ADHD of the Soul

My intended quiet time in the early morning hours is not what it once was. What was a long period of worship, reading of psalms and proverbs, journaling, and prayer, is now like a blank time of intended decompression. I can’t get my brain to settle down to rest with God no matter how early I rise. Everything in me is numb, racing, restless- all at the same time. I have ADHD of the soul. 

My soul is in overload, overdrive, and is overstimulated. With too many different thoughts and needs competing for attention, my mind flips and flops around not able to attach itself to anything. My morning spiritual quiet time has morphed into my morning numbing.  I cannot access that pure peace I once received daily. God seems to be silent …and honestly, I’m hardly  asking questions anymore. I’m flat. My desire is stale. Everything is depressed. 

But thank the Lord for laughter. I am still able to laugh and laugh a lot. Laugh until I’m crying.  Tears are tears, and my soul needs an outlet and laughter has been good medicine.  I feel alive after a good laugh, I’m reminded there is still joy. This is God’s gift to me right now, satisfying my deep thirst during this season of emotional drought, soul drought, and even spiritual drought. 

I love reading, and typically all different genres, but it is now a point of contention for me. My mind jumps around… Is this the most important thing to read? What scriptures are most important for me right now? What movies, what prayers? I mean, where do I even begin if I can’t even decide what books to read?   And so I spend too much time wondering if any of it is even worth my time. Am I in the mood for anything at all?  Probably not.  

The same way with food. I crave nothing-nothing sounds satisfying or tasty. When I’m hungry, I just want my stomach filled – I don’t care what it is. Often I have toast for my meals. Sometimes with avocado, and sometimes just butter and salt.  These kinds of meals satisfy me. I have cooked about once a month this past year.  I cooked 2 to 3 meals a day for most of my adult life including a time as a private chef for 7 families. Eating is now just  a means to an end.

My soul, mind, and emotions are like an over stuffed closet. Jumbled, full of random items, some things need to be discarded , while others need to be kept and given new life, or repaired, donated, polished, repurposed, or even altered. This is what needs to be done in the closet to my mind, the closet to my emotions, habits, beliefs. The attention deficit is real, and the best way to eliminate the deficit is to remove distractions-create uncluttered space so the soul can expand and thrive. I’m currently  on a focused personal journey to purge the closet of my soul, making room for healing, alterations, and new things to come. 

PTSD and Daffodils

 I’ve a love hate relationship with daffodils.  I love how they spring up to life in all their glory at the end of a grey, dead winter.  If they had a personality, I feel they would be an introvert. They stand alone, unassuming, and unaware of the beauty they bring to darkness.  I love them because they remind me of a scene in Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory when Willie Wonka(Gene Wilder) picks a daffodil in the factory, holds it like a cup & saucer, then proceeds to drink from it. Metaphorically speaking, we all drink from their beauty on an overcast day in late winter.  In Mississippi, that day is always in February.  Their arrival is my keeper of time.  

And I hate daffodils for that reason.  

When I see their cups upright on a humid overcast morning in February, my body kicks into PTSD.  A few days ago at work, I looked out the floor to ceiling windows-February hit me like a weighted blanket.  The lump in my throat was back, the full body burn was back. The inability to swallow was back.  The anniversary of my husband’s tragic sudden death was back. The body keeps the score.

The knock on my door came around 3:30am. My husband was out of town on business. I cracked the door & heard these words, “We have a fatality to report”.  Just writing those words makes my body feel as if an elephant is sitting on my torso. 

At some point In following days, my friend Beth came over with a bouquet of daffodils she’d picked from her garden.  The bright yellow flowers seemed as if they were the only color in my house at that time. 

Daffodils make me think of Beth and her tender love she extended to me that day. They remind me that beauty & life still spring up after a dead  winter. I bought a fixer upper last year. Next to a low broken down brick wall, clumps of daffodils are in bloom.  Their unexpected placement in the landscape means they’ve been around awhile and have seen lives come and go, and yet still show up to share their light & hope. They are like a messenger, blowing a horn as if to say, “Hear ye hear ye!  Winter’s almost over, the worst is over, more beauty is coming.”  More beauty is coming.