reminder that all things change. The sun warmed this earth once and will again. No night is eternal and there can still be stars to light up the darkness. The twilight is the bridge to something else, something new. And so here I’ll wait, daring to hope and trust again. Waiting for the dawn.

“The ball drops and fireworks. Resolutions are made.
People scream and people kiss and is it possible to change?
Is it really truly possible to leave the past behind?

…Because isn’t there something inside us that aches for change…
Dreams it to be possible
To let go.
To hold on.
To leave it behind.
To start again.
To be new.
Is it possible?

If you’re reading this, if there’s air in your lungs, then you’re alive today tonight right now.
And who can know how long we have here…
And is it a gift? Was it ever a gift? Did that ever feel true or could that one day feel true?
Are there things to fight to live for?
Moments and people… Weddings and children and all your different dreams…
Love…
Is your life more than just your own?
And are there broken things you were made to fight to fix?
Broken families, broken friends… Injustice.
Will you move for things that matter?

Wouldn’t it be nice if change took just a moment?
Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?
Midnight and we’re new. Midnight and the past erased. Midnight and we’re free.

It seems to come slow. It seems to be a surgery.
Forgiveness. Healing. Sobriety. Letting go. Starting over.
It seems to happen slowly over time.
One day at a time, the choice made new each morning.
Will you fight?
Will you fight to be healthy?
Will you fight to be free?
Will you fight for your story?
Will you fight to get the help you need?
Change takes more than a moment, but maybe there’s also something to this celebration of a moment, something to the way it speaks to us, something to the way we fear it, and dream it to be true. Maybe it’s the most honest moment of the year.
It’s possible to change.

Welcome to midnight.

Here’s to the possibilities“

Jamie Tworkowski, ‘Welcome To Midnight‘

The Long Wait

It’s that time of year again. Houses are aglow with fairy lights, the presents are wrapped under the tree, the cupboards are packed with an unreasonable amount of food. And we wait. Some with joy and excitement, others with dread and resignation. Sometimes I wonder if we even know what we’re waiting for.

Christmas for us comes round once a year. Somehow every year the hype starts earlier and earlier. The Christmas food fills our supermarkets as soon as October ends. The adverts bombard us constantly for months. Seemingly each year the pressure to have finished Christmas shopping lands before it did last year. Consumerism strives to extend our waiting and anticipation.

But the Israelites had a long time to wait for that first Christmas. Isaiah foretold Jesus’ birth about 700 years before he came. They had centuries to wait and watch. Years filled with exile and pain, war and confusion. To them it must have felt like God had left them. That he was leaving it much too late.

And when Jesus came he was not at all what they expected, what they’d hoped for. They wanted a mighty king to overthrow the Roman empire, they got a baby born in a stable, visited by lowly shepherds. Anyone who recognised the signs may well have been disappointed. It must have felt like God had given them neither what they wanted or needed.

How many of us can relate to the feelings of the Israelites? Are you still waiting for God to show up in your life after what feels like forever? Watching your hope dwindle with every passing day? Have you ever been disappointed when God does intervene in your life in a way you would not have chosen? You think you know exactly what you need but instead receive something different?

We’ve all been in that position at one time or another. Filled with the pang of waiting for a thing long hoped for. Or disappointed when God doesn’t give us all that we want. No matter how much we are ashamed to admit it we have times when it feels like God has shown up much too late.

Christmas should give us the comfort and encouragement we need. It demonstrates that God keeps his promises no matter how long the wait. That his plans are good no matter how unconventional they look to our eyes. That anyone can be used by him.

But we wrap Christmas up in so much packaging. We make it about happy family times, alienating those who are lonely and without family. We cover it in presents, making the season stressful and pressured particularly for those who are on tight budgets. We focus on food, making it a confusing time for a society that has such a strained relationship with food. We expect people to be joyful, which can feel out of reach for those struggling with mental or physical illness.

And our picture perfect nativity scenes paint over all the raw reality of that first Christmas. A teenage mother giving birth far from home in the poverty of a dirty animal shelter. Mary work have worried for the survival of her baby in a time without healthcare when infant mortality was high. There would have been much fear and pain in amongst the joy of the new arrival. Instead of being surrounded by family God sent some shepherds, filthy and smelly from sleeping out on the hills. They were the first unexpected visitors of this tiny newborn. It was only a matter of months before this little family would flee for their lives, refugees in a foreign country. Alone and afraid, unsure what God would do next.

Christmas is not about family, food or presents. It isn’t about the carols we bring out once a year, or our decorated oranges or even any of our advent preparations.

Christmas is the truth that God chose once and for all to step into the mess and chaos of our human lives. To be immanuel, God with us. To walk alongside us no matter the pain or struggles we go through. He invites us, like the shepherds to come to him no matter what dirt or filth it feels like we’re carrying. To be washed clean in his presence.

It’s okay to not be okay this season. Whatever emotions you are surfacing are valid and important. You don’t have to go along with all the wrapping Christmas comes in. It’s fine to take or leave as much as you can handle. The most important thing to remember is that, thanks to that first Christmas, whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re carrying, you will never be on your own.

The Next Right Thing

I didn’t expect to have a profound experience in a cinema the other week. And I certainly didn’t expect it to be watching Frozen 2, a film primarily aimed at children. But sometimes you can’t predict when something is going to hit you right in the heart. So this post, for the first and likely only time, contains movie spoilers.

I’ve always loved a good animated film, you know whatever the peril somehow there will be a happy ending. You’re watching characters who are relatable enough to see something of yourself reflected in them, but without all the mess and chaos that comes with being human. For ninety minutes there is no job to worry about, nor bills to pay or responsibilities to take care of. You are somewhere else entirely, joined by often adorable sidekicks.

But watching Frozen 2 what hit me was not the depth of the storyline or the character development, but the sheer rawness of emotion in one of the songs. There’s a moment in the film when all hope seems lost. One if the main characters, Anna, is all alone she think she has lost her friend and her sister. She is overwhelmed with grief and despair and sings:

I’ve seen dark before, but not like this
This is cold, this is empty, this is numb
The life I knew is over, the lights are out
Hello darkness, I’m ready to succumb

I follow you around, I always have
But you’ve gone to a place I cannot find
This grief has a gravity, it pulls me down
But a tiny voice whispers in my mind:
“You are lost, hope is gone
But you must go on
And do the next right thing”

Can there be a day beyond this night?
I don’t know anymore what is true
I can’t find my direction, I’m all alone
The only star that guided me was you
How to rise from the floor
When it’s not you I’m rising for?
Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing

I won’t look too far ahead
It’s too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath
This next step
This next choice is one that I can make

So I’ll walk through this night
Stumbling blindly toward the light
And do the next right thing
And with the dawn, what comes then
When it’s clear that everything will never be the same again?
Then I’ll make the choice
To hear that voice
And do the next right thing

And somehow in doing so she gave voice to what living with depression has been like. There I was crying in the cinema, not because the story moved me, but because somehow the words of that song painted my pain into music. The bleak, quiet agony of it all was displayed on a screen for all to see.

It’s that time of year where we look back and reflect on what has gone before. I am already receiving compliments on how well I’ve done this year. I started the year phasing back into work after a two months off. I have managed nine months back at my full hours, only missing a day in the last year. From the outside it looks like I should be fully healed now. I have successfully made the shift from low functioning depression to high functioning depression. Unfortunately the thing that hasn’t changed in that shift is the reality of that depression.

This year has been harder than I could have imagined. The darkness has been deep and unrelenting. Every time I thought that dawn might be on the horizon the blackness would descend again. It’s as though a black hole opens up inside you, sucking up all the light and joy and hope. There is a gravity that pulls you in and all you want to do is stop fighting it. You are hideously alone and completely empty, a flesh and bone imitation of the person you want to be. On the darkest days even the voice that tells you to keep going believes ‘you are lost, hope is gone’.

But go on you do. Some may call it pure instinct that drives you on, others God’s strength in you. Sometimes it can be sheer stubbornness that keeps you going. Whatever the motivation, you have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, stumbling blindly in whatever direction you think the light should be. The future is vast and uncertain, if you look too far ahead you get overwhelmed with fear and anxiety about what could be coming. So instead you have to break it down, working out what the next choice could be, to take you a shuffling baby step in the right direction. You have to find the next right thing.

And that will vary depending on where the day finds you. It might be the basics of getting up, getting dressed, buying your groceries. It could be practising self care, being kind to yourself, reaching out to a friend or doing an activity that you know you would have enjoyed once upon a time. Sometimes it’s the drudgery of adult life, finding someone to fix whichever part of your house chooses to break on any particular day (it’s been one of those weekends!). Maybe it’s dragging yourself into work even when you’d rather stay in bed or it could be making the choice to stay away and put your health first.

We don’t get to choose what challenges and storms come our way. No one chooses grief or depression, or willingly invites pain into their lives. But we do get to choose whether we let that pain destroy us. Somehow we have to rise up off the floor and find the next right thing to do. Breath by breath and step by step we have to trust we’re heading in the right direction.

Empty Arms and a Full Heart

I haven’t slept well over the last year. I wake multiple times a night from dreams so vivid I feel as though I’ve lived through them. At points I’ve been so haunted by nightmares that I found myself using a nightlight to keep the shadows at bay. But those dreams are not the ones that have lingered with me the most.

Those would be the dreams where I am going to be a mum. I can feel things I’ve never felt before, the baby move and kick within my stomach, the stretch of my flesh around that new life. Sometimes I get to cradle my baby, see that little face, feel that rush of love.

And then I wake bereft for a child I’ve somehow held but never known. My heart is full of love but my arms feel inexplicably empty.

I am now 28, still single and childless. To the millennial world around me that is normal, I am still young, too young perhaps to settle down and fully embrace adulthood. But I walk in different circles. And in the Christian world, both at work and church, I am becoming an outlier. It’s normal for Christians my age to be several years into marriage by now, often with a couple of children in the mix. There’ll be four babies born just into my team at work this year.

And I can feel the clock ticking. Every time I learn a parent’s age my brain does the same ridiculous calculation: how much younger than me were they when they had their first child? How many years behind them am I?

All the time I don’t even know if there was ever any time on the clock in the first place. How many years will my body give me? Was it always too late? Why would this be simple when everything else hasn’t been?

I am not sure I should feel this emptiness. I am yet to discover if I will struggle with infertility. I have suffered no miscarriage or loss of a child. My sorrow is circumstantial. As a single person am I even entitled to these feelings? I can already hear the dismissive comments that I really know nothing about the thing I long for. It’s a club I can’t be invited to.

And it’s strange how heavy emptiness can feel. As though longing can be a rock we carry with us. It feels like a little grief, a slow heartbreak.

Many of my colleagues go home to wives or husbands and children who need them. I have none of those ties. Some parents will tell me wistfully how easy my life is without kids. I wonder if those people have left work knowing they won’t speak another word out-loud until they arrive in the office the next day. Whether they’ve faced the fear of knowing they are sick and also their only means of financial stability. To know you could walk out of your life now and it could be days before anyone missed you and raised the alarm.

Some would call that freedom. At times I call it loneliness.

I know parenthood can feel at times impossibly hard. And I want my friends to be real about the struggles and challenges. I am happy to listen patiently to every frustration. I want to share in that part of their life with them. The experiences we are going through may be different, but pain and joy, heartache and love, fear and doubt are all universal.

I know you don’t have to be a mother to nurture a life. I am a proud godmother to four beautiful children. I love them fiercely. Watching them grow and blossom gives me so much joy. I leave little scraps of my heart clutched in tiny fists. But they aren’t mine. I know there will always be a limit to what I can do for them, who I can be for them.

I also know this longing for children is not universal. I have friends who do not want to be parents. And that choice, those emotions, are just as valid.

It can be easy to think that if we have a desire deep enough then God must have put it there and will see it fulfilled. But I don’t think it’s that simple. God’s purpose is not our happiness but His glory. Sometimes the griefs and losses of life are the powerful tools He uses to shape us. My God is not a vending machine. Praying for something enough won’t necessarily bring it into being. Having a child may not be a part of His plan for me. Only time will tell.

One thing I have to remind myself daily is that my life has worth and value even if I don’t have a partner and children to share it with. God doesn’t love me any less than my parent friends. Singleness is not a punishment nor is parenthood a reward. I am more than the things I lack. I have been already given more treasures than I can comprehend or value. I am more than a relationship status, an empty house or unspoken words. I am known and loved by the creator of the universe, who will one day wipe all tears away.

In the meantime all I can do is channel the love in my full heart into the people who are in my life. I’ll be a proud adopted auntie to any child who’ll have me, I’ll cherish every moment with my godchildren and enjoy the privilege of supporting the parents in my life through the good times and the bad. I’ll focus on loving my friends and family with the best that my flawed human heart can offer. To celebrate with them on the straight and sunshine filled paths and hold their hands in those dark valleys.

And I will try to hold out the same love to myself. To find the compassion and grace to love my bruised heart, whether my arms are empty or full.

The Songs That Are Hard to Sing

Words have power. Whether it be the encouraging words of a friend, that speak hope at just the right time, or the fervent declaration of truth in the face of adversity. I’ve grown up loving to read, but there’s always been something about setting words to music that has moved me. Whilst the letters speak to our ears the music seems to speak to our hearts. The playlists on my phone are a mismatch of songs that make me feel something, that speak to a particular emotion or circumstance, whatever the genre.

I’ve always connected to God most through sung worship and have sung on worship teams since I was a teenager. Stick a microphone in front of me in any other context and I’d be a bag if nerves and awkwardness, but somehow in church it usually feels safe and natural. However, how easy I find worship varies hugely with what storms I find myself in. And it is far from easy right now.

Worship has become an emotional battle that I wage every time I open my mouth to sing. The barriers come down and I can dissolve into floods of tears. They are not holy tears, like the ones people cry when they’re overwhelmed by God’s goodness or moved that there are people who don’t know him. I cry because I am sad. And no matter how much I try to put it out of my mind, when I bring my heart to him, I can’t pretend it isn’t scarred and wounded in my hands.

Some songs are harder to sing than others. It’s hard to sing about trust when trust is costly. When it feels like throwing an anchor out into the storm, and praying that it both holds fast to something and also doesn’t capsize the boat. Trust often requires you to see your circumstances through an entirely different lens. But there’s only so many times you can tell yourself the light is on, when all is black and you keep walking into things. It should get easier each time, when you think back on all the other days the world didn’t end, despite feeling it might. But memory is an unreliable guide, often serving up only the bad memories and writing over the good.

It can be challenging to sing about joy when depression has been stalking your steps, turning the world into countless shades of grey. Those three letters start to feel like a word that happy people use to mock you, as well as proof that you are not a proper Christian. It’s as hard to grasp as the mist that clouds your vision. You know it exists, but it might as well operate in an alternative reality for all the good it does you.

It takes strength to sing of chains broken and freedom when fatigue has you bound tight and depression is the one pointing the gun at you. You know God wants to give you life in all its fulness but you’re still hoping this isn’t it. How much of worship is singing of what is or what you’d like to be? Are chains a state of mind? If you feel free does that make you free?

Not all songs are created equally and increasingly I’m coming across songs that sound amazing, have a great beat and guitar riffs, but the words don’t match up. There’s one line in a song that’s popular at the moment that I choke on every time. It’s a song called ‘Great Things‘ by Phil Wickham, which has the line “And I know you will do it again, for your promise is yes and Amen“. I agree with much of the song and the declaration that God is greater our circumstances and all powerful. But I don’t agree that God’s promises are ‘yes and Amen’. Try telling that to the Israelites who were promised deliverance but only generations later. The message to them was wait, settle down, make a home in this foreign land as I’m not coming in your lifetime. Who’s God saying yes to? God promises to be with us but that’s not the same as giving us the answers we’re looking for or helping us in the way we may long for. God’s ultimate purpose is his glory and sometimes that can be served through our suffering. We may not see the outworking of his purpose within our lifetimes.

Whilst it may not always be the case, I think that sometimes the songs we find hardest to sing are the ones we need to sing the most. We need to sing of trust, joy and freedom especially on the days when we aren’t feeling any of those things. Faith is supposed to cost us, Jesus talked about ‘taking up your cross’ to follow him. Maybe that’s choosing to trust for the nine hundredth time even though the storm is battering you from all angles. It might be continuing to believe in joy even when the chemicals in your brain are rebelling. To hold onto the fact that there is a spacious place somewhere and good in the world worth fighting for.

And I believe God wants us to bring the broken and bruised parts of ourselves to Him. That there is power in worshipping Him and acknowledging his sovereignty in spite of our circumstances. Some days that may mean croaking out the words through our tears. But somehow I think those cries may be precious to Him.

When the Night is Black

Today is ‘World Suicide Prevention Day’. It’s a day which aims to start conversations about a topic that is so often not talked about until it is far too late. It’s been two years since I’ve written a post for this day. But I couldn’t not write this year.

The thing is it’s so easy not to talk about suicide. There are few words that hold so much weight. The weight of fear and misunderstanding, of shame and stigma of pain and grief. It’s a word that can cause us to question everything we thought we knew about life and love. It’s therefore not surprising that we can shy away from these conversations or mention it only when the situation is far removed from us, at the distance of the latest celebrity tragedy. But not all of us have distance.

I would love if I could paint this year with colours of only hope and light. I wish I could shrink depression into the kind of pint-sized monster that could conjure affection rather than terror. I want to write that my night-light has always been enough to keep the nightmares at bay. But the last year has contained times where the night has been utterly black and hope has been hidden from view.

The truth is depression sucks the light out of the world, until waking may as well be another bad dream. Everything you like about yourself gets absorbed into the void, until you can barely relate to who you used to be. You are a flesh and bone imitation of a human being, you’ve forgotten what it truly means to be alive. Every ounce of you is heavy with a weariness that feels like it has seeped into your bones.

It’s against this backdrop that suicidal thoughts take up residence. It’s not always that you want to die but that you don’t want to live like this, that these days of pain feel unendurable. And on the darkest days faith is not always a comfort, but another jagged shard in the heart, knowing God is letting you walk through the valley of the literal shadow of death. Each day it can feel as though you are being faced with two impossible choices, to face another torturous day or to end it all. And in the irrationality of a depressed brain, suicide does feel like a genuine choice to be considered or decided.

Just to make it clear I am absolutely not condoning suicide, it’s something that causes unimaginable pain to countless families. I wouldn’t want that pain for anyone, let alone people I love. But what I’m trying to articulate is that the fight to stay alive, to keep battling the darkness day in and day out, can be gruelling and exhausting. Happy mentally well people don’t consider suicide. They are thoughts of a desperate mind under siege.

And when you’re in this place all you hear are stories of people who have died by suicide. As one story after another breaks of people who have lost their battles, it can feel inevitable that you will loose too. Each death feels as though it stacks the odds against you. Does anyone survive this hell?

Yes they do.

I can say that because I have. I have been suicidal and yet I am still here. I have survived the blackness. And yes recovery is a journey rather than a destination and it’s one I am still on. But I am so grateful to be here.

The biggest lie depression tries to make you believe is that your days and nights will be black forever. But they do pass. Especially with the right help and support. The colours will come back again, it may take time but they will. There will come a day where instead of just the black night you will be able to see the stars. You will hear hope whispering again. And little by little it will get easier.

So, on World Suicide Prevention Day, what can you do? Firstly if you are having suicidal thoughts please reach out for help. Speak to a medical professional or someone you trust. Depression thrives on secrecy and shame, don’t let it.

Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask someone you’re worried about ‘are you thinking about suicide?’ We have to create space to talk about it. And then be prepared to listen and support them in accessing the help they need. It’s a common misconception that asking such a question could put ideas into the head of someone who isn’t suicidal. That’s not true. By asking you are showing that you care, that they matter to you and you may even help open a door that lets the light back in.

On today of all days let’s celebrate the battles we’ve won and those we’re still winning. Here’s to the monsters who have shrunk back under the bed and the days we found an unexpected smile or laughter.  As TWLOHA are campaigning this year ‘you make today better’. We are so very loved by the one who made us but also by countless others who we matter to. The world needs us.

“If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.
If you feel too much, don’t go.
If this world is too painful, stop and rest.
It’s okay to stop and rest…..
You are more than just your pain. You are more than wounds, more than drugs, more than death and silence.
There is still some time to be surprised.
There is still some time to ask for help.
There is still some time to start again.
There is still some time for love to find you.
It’s not too late.
You’re not alone.
It’s okay – whatever you need and however long it takes – it’s okay.
It’s okay.
If you feel too much, there’s still a place for you here.
If you feel too much, don’t go.
There is still some time.”

 Jamie Tworkowski