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My friend Jeannett over at Life Rearranged asked me to write a guest post for a series on her blog about depression, which I battled a few years ago. When I was writing it, I came across this post from that time, which was hard to read, but also good to read. I hope you’ll read it today and read my guest at Life Rearranged tomorrow (and read the first in that series today).

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Originally published June 2009

“How’s your brain?” a friend asked me this weekend. Meaning, to ask, of course, if I was still losing my ever-loving mind.

“Eh. I have good days and bad days.” I replied.

Which is true, but it’s not quite that simple. Some days I have really good days, and some days I have really bad days, and some days, I am just not quite right. Some days it is my mental health that needs a tune-up, and other days my hormones still torture me physically.

I am working on it. I have medication, I have routine doctor’s appointments, and now, after a good talk with the aforementioned friend, I have some social and activity-related goals I am going to set for myself. To be proactive, and perhaps, help my body chemistry along a bit.

But the truth is I am tired. Tired of trying to get better, tired of waiting to get better, tired of not being better. Tired of feeling totally awesome for a couple of days and then the crushing disappointment of feeling the opposite of awesome the next day.

And sometimes, I am afraid. Afraid that this will be the rest of my life. Afraid that I will end up laying in the middle of my lawn speaking jibberish and wearing my underwear on my head. Afraid that if I post about being crazy I will not be invited to cool mommy blogger events or win friends and influence people (hey I never said my fears were rational.)

What will I learn from this…period in my life? I want to know it, this lesson, I want to have learned it, earned it, put it into practice. I want to tuck it into my back pocket and say, “Oh, I am so glad I had that experience because it made me a better person.”

The Bible says we are to count our trials as joys. Because they build faith, and character. It also says they that wait on the Lord will soar like eagles. And soaring instead of muddling sounds lovely right now, and I want to do it. So I wait. And I remember, in my saner moments, in the quiet, in the stillness, that it is enough that God knows. He knows the number of my days, which ones will be a battle and which ones will be full of effortless joy. He knows these things that it is not time for me to know yet, and for that I am so thankful. It is unknown to me but it is not unknown.

It is enough.

The NCAA March Madness tournament starts today, and it’s quite an event at our house. Sam made his picks the other night and his enthusiasm cracked us up, so I had to share.

My favorite part is about 56 seconds in, when his patriotism and loyalty to our local team collide.

I love to bake. Like, a lot. I really love it. The problem is that I also love to eat baked goods, and I cannot be trusted to have them in my house. It’s a real conundrum, because I will eat all the things. I do tend to bake a lot around the holidays, and while I’ve mastered things like my famous pumpkin rolls, until this year there was one area I had not ventured in to.

Pies.

Making pie seemed so… complicated, and I really didn’t know anything about it. But, one night shortly before Christmas, I was up to my ears in flour and baking supplies, and I got it in my mind that I should make a pecan pie for my grandma – her favorite treat. I turned to my good friend Google, and before long I was whipping up the Karo syrup pecan pie recipe along with Wesson oil crust. Believe it or not, it worked.

At least, I think it did. I didn’t actually have a piece.

In any case, I no longer feel like pie is beyond my capabilities, and I am looking forward to trying out more recipes.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t even remember the last time I looked in a cookbook. I still have some, but they are downstairs and really don’t make their way to my kitchen. When I need a recipe, I bring my iPad into the kitchen and I’m good to go. Searching all over the internet for a recipe I ran across two weeks ago isn’t always convenient, and it’s good to have recipes in one place.

Enter Foodie.com. You can browse, sort and search more than a million recipes and restaurants, and collect the ones that interest you all in one place. Their toolbar makes it easy to grab recipes from all over the internet, too. The collection posted above is my “Pie” collection, but as I scrolled through Foodie I also made collections for breakfasts, desserts, slow cooker recipes, and appetizers/snacks. I’m sure there’s more where that came from, too. One thing that struck me about Foodie is that it’s JUST food – there’s less noise and it makes it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for. I think that this is a tool I will use a lot.

Check out Foodie.com and let me know what you think!

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This post is sponsored by Glam Media.