Accepting God's Grace

This is exactly what God is doing in my life right now and I feel so blessed to be able to see how all I have gone through is going to give me the courage, strength, and empathy I need to be able to help others who may be struggling with similar things. 

While I am doing that I also am constantly reminded of the grace God gives me every day. This past month and half has been a real struggle for me. I started getting manic and instead of trying to do it alone I asked for help and found so many people who were there for me. Things got back to normal and I thought everything was going really good. Then somehow I started getting more depressed without really realizing I was. I can now recognize that I have a much harder time asking for help when I am depressed than when I am getting manic. I'm not sure what it is exactly. Maybe it is easier to recognize there is a problem when I find myself not sleeping for 3-4 days and still having lots of energy, compared to not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to even watch my favorite TV shows, having no motivation for life in general. I think it is hard because it sneaks up on me so quickly. One day I will be great then the next I just wish I could disappear. Which is obviously not ok. But I tend to not ask for help during those times. Maybe it is because simply getting out of bed feels like a chore and so I do what I have to do to get by and that takes all of my energy. There's nothing left to ask for help. Thankfully I have some pretty awesome friends who start to notice when I check out and start asking questions. When people start asking me what is going on it's a reminder to me that something is off. Then I can start talking about it with some people I trust and get back in to see my psychiatrist and adjust meds as necessary. For some reason my mind still likes to associate depression as something I can talk myself out of, which is really not the case. I have to humble myself to recognize that I can't fix this on my own and it is ok to accept help from other people. God has given me so much grace this past month and a half and I am so grateful for that. I am finally starting to learn how to deal with things better than I have in the past and for that I am so thankful that God has given me the wisdom I need to be able to do this. And the support of people I have received lately has been more than I could have ever hoped for. I asked God for one person and He gave me several. I know I am going to continue to make mistakes and this is going to be a learning process. But I am so thankful to know that no matter what happens His amazing grace will always be there for me. 

Through Him I continue to grow stronger. And I hope that by me sharing my story, it helps someone else to know that they are not alone in this fight. There are people who understand what they are going through. And that if we lean on each other and on Jesus that we will not only get through this, we will become strong, encouraging, fierce people who can make a difference in this world.