A prayer for when the world expects more than you can give, written by Laurie Freeland

and read by Kelly Gibbons, made the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you

trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15 verse 13.

I should be doing laundry, cleaning my bathroom, making a much-needed grocery run,

checking my daughter's homework, calling about a prescription for my son,

editing a client's chapters, and starting my new book, or at least returning my writing partners

frustrated texts. But I can't. Every minute I spend thinking about doing even one of those things

tightens my chest, and I find myself trying to breathe under a hundred pound weight. Crazy, right?

Every item listed above is menial, normal. Things most people do every day, if you substitute my

writing tasks for your job. But I can't do normal. I can't jump or even crawl out of bed most mornings

and look forward to my day. It's the expectation of normal that feels overwhelming.

I'm exhausted and sad and lost. Every little thing on my to-do list, every call from my friends,

an unfinished project, it all makes me want to run away. So I stay in bed, avoid the phone,

put off my friends, procrastinate the things I should be doing until we run out of clean underwear

and milk, and I worry the only friend I'll have left is my cat. There's a lot of words

thrown around for these kind of feelings. Depression, anxiety, grief, but other people's labels cease to

matter when you find you're the one who can't get out of bed. Your story might be different

than mine. I'm not a psychologist and everyone's situation is unique. All I can share is my experience

and what is helping me move forward. I found Christians are sometimes the worst when it comes to

understanding what I'm going through. We're taught to believe that all we need to do is pray harder,

believe more, and turn it over to God. And as Christians, we're blessed to have that option,

but turning it over isn't always simple. It's never been for me. It's been a process,

...