Day 141 - Three cities

An early start. Thankfully I had fallen asleep early last night but had awoken at 5am to find a text saying a friend couldn't meet me after all this evening. I had kind of expected as much. It hit me that maybe I wasn't valued by anyone. Maybe I was just a weird, rubbish person. Suddenly the arguments came flooding in for why I had been wrong to believe I had lots of friends. So that did make me pretty low. I didn't get much more sleep before having to get up at 7.

In London, I met Naomi before going to see the psychiatrist. I got pretty nervous as she was going to have to leave before the end of the appointment.

The appointment was pretty good in that changes were made: I'm probably going to start lithium. It feels like quite a big deal. I worried that I had made the situation either recent or ever sound worse than it is. But then it can be so hard. So, so hard. Anyway I think I had prayed that God's will would be done irrespective of my motives.

I wandered around London a little after the appointment, keen to have a bit of fun. There was some guilt and anxiety about this though and soon I became tired anyway.

On the train back I was feeling rather harassed. So I got off a stop early in Great Shelford. I went to sit in a park. Bad idea. Should have listened to my mother' sage old advice. But it seemed so safe...

Anyway, I ended up having a very long conversation with a strange man. It messed with my head and I did initially feel angry with God for letting it happen when I had been feeling so vulnerable. But that really echoes some of the psalms and that was a comfort to me. It's like Naomi said to me earlier in the day - we can't understand or give reason to every bad thing that happens but we can trust that Jesus in his sovereignty has won.

Just in case that wasn't enough, once back in Cambridge, some youths shouted at me 'Oh I like your....err...oh, I don't like anything you're wearing' and proceeded to discuss how rubbish different things I was wearing were. I hadn't been feeling happy about how I looked anyway and now I just wanted to cry.

I was fairly quiet in the bible study. We were looking at Acts 12:25-13:12 in which Elymas, a sorcerer, who is an attendant of the proconsul is accused of being a child of the devil. This was so very relevant to the situation I had been in with the weird man (not saying he was a child of the devil but there had definitely been some spiritual warfare going on there as he was telling me about his healing hands and stuff).

I worried about offending people and worried about certain people being low. Andy pointed out the first worries were silly but the second one was more a case of carrying each other's burdens. So a good 'worry'. But I must remember I am not Jesus to people.

Anyway, all in all, very upset and stressed by the end of the day.