Milestone!!

I have a MAJOR milestone to share with y'all. A week and a half ago, my therapist announced that he thought I was ready to begin weaning off of therapy. And I was excited! Not nervous, not depressed, not anything negative, just excited. My last day of therapy is March 26th - one day after the one year anniversary of my suicide attempt. And then, the week from hell began....

Tuesday, I accomplished nothing I needed to thanks to various friend and work emergencies, got lots of extra work dumped on me, and had a panic attack myself in the library over telling my father about my impending divorce.

Wednesday, I started to feel sick, which I just don't have time for right now.

Yesterday, I got a call at work. It was Mom, so I answered. She was crying, and struggled to tell me that a great man, who's been a grandfather figure to me, had passed away. I know we talked after that, but I have no memory of the conversation. I know that one of my students came over to ask a question, but I couldn't tell you what it was for anything. I was simply in shock.

I made plans to go home this weekend to see his family, as well as my own. Today, they were derailed by, you guessed it, snow and ice (seriously, is anyone in the contiguous US not getting this stuff???).

However, this is not a rant post. Because today, I realized that, in spite of everything challenging my mental health, I was still happy, healthy, and positive. I realized that my therapist and my best friend were both right - I was "better." With the help of God and family/friends (really, those words are interchangeable at this point), I can handle absolutely anything thrown my way.

The conversation with my best friend upon telling him that I was weaning off of counseling. He said that what he'd told me last spring was coming full circle:

Happy New Year???

Given the state of my personal life, I've heard more New Year's platitudes this year than ever before.
"New year, new you!"
"Time for a fresh start!"
"Everything can be different this year!"

With all due respect to the people who told me those things, they are bald-faced lies. Now don't get me wrong - I firmly believe in the power of choosing to start over. However, there is nothing magical or inherently more powerful about the new year. You remain the person you were when you entered. My past has not suddenly changed or disappeared.

That being said, I have decided to make some alterations to my life this year. I'll be updating you as we go along, letting you know at least one change per week until I run out of changes. This week, that change is a book.

It's no secret that my faith has been wavering, thanks to my life circumstances. (More on that later.) But when I received The Bible in Rhyme by Kyle Holt from my mother for Christmas, I decided to give it a try. After all, it couldn't hurt, right?

Wrong. I am a poet, by both nature and schooling. The rhyming scheme (and its frequent misses) often grate on my nerves. But it's cute, fun, easy to read. I have consumed more of the Bible in the past three days than I usually achieve with the standard "I'll read at least four chapters a day" kind of resolution.

The Bible in Rhyme has also forced me to think about what I'm reading in a way that reading the standard Bible never has. The author has made a concerted effort to capture a cohesive, overarching story, which ash forced him to omit some details and to explain the relevance of stories that interrupt the overarching narrative.

Should this Bible be your only Bible? Absolutely not. However, if the original text is hard for you to get through, difficult for you to understand, or in some other way prohibitive to your reading it, give this a try. Thus far, at least, it seems to be a great way to get to know the general story without getting bogged down in difficult language, incoherent measurements, or genealogies that do not carry the meaning to modern readers that they would have to the original hearers.

What are you doing to change yourself or your circumstances this year? What do you think of New Year's resolutions?