Sometimes I forget how sick I was… (August desktop Calendar)

If you forget how sick you were, you probably aren’t sick anymore.

On this peaceful morning, however, I was reminded how sick I really was back in 2009. Today I simply wanted to find one of my barn paintings that I hadn’t used as a desktop calendar yet, so I chose “Farmview Rd.” — for no other good reason than it is hanging in my gallery right now, and I love the fact that it is my one painting which is inspired by Travelers Rest.

When I went to my website and read the “Inspiration” behind this painting, I was struck by what I had written. The memories of that terribly scary time flooded back. I can still feel the blood that rushed to my head this morning I read my own words from 2009. [ So maybe I still am a little sick if I still get the feeling that my head is going to explode, simply from reading something I wrote?!? ]

We moved to SC in the fall of 2008, and by January of 2009 I was on my way to a nervous breakdown. That’s what I call it at least. I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which haunted me for several years, but from which I have slowly but surely recovered.

I went through lots of counseling, some medicine, lots of vitamins, a huge change in my diet, lots of deep breathing, and lots of prayer. Mostly though, I would just ask Tim “do you think X will happen?” (X meaning something terrible) and every time, he would simply say “no.” So I chose to believe that he was right. And he always was. And I survived.

As we packed up to move again a few weeks ago, after several terribly exhausting months which I sometimes worried would cause me to regress, I found an entire calendar under my bathroom sink, filled with randomly odd notes. This calendar was another recent reminder of how sick I really was in 2009 and the years following. The good news was, that I found the notes to be as strange as they WERE, and more importantly, did not feel the slightest need to save them.

Just thinking about all of this makes my head feel like it could explode, and also reminds me that I probably will never be completely “well.” But then I am also reminded that none of us will ever be completely “well” as long as we live here on this imperfect earth.

But there WILL be a day… A day when I am not waiting for the bomb of disaster to drop on my too-good life. A day when the sun is safe, and we don’t need sunscreen. A day when my friends are not hurting. A day when my sweet grandma remembers everything that has slowly slipped from her mind these last seven or eight years. A perfect day that never ends.

What a glorious day it will be, when this un-perfect earth is made new, and the new heavens and a perfect earth are created.

I realize this explanation of my theology is fuzzy at best. Although I’m not great at putting it into words, I believe it with all my heart. And it is exactly what I try to capture and illustrate in each of my paintings… a glimpse of what I think it will be like when the earth is made perfect… more beauty than we could ever imagine!