Last week, I returned from spending a week in the beautiful country of Haiti. I know – it’s a terrible time to travel. But my friend, Morgan, was moving back to Haiti, and I chose to travel with her to help her move and get settled in. Being away from my family during such a crazy time wasn’t easy, and in addition to that, I’m isolating from them now that I’m home, just in case I picked up COVID during my travels. It’s not fun, for either Josh, myself, or the kids, but it was worth it to us to help Morgan and have an opportunity to see her world.
There are many things I learned or was reminded of on my fourth trip to Haiti:
- I’m not as scared of lizards as I thought I was.
- It’s worth it to pay the money to ride the horse up the mountain instead of hiking it–especially if you’re over the age of 40.
- A moto (small-scale motorcycle) can carry any combination of four humans, three humans and three goats, or two humans and a big screen TV.
- I am terrible at learning new languages.
- A house that is not lived in for seven months will play host to a large number of banana spiders, lizards, and tarantulas.
- Avocados can grow as big as a toddler’s head.
- Always bring more cash.
- You CAN seat 15 people in a minivan in 90-degree heat, and it is done on a regular basis in some parts of the world.
- Tour guides can be aggressive and territorial.
- The back spot on the moto is the least comfortable for your butt, but most comfortable in terms of personal space.
In addition to this, I was reminded of another very important fact — road maintenance is a luxury I am very thankful for.
During our time traveling to Haiti and also within the country, we spent a lot of time on a variety of different roads. Interstates, highways, side streets, dirt roads, runways, rock roads, streets with trash burning in the middle of them, wide-open roads, traffic-congested streets, and trails that simply bypassed the road because the road itself was so terrible. As we spent many hours on these roads, it became pretty clear that road maintenance in many parts of Haiti is minimal at best.
As this wasn’t the first time I’d spent a lot of time on Haitian roads, this wasn’t a surprise to me. In fact, more surprising was that there are actually some pretty nice roads in some of the areas we traveled, and my butt was quite thankful for those parts.
But as we were bouncing along one day, I began to reflect on the importance of maintenance (despite the fact that my brain was drumming against my skull). That morning I had woken up simply feeling really down and depressed. There was no obvious reason why – it wasn’t the normal time of the month when I get depressed, I was feeling good, I was eating fairly healthily, and I’d been having a great time. But sometimes this happens – sometimes I just wake up feeling depressed for no clear reason.
Right now, I’d say that I’m in “maintenance mode” with my depression. I recently adjusted the level of my anti-depressants, and that change allowed me to feel great on a pretty much everyday basis. I haven’t had many down days, no suicidal thoughts, and I’d been handling stressful situations well (such as packing and preparing to leave my husband and kids for over a week in the midst of a pandemic and hybrid schooling). I’ve spent the past couple of years working hard at getting a handle on my depression, and right now it’s (finally) fairly smooth sailing. It took a lot of REALLY HARD work to get here, and I’m enjoying it immensely.
But here’s the thing about anything we build in life – it has to be maintained. If you think about the roads we went on in Haiti, most of them were full of washed out areas, giant holes, mud pits, and rocks. Driving a four-wheeled vehicle on the roads was a slow process – it was faster to take a moto because you could dodge the holes so much easier. I’m guessing that at some point when those roads were first built, you could go over them fairly easily. And as I said, there are actually some roads that are currently in great shape. But it’s entirely possible that by the next time I go to Haiti, those roads could be full of potholes and cracks as well, because the likelihood of them being maintained is so small.
The same is true with depression. I’ve done the hard work. I’ve changed significant things about the way I live my life. I’ve prayed, studied, eliminated major stressors in my life, found medical solutions, consulted with friends and professionals – basically I paved a brand new road for my mental health.
And now that I’m in “maintenance mode,” I know that doesn’t mean I can just sit back and ride it out, or try to go back to life as it was before. Instead, I take stock of where I’m at and how I’m feeling on a regular basis. I keep an eye out for cracks and warning signs. I’m aware of potential pitfalls that may come and how my mental health may be affected by them. I wish I could say that my depression is something that I’ve been healed from. I’m sure that’s possible for some, but so far it hasn’t happened for me. I’ve realized that this is something that may be with me long-term – possibly all my life. And so I’m learning what it means to maintain my mental health.
For me, that looks like paying attention on those days when I wake up feeling down. It means knowing that often simply eating something is a helpful tool for fighting that feeling. It means looking at the calendar and being aware that there are usually certain times of the month that are more difficult and preparing for that. It involves knowing that sometimes a walk with a friend will get me out of a funk, or that doing something financial helps me use a different part of my brain and causes my thoughts to shift. It’s being aware of what foods I’m eating and how that affects how I’m feeling. It’s reading Scriptures that have given me strength before, and crying out to God when I feel overwhelmed. It’s reaching out to a few key friends to ask for prayer. It means knowing my limits and saying no to things that will push me past an acceptable margin – and knowing when it’s worth pushing past that margin occasionally for the right reasons. It’s knowing when to consider jumping back into counseling or scheduling a med check-up with my doctor.
So that morning when I woke up feeling down, I ate breakfast, took my meds, told Morgan how I was feeling, and texted Josh to ask for prayer. I didn’t allow the depression to hijack my day – though there are days when that has definitely happened! But I addressed it in ways that I knew would help, and as the day went on, I slowly began to feel better. The next day was a little easier, and within a couple of days I was feeling great again.
Maintenance is all of these things. It involves awareness of the problem on a subconscious level — a willingness to acknowledge that the problem hasn’t gone away, but also acknowledging that some major battles have been fought and won to get me to this point. And it involves knowing how to address the minor problems that come up, before they become major problems again.
Maybe you’re still in the midst of the battle, but I pray it gives you hope to know that it’s possible to hit a “maintenance mode.” Keep fighting for it, and when you get there be sure that you actually do the work to maintain the ground that has already been won. Trust me, it’s a beautiful place to be.
Feeble Hands 