Ever After

On Wednesday, it will be seven years since Monty and I moved to this little town on the prairie. My dad and my brother Adam had started an internet-based tech business here, and they offered Monty a job as a software developer. After much thought and prayer, Monty and I decided to leave the city behind and move here. We were certain that this is where we belonged—that here, we would find our happily ever after.

But our first year here was anything but happy—it was the hardest year we ever had. As we struggled to adjust to the culture shock of our move, Monty worked to adapt to his new job with Dad and Adam. I didn’t seem to be able to adjust or adapt. After ten years of addiction, I’d been clean and sober for a year, but I had no coping skills for a life without substances to numb my feelings. When our beloved 17-year-old cat Ricky died, I fell headlong into the darkest spiral of depression I’d ever experienced. Monty and I began to wonder if we’d made a terrible mistake in moving. But we couldn’t move back, so we slowly began to adjust to our new normal. The lessons I’ve learned since then have made those dark moments worth it:

You can’t outrun your problems. When we moved here, I thought I was leaving my personal demons behind. Instead, I found out that those demons travel. I’d been running from them for years, refusing to face them and trying to mask them with the oblivion I found in drugs and alcohol. Here, I finally stopped running. I looked my demons in the face and decided that they were no longer going to control my life. And I discovered that something wonderful happens when you finally stop running and face the music—you get to dance.

Risk a movement. The poet Louis MacNeice wrote this phrase: “to risk a movement without being sure.” Monty and I thought about that when we moved here—we weren’t sure what life in a small town, working for a family business, would be like. But we risked the movement. And when I hit a new rock bottom of being sober but still deeply depressed, I risked a movement: I joined a recovery group. My group meets in a basement room—you have to go down twelve steps to get to the room. The hope and friendship I found in that room showed me how to take the twelve steps back up. Again and again, I work those twelve steps—the steps that gave me the coping skills I so desperately needed—to get back up when I fall.

Look up. When I feel the pain of depression and anxiety, my focus narrows until that’s all I can see. I start to believe that I will never feel joy again. Looking up reminds me that there’s a whole world of hope and joy out there. And my focus changes from myself to God.

Use your pain. I live with chronic physical pain and mental illness. Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for myself, which I admit I still do sometimes, I use my pain to fuel my purpose of reaching out with empathy and compassion to those who suffer like I do—to offer them hope through the message of God’s enormous grace and redemption.

Change is possible. All my life, I believed that I was broken, damaged, and beyond anyone’s help or capacity to love. I accepted my own label of “invalid,” or, as I thought of it, “in-valid.” But now, with the help of my family, friends, and recovery community, I’m changing. I no longer believe that there’s no place for me in this world because I’ve found my place as a wife, daughter, sister, friend, writer, cat mom, and employee—I work for the family business now, too. I’m changing the way I see myself. I’m changing the labels I’ve lived with all my life. I’m changing the feeling of being adrift and purposeless.  I’ve realized that I’m capable of far more than I used to require of myself. I’ve realized that I can cope with life without using substances to numb myself. And I’ve realized that I’m worth fighting for.

An attitude of gratitude changes everything. Every day when I write in my gratitude journal, I’m pulled out of the drudgery of the daily routines of life, and I’m reminded to notice the beauty around me—and there is so much beauty to be found when I’m looking for it. When I choose to see the world through the lens of gratitude, the prosaic becomes poetic, and my burdens become blessings. I look through that lens at the life that Monty and I have built here with our boys and our jobs and our family, and I’m overwhelmed with gratitude for what God has given me. After all that Monty and I fought through to get to this season of our lives, I can finally say that here, in this little town, we truly did find our home—our happily ever after. And when I think about that and how far we’ve come together, my heart beats with the refrain of the redeemed: I am so grateful. I am so grateful. I am so grateful.