Perspective

Ever since Saturday, I have been thinking about perspective.  Last week was so bleak and dreary every day-- rain, very little sunshine, and lots of depression for me.  I love a good thunderstorm, but days and days of drizzling rain get me down, almost without me recognizing why I feel so awful!  

All day Friday, the drizzling continued.  That evening, my husband gave me an extension tube set for our camera to allow me to take macro pictures.  The next morning, I went outside to try it out.  What would have appeared to be wet dreariness everywhere only the day before transformed right before my eyes into beautiful, delicate little beads of rain on EVERYTHING.  I could hardly contain my excitement as I took pictures of every little drop I could find.  It felt like a whole new world had opened up to me, and I wanted to spend hours capturing it.

The ability to see the world in a new way changed how I felt about the rain.  What used to be dark and gloomy turned into something beautiful and something I could appreciate.  It filled me with joy in a way that I never thought would be possible, but now it is.

Likewise, my personal perspective on bipolar disorder often includes words like "sorrow," "discouragement," "difficult," and even occasionally "unfair."  I try to find joy through it, but sometimes it feels so hard to find the good in this.  It hurts and has changed me in ways that I don't want to change.  I'm different now, and sometimes I just want to go back to how everything used to be.

But recently, some good friends and good experiences have opened my eyes to see this disorder from a different perspective.  What I often see as not being a good enough mom because of this struggle has been explained by several people as an opportunity for my daughter to learn compassion and to realize that hard things happen to everyone and that we keep going without giving up.  What I see as me not being able to keep up with any of the big or little things I used to do has become an opportunity for my husband to appreciate every little thing I am able do now and for me to appreciate his efforts to help me and my good days.  What I see as one hard thing after another in the last year, God sees as a heart that has been softened and that has been opened to the heartaches of others.  What I sometimes see as misery, God is helping me to see as miracles all around me every day!

Whenever I find myself falling into the hole of self-pity, I know that I simply have to change my perspective, which is not easily done but very worth my time.  I have to try to look through different eyes and see things the way they really are, not the way my broken heart and broken brain like to see them.  For me, striving to find joy is my surest way of changing the way things look.  It gives me the ability to see my trials as stepping stones instead of stumbling blocks.  Sometimes I have to look really hard to find joy in what I am experiencing, but it's always there and always possible to find it!