Several years ago, my friend Heather sent me a care package. In it was a little gratitude journal called 101 Joys Make a Rainbow. The idea was that every day you’d record something you were grateful for and then fold the page. When you were done the booklet, you’d have an entire rainbow of “joys.”

Something stinks. I don’t know what it is, but every time I walk into the mudroom of my house, there’s this, this…stench that wafts from…somewhere. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. And it’s driving me crazy.

What the heck is that smell?

In case you’re wondering, I’m not against gratitude. In fact, I recently spent an entire year posting a daily photo and blurb on social media for something I was grateful for each day of the year.

“I feel like a small potato,” I texted to my husband the other day.

Trying to be a voice for mental health, for women of faith, amidst all the noise “out there” some days feels impossible.

I’m here again. After a six-month hiatus from my depression and anxiety, it’s back. When I was “out of it,” back in a clear frame of mind, I wasn’t stupid enough to think it could never come back.

Writing has been hard today. The words haven’t been flowing. I write in spurts and starts. Type here. Hit delete. Then backspace, backspace, backspace. If I had been writing on paper, I think there’d be a huge pile of crumpled-up pieces of paper in the wastepaper basket.