Relapse.

Even feathers feel like bricks these days--the slightest contrary motion enough to send me spinning suddenly out of control.

I attribute it to fickleness rather than hypocrisy. It is not that I say one thing and do another. It is that I say one thing in a moment of peace, and then in another moment, when some hitch in my thoughts or plans brings the pain flooding back in, I am saying something else. I am the doubter, bobbing on a storm-tossed sea. One step forward, two steps back--I spend hours struggling up the slime-encrusted pit, and in a split second, I have slipped back down to the very bottom.

This is the part where words seem empty. Even the true ones. Because sometimes, the knowledge that God is with me, that He is my strength in times of weakness, that He makes everything beautiful in its time--along with a thousand other good and marvelous promises that are engraved on my heart--all seem incredibly distant, as I shiver in the dark, coated in mud, angry and sick of the feeble and failed attempts at escape that brought me right back to the place where I swore I would never return.

What, then? When feelings turn against you and words fail to comfort?

It begins with standing. Lodging your foot into the dirt, hands gripping rock or root, and you take a step upwards, head tilted toward light. Maybe you will fall again, but don't you dare look down. Not even a glance. You might not have the strength to believe right now, but you do have the strength to live this next moment--it has been given to you, your manna from heaven. So live it. Don't give up until you taste blue sky.