Walking Each Other Home 2

When you’re out at night and you need to walk back to your car alone it can be scary. I’ve often walked with my car key jammed between my fingers ready to hit someone if they jumped out at me. The sound of footsteps behind you can freak you out, but if it’s you and a couple of girlfriends walking along, you feel safer.

It’s always a good idea to walk each other home.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been battling with feeling very run down, depleted and not able to cope. It’s been a journey I’ve been taking alone. I tend to squash my feelings and work through things on my own. I don’t often invite others, even my husband, to walk alongside me.

Three weeks ago, I took myself away on retreat and rested, but that wasn’t enough.I wrote a blog about how I was feeling—tentatively sharing my feelings and trying not to do it all on my own.

A few close friends read the posts where I admitted that my mental health wasn’t great. No one judged—they lifted me up with prayers and sent sweet messages.

I stayed with a friend for a few days and she gave me the gift of a safe place. The sort of safe place you get up and stay in your pjs, forget the makeup and admit that, even though you were supposed to be there to write, the words weren’t coming.

I’m back home now and feeling rested in some ways, but fragile in others. This hasn’t been a quick-fix deal. It’s more an ongoing process sort of deal. It’s one of those seasons in life where I’m choosing to be vulnerable and rumble with the feelings.
So I’m asking myself:
When you feel skinless, when every interaction is hard work, when everything in you wants to scream, ‘Go away,’ who comes alongside and gives you the words, or the presence, you need to bring hope and peace back into your world?
I am a person of faith and know God is always there to give peace and comfort, but I’ve found that He also sends friends at just the right time. These friends bring a contribution to your world that helps you get through, just when you’re at the end of your rope. I’m finding at this moment in my life that there are people who are willing to walk me home.

On an international level, we’ve just witnessed an election where two people offered their contribution to the world. I won’t go into the way the outcome made me feel, but I pray that all who have just been elected will realise that:

every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace. Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution. Aung San Suu Kyi

We all bring something to each other, whether it’s on a personal or community or world stage level. I thank God for the people who are walking me home and contributing to my life. I hope that when one of my friends needs someone to walk them home, that I’ll be there.

I hope that in this crazy, sometimes scary, world that there will be leaders who will walk us through these times and realise that we’re all just walking each other home.