This message of peace came at a perfect time for me because (SURPRISE!) I’m feeling a tad insecure as of late. Not that I’m feeling any more insecure than usual. Well, yes I am, because I got to taste what it felt like to be normal, not insecure, when I was manic a week ago (THAT WAS GREAT–Oops, there I go with the caps again). So when I went back to feeling insecure, it felt like that black dog that Winston Churchill talks about (with regard to his depression) was peeing on my leg, thinking it had found a tree.

These days, in the moments that I catch myself in the midst of a massive bout of insecurity (“Self, why are you feeling insecure?”), I have been repeating this new mantra: “I am okay.”
Just those three simple words: I am okay.
They can be interpreted to mean a host of things, from financial security to confirmation that the world doesn’t hate me in the way I think it does and that I’m not the worst mom in Annapolis. It means that I will be taken care of, just like Jesus says in Matthew’s sixth chapter—”So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat? Or ‘What are we to drink?'”—that I need not prove anything to the world in order to be loved.
It works, this mantra … at least until my next therapist appointment. It brings me a small sense of peace: that even amidst the chaos of my brain, and the craziness of this world, all is right for the moment with me.