As I finished work today I made my way out of Cane Ridge over to Nolensville Road to grab some McDonald’s. I love Concord Road from Nolensville to Brentwood. You pass the Governor’s Club, I-65 and Brentwood Baptist before you have to make a choice between left or right on Franklin Road. I was going to Black Dog Book Company, so I went right.

Sometimes the most mundane of tasks can inspire you. I wish I could remember that quote Amy and I talked about the other day concerning moments. It’s appropriate here. I probably saw it on Twitter.

Nonetheless I do remember one quote that I think is spot on here.

Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making future plans.

I don’t know who said or wrote that, but I like it. Maybe that’s what convinced me not to set New Year’s resolutions for so many years. I do now, but for many years I did not set goals in January. It took Jon Acuff to drag me out of that funk. Thanks Jon. Hope you had a good flight to Seattle.

I digress. Planning is wise. I understand that, but sometimes we just have to slow down to see a particularly beautiful tree in a forest. You know, stop and smell the roses. Sitting down for a meal, cup of coffee or just “simple” conversation without any food at all are powerful ways we can immerse ourselves in connection.

As an extrovert I gain energy and strength by being with others. I fight depression, but my conversations with Amy make it bearable. Watching the Cubs beat another MLB team makes it bearable too! Go Cubs go!

Life is hard ain’t it my peeps? I don’t care how young or old you are. You’ve got hard stuff to persevere through. We cannot do it alone. Thank God we don’t have to. As you know I’ve written many times about church on here, and I don’t know what I’d do without my church family. I truly love them, but DC Talk is right in one of their songs I can’t recall right now. It does something like, “It goes beyond religion.” It might be the title track Supernatural, but don’t quote me. The context of the song is our relationship with God, and of course that extends to the catholic (universal) church. “Where two or more are gathered in my name there I AM.” So, obviously there are many times when church is happening at 4006 Granny White Pike. Amy Bradford is one of my “angels,” and I can’t thank the Father enough for her friendship.

As each one of us strives to make sense of an evil ugly world I truly hope we can trust that God is indeed for us. Somedays are better than others. That’s a given, but when we can look at the past to see how He brought us through suffering we are given evidence that He can be trusted. Satan is continually messing with our minds to disrupt any kind of peace God is trying to give us. He will send us miserable comforters, outright attacks from bad angels and he manipulates situations for maximum damage to those of us who have a mental illness. Those are some of the things that make life unfair. I could write a book about the unfairness, injustice, favoritism and bullying that happens to all of us.

Actually I am kind of writing that book. It’s my own memoirs, and I’m excited to announce that the title is Beyond Sad. I haven’t written the subtitle, but it will come in time. It’s predominately about my struggle with depression as you already know if you are a regular visitor to beyondsad.com. I’m going to self-publish it, but I will definitely use a professional editor because I want the first edition to be high quality.

I haven’t asked Amy yet, but I’d love to have a book signing at Black Dog when I print the first few copies. I’ve got to get it written first. I haven’t even had the first chapter professionally edited, so obviously I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Please put this project on your prayer lists because I’ve started and stopped this goal many times for fifteen years, so I need some supernatural guidance on the team.

Mental illness needs to be talked and written about. It is a challenging illness that many people do not understand, but I’m thankful that the stigma around it is lifting. When an illness is talked about and written about from a popular or scholarly level we grow from our learning about it.

I would even argue that understanding anger management, depression or any other anxiety producing illness might help us in our war against terror. It could make our world safer, and in the end make many people like myself more “normal.”

I will again add that I did not manufacture this mental illness, and mental illness is just as serious as any other illness, so let’s stop telling people to shake it off. We don’t tell people with cancer to shake it off. Let’s not tell people with PTSD, depression or bi-polar disorder to shake it off.

Thank you to those of you who found me again. I had to delete my other blog for safety reasons, and I can’t thank you guys enough for joining me here. I’m starting to feel safe here, so when I feel like it’s “completely” safe I’ll use more of my name on the sight here.

Grace and peace dear ones.