This Is For You Dad

My Daughter's blog today addresses issues of depression, both hers and my profound sadness, a little of what it was like to be my daughter and her encouragement to me to seek Joy. It's a touching read and I hope you'll take the time to see for yourself.

Thank you Daughter: I love you, Dad


I was originally going to just e-mail this to my father but he has decided to go though the gift we gave in publicly on his blog.

So a little of back story. Depression is a terrible thing. I have struggled with bouts of it. Where I am tired, and apathetic and nothing seems to be important, or matter,or make me happy and the worst part of it for me is that I don't feel like this is a bad thing, because nothing really seems to matter. I just want to read and sleep. Reading takes me out of my world where nothing matters into a place where things do and people feel. The first time this hit me after we were married I did not realize how much it had altered my behavior until I saw how much it worried my husband. My depression is very manageable. Control stress, eat well, get enough sleep and I am usually fine.

My father has a much harder time managing what he calls his "profound sadness." Its hard to be the child of someone who rarely seem happy with you. I mean my dad did everything he could to let us know he loved us and he was proud of us. He never missed a single track meet. But there was the underlying current that none of this was enough to be happy. As an adult I understand this much better and as a child I don't think I was aware of it as it was pretty much a constant, but it makes my heart break for him. So I put together a little appointment style calendar with bible verses, questions, and random acts of kindness that I hoped would help him discover how to choose to be joyful even when sadness seems to be the only real option. You see it is my belief that joy is different than happiness. Joy is one of the fruit of the spirit according to the list in Galatians. This means Joy comes from God. It is something that is there despite, or perhaps regardless of circumstances something you can choose to have if you only reach out for it.
Read the rest of my daughter's blog at:

http://homegrownstrawberries.blogspot.com/2012/12/you-still-need-cough-suppressant.html#more


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