I live because I am loved

I want to tell you I only lived through the last two weekends to write the post below, and this one, because I have a friend that can, in some mysterious way, always lift my spirit. I have learned a few things that I think are important enough to share.


I wanted to quit smoking by Christmas as a gift to myself. It would have been a gift, too, for those in my family and my friends that don't smoke, at least that is what I thought.


It was not to be more socially acceptable, that doesn't even appeal to me, but to be more able to spend time with those I love with less stress on myself did. I hate having to miss something because I needed to have a smoke.


I tried the new medication that is supposed to help you stop smoking. My body was told it was getting no "feel good feeling" (first note) when it had a cigarette. The medication blocks those receptors in your brain. Unfortunately it got no "feel good feeling" from anything else I did, either.


I got depressed seriously on day four, the first day you take a second dose, upping the level of medication in your body. I didn't realize it was the medication.


I have had bad days on and off since the mate died and accepted them as grief. I have bad days that have nothing to do with the mate dying. I accept them as normal to life. We all have a bad day now and then.


This was really bad though and I called a friend for help with it. It was given. Our conversation made me feel better. (make a note of this)


I made it through the first weekend. I was busy with things going wrong during the week and thought that was why I wasn't pulling all the way out of the funk. Things were going wrong and it was almost Christmas, a funk is normal, then. That is what I told myself.


Only Saturday, the 15th, I was cleaning house and getting things in order. This is not me. I clean or I put things in order. I do them as rarely as possible because I like to have better things to do than clean or do books. I realized I was doing both and then I knew it was because I would be killing myself that night. That is not like me, either.


I have dealt with depression in my life. I have suceeded at suicide once. I will not be doing that again. Not because I believe it is a sin but because I was sent back and believe there is a reason I need to be here that goes beyond my ability to understand. Bad or good, my life and my self are needed here. I made it through losing the mate, I wasn't going to punk out for a black funk of depression I could see no reason for. But I knew right then I wouldn't see dawn.


I needed help. I called my friend again. I claimed another hard day. You don't really want to say the truth when what you feel is so bad you are ashamed of feeling it.


That blessed friend gave me no lecture, no faulting me for needing the same help again. They didn't say "Blow your head off then, I'm tired of dealing with this." They told me that when they feel their thoughts scattering and picking up bleak feelings that they focus on the good things they know, on a healing light from above.


Because those words showed me what I needed to do to get through one more day I could tell them how bad it had been for me - until their kind and caring words had lifted my spirit. (also note this.) Then I confessed why I had called.

They let me talk it out and then we ended our conversation. I made it through another night and researched it on the web the next day. I found it was not me - it was the medication - that was causing my problem.

I can't tell you where the joint is where my body and spirit are joined. I can tell you this - I know they both exist. There is a part of each of us that we can not see. It is real. It is part of "me".


My body was physically incapable of "feeling good". No matter what I did for it the brain said it was NOT feeling it and it was miserable enough to seek an end to it's existance. I know, I was there. Saying it was "not me" that wanted to die was true, it was my body that wanted to quit.


That inability to feel good physically had affected my spirit, but not as strongly. I feel the spirit of me felt badly because the body was having such a hard time. My spirit didn't want to give up. My spirit wanted to live. My spirit sent me seeking again a friend to help it win this one. On it's own it was going to lose.

My friend's words redirected my thoughts to the Holy Spirit. They lifted my spirit up and helped strengthen it. That let me reach out to where my spirit could find help. It was too weak from fighting the body's depression all week to reach out on it's own, at least it seems like that to me. I felt better when I got off the phone. (note again)

You may disbelieve this next, for me it is a truth. After we got off the phone I felt my friend's prayer for my spirit to be healed of this darkness actually touching "me". I felt their spirit lifting mine in prayer. I lived to see the next day because of a friend who did not judge me but offered me the best they knew to give.


A reverse on this is that I have seen that friend dealing with a rough go sometimes this year and been praying for them. I hope my prayer has ever done for them what the prayer they prayed did that day. I would like to think that even once I had lifted anyone's spirit like that.


Now let's add up the notes.

My body was told it was getting no "feel good feeling" (first note)
Our conversation made me feel better. (make a note of this)
their kind and caring words had lifted my spirit. (also note this.)
I felt better when I got off the phone. (note again)

My body could not feel better. If I was sunk in a hot tub with a virial male feeding me dark chocolate with a massage to follow it would not make the body feel better. My brain could not process the information to tell the body it felt better.

"I", in at least three places, state that I felt better or my spirit was lifted. "I" felt better.

The apparent conflict in those two paragraphs is really no conflict at all if you believe your body and your spirit, while they are joined, are two different things.

Two ways to perceive the world are available to us. We mostly only believe that the ones of the body are "real" perception. No one teaches us to use the abilities of our spirits.

I learned again that spirits are real. I learned another spirit can lift mine up. I learned that prayer is the way the spirits touch the Holy Spirit or God and that they can touch each other where ever they are on the planet.

I know things through my spirit when it may be only my body you see here. I knew these things once, when I was younger, but I forgot, I guess. I am going to work at not forgetting them again.

I learned that we do not walk alone here, ever, when there is even one who cares. If we do not die then I never walk alone or unloved - in spirit. That I may feel alone is only the body's way to see it. I know that there is always more than one way to see it. I need to see more with my spirit.

May God Bless all my friends the reached out to help me this week. I live because I am loved.