Sunshine

I love the sunshine. I like wearing flip flops, sitting on the cathedral green in my hometown, going to the zoo and not having to take a jumper when I go out. I spend my entire Autumn and Winter counting down the weeks until the end of February, when evenings begin to stay lighter for longer, and I can start waking up to a little bit of sunshine peeking round the edge of my curtains.

However, sometimes I feel like what I love most about Summer is that it's not Winter.

It's no longer a secret that in my earlier teenage years, I suffered with seasonal affective disorder. My condition was diagnosed only a couple of years ago - just before my first Winter in years that I would suffer from much milder "winter blues" around November, as opposed to a full-blown depression which would lead right through until early Spring.

For me, September and October are scary months. I watch the weather start to get a bit drearier, and the night starting a little bit earlier, and I don't quite know yet how I'm going to cope for the next several months. I see everyone getting excited about woolly jumpers and candles and pumpkin spice lattes on social media and for me, those things are associated with something a lot less sweet*.

*(Okay, maybe not the #PSL. I love that cup of sweet spicy goodness and I get excited about that too)

SAD and Winter blues are different things, but, just like any mental health illness, they both can be pretty hard to explain to others, even though a pretty large proportion of the population do feel a little bit less energetic during the Winter months. Perhaps that's what makes it harder: worrying that people will say "Oh, yeah, we all feel a bit like that when it's cold, you've just got to snap out of it." But with SAD, and more severe Winter blues, the cold/dark can drag you down for several months at a time. "But you know you'll feel better when it gets lighter again, so it's not as bad as normal depression". Yes, we probably will, and I've always felt super grateful that I tend to only suffer during the colder months. During the Summer months, that makes it sound much more bearable. However, depression has a habit of making you feel like you're never going to be better than you are now. In January, the prospect of feeling better in May just seems too far away to get much hope from.

I don't have any dramatic point to make about seasonal affective disorder, or Winter, nor do I have a desire to rant about the way people talk about mental health issues (I'll leave that for another post). Instead, I want to share these famous verses from Romans 8 in the hope it can encourage someone suffering with depression today.

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 

39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

During dark periods of our lives, often Christians will encourage us to "cast all our anxieties upon him", and to "be not afraid, because the Lord your God is with you". This is wonderful advice, and I believe in a God who hates to see us depressed or anxious or in pain, and who is indeed with us always. However, sometimes those things can seem just too hard to believe and live out. In the times that we're not strong enough to process that, my prayer is that we will be constantly reminded that there is nothing can separate us from His love.

In Praise of Social Media

I've seen loads of videos and articles lately, particularly from Christian sources, talking about the damage social media is causing to our society, and the "loneliness epidemic" that lies behind the "social" element of modern technology. Before I start getting into this, I want to say I pretty much wholeheartedly agree with what these kind of articles are saying. I recognise the problems behind social media and various forms of technology, and I've experienced the negative effects of them myself. I'm not here to defend social media of its bad press.

Checking my Timehop this afternoon, I found this tweet from two years ago:

Clearly this was a late-night musing (I've always said my best musings come to me between 11pm and 1am). I can't remember if there was a specific incident or interaction that inspired this thought, but two years later, it's really made me think about the impact social media has had on my life. As a young person, social media has been around for pretty much as long as I've been old enough to be using it, which makes it hard to see how it's shaped me over the years. I'll probably never know, but I can tell that it's definitely had a big impact. Twitter and YouTube in particular have been a huge source of encouragement and self-discovery for me. So much of my ministry as a teenage new Christian in a non-Christian household came from online podcasts (shout out once again to the Say That team), Christian lifestyle/advice videos (such as the ones Jeff & Alyssa make), online devotionals (e.g. Word4U2Day), and Christian radio stations.

I've made friends through social media - obviously it's always so important to do this in a safe way, but I was grateful to make a friend through Twitter after we connected through the #ssbioy (Soul Survivor Bible In One Year) hashtag who I encouraged and was encouraged by.

Through Facebook in particular, I've been able to sustain relationships with people who have really blessed me over the years. I've received and given support to a friend who I got to know mostly through Facebook a year or two ago when we were simultaneously experiencing a similar tough situation. Moving to London, I could easily have lost contact with almost all of my college friends back home in Hampshire, but through Facebook I know a little bit about what they're up to, they know what I'm doing, and so we all stay a part of one another's lives. Additionally, my potential worries about moving to London and meeting a whole load of new people were much reduced from the friendly contact I had already had with many of them through a Facebook group.

I've been able to take part in debates, interacted with important people, and learn so much about the world I live in and my place in it. Social media, and Twitter in particular, has truly given me a voice. Through blogging and tweeting, I have a platform from which to speak and that is a valuable thing. In a democratic country where freedom of speech is our right, it's good and important that we are able to be heard. Again, I completely recognise that this privilege can be abused.

The social activist and feminist in me has pretty much been borne of social media, because I've become aware of the issues facing my society and this world, and helped me understand what I could do about it.

Regarding my recent desire to live a new, healthier, more ethical and eco-friendly life, social media communities have been the ones to teach me how I can go about it, and answered any questions I have.

I could go on.

People need people, and social media isn't always the way to access what we need from them, but just sometimes, it can be edifying, fun, educational and inspiring.