Fit for purpose?

Morning Prayer -- 5 days out of 5 this week. No, it isn't about the numbers... but setting a time, having a structure, seems to be helpful. Structured prayer doesn't confine my prayer to the limits of the structure but it does ensure that some prayer happens.

In addition to the thinking I've been doing about vocation or purpose, I'm struggling a little with a general mental malaise or low mood. I don't think it's a reaction to the things I've been thinking about or coming to recognise, though of course it could be; it doesn't feel like that kind of emotional response. I think it's much simpler. I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder and some years it's worse than others. I'm using my lightbox, and that's helping, but I still feel low.

As anyone who's had a major mental illness would be, I'm rather frightened that this mild low patch will develop into full-blown, whimpering-under-the-duvet depression.

I know that I have much better external support now than I did last time.

I know that I have much better mental tools now than I did last time.

I know that over three years of therapy did help heal a lot of the things that made my previous experience so debilitating.

I know that I don't react badly to some of the dried frog pills and that medication, though inconvenient, is an option.

I know that I'm aware of this and in a much better position to do something about it than I once was.

And I know that there is a chance that even if I do all I can, I will still get very ill.

And that's scary, because even the work I'm doing now -- which I love -- will fall apart if I get too sick to do it.

So I find my prayer this week sliding from "Please tell me what You want me to do" to "Please let me remain well enough to do it..."

I keep using the lightbox, I keep practising, I try not to sweat the small mistakes while allowing myself to focus on the small pleasures. I ask friends, loved ones, for help and company, I try to pace myself in terms of what I take on, and I reframe, reframe, reframe every all-or-nothing, black-and-white condemnation of myself or the world that my maladapted lizard brain tries to throw at me, trying always to turn toward what is good, turn toward what is God, the ground of all being, wanting to believe that love is stronger than this greyness.

Turn us again, O God of hosts; •
show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.
from Psalm 80