The day starts at an hour of my choosing, I like that.

Perched in my pink chair, I sip hot caramel colored decaf coffee from a mug that reads “life is good”, and I know it to be true. Oh how I truly know that fact, which in knowing, the sensible person I believe I am begs to question, how even knowing it abundantly am I unable to shake this gnawing gloom clinging to me, for months now? It stands as a threat to steal my joy if I so much as let my guard down even for a moment. It is bigger than a mind over matter thing, but I know my mind is where the battle wages.

Self-sabotage.

Somehow, with parents and children and grandchildren all well, and so much to celebrate here in the month of June, Dad’s 80^th birthday, a grandsons 5^th, another’s 1^st, the adoption of a granddaughter establishing her as a permanent addition to our family, dear, dear friends, the kind who send cards in the mail and phone texts just to say they’re glad we’re us, good health, a fine home and all that goes with it, somehow, with all that is good and right, sadness creeps like an oozing blackness.

Next month, a few short days from now, I will exit one decade and enter another. The new decade is a rude reminder that I am running out of time. That, compounded by the lack of resources needed to fulfill the wish list I’d like to upload into that limited time, is the culprit, the enemy of my content, the black ooze.

I look at my book of Psalms, a gift from a daughter-in-love, precious. Today I read “ You (God) care about the anguish of my soul”, that’s it really, a soul ache, “I am in distress, tears blur my eyes, my body and soul are withering away, my years are shortened by sadness, I am wasting away from within…as if I were a broken pot”. I can relate to that, all of it, the broken pot part even, much like the one I made in ceramics class designed to represent me, a “self-portrait” in clay, unfinished, because neither am I yet finished. That is a comfort, and empowering.

I look a little further down in the same Psalm and read “You lavish blessing…far from accusing tongues”. Even the forked tongue of a serpent? Even the tongue of the voices in my own head? Ann Voskamp eloquently writes “that serpent, the enemy of your soul, his name means ‘prosecutor’ and that is what he does…he tries to make your life a trial to get you to prosecute yourself…poisons endlessly with self-lies…distort your identity”. The fears creep black, fear “I’ve run out of time…missed the boat…was never good enough for the ‘real boat’…I’ll probably get kicked off this boat”.

I write, it is therapy. In the journaling section of my Psalm book I enter:

Sometimes a rescue is needed even when there is no outward evidence. One can be chased into hiding by an enemy invisible. What I hear myself say to my own ears can freeze me, dead and cold in my tracks unable to push through, ahead.

Lies.

Lies of my own worst enemy, me. I self-sabotage.

One word of encouragement so desperately needed, one expression of loving kindness, threatens the already bulging levy barely holding back the heaving deluge pushing behind it. I swallow hard, push the feelings down, keep them contained, hold back and hold on, ‘till the cavalry, Calvary, rescues, yet again.

I want to run away. I want to get in my car and drive until I meet the edge and have to turn back. The reality of that thought is, as it has always been, that I won’t get very far unless I rack up a credit card debt that will haunt me upon my return. It tempts even still. I succumb to sensibility and decide to instead go to the park just ten minutes up the road. Easily enough along the way my car points itself on a right turn into the fast food drive through. Crack. My son calls the food crack, an irresistible indulgence.

At the park I am greeted by a red bird, dining next to a blue bird, two doves, and a squirrel at the feeder. Coexisting amicably for their own well-being. Even those birds seem to be smarter than me. Isolation is unhealthy even if it is what I prefer. Along the edges of the park path yellow flowers grow in the grass, their faces bent in unison slightly west, looking full on to the warmth and light, their life source. Shouldn’t I be smart enough to do what these mindless flowers automatically and naturally do, bend toward my life source? That is why I am here. A bright green streaks across the trail, an iguana quick to dodge perceived danger and run for cover from it. Shouldn’t this be my reaction to danger?

And so it is.

I have run away, to the woods. Run from the danger of isolation and self-pity. Run to a place where I can meet God for a little us time, just Him and me. I have come where the trees and breeze twirl by the breath of their creator, where the sun and shadows flirt on the path beneath, where the orange butterflies tickle the fancy of purple flowers, and where a feather has gently fallen to the dirt floor.

Treasures for a treasure seeker.

It is a departure, a diversion from the “prosecutor”. It is not a once done cure-all but it is a soul soothe.

There is much yet to celebrate here in June, and into July and the whole second half of the year. Be brave writes Ann Voskamp, “be brave, your bravery strengthens a thousand battles you can’t see because your bravery strengthens a thousand others to win their battles too…there’s a cross you can take into your heart…that can cut the head off a lying snake”.

Sometimes it’s best not to wait for the cavalry and instead go straight to Calvary, where the work of Christ’s cross has already broken the stronghold of the lying snake.