This week's lexicon entry is a...not particularly happy Czech word -- litost. It means the feeling of regret and misery you get when you look at your own life and aren't happy with it, aren't content where you are. It's...the darkness that comes in the night when you can't sleep and can't see a way forward, the dark of depression and self-hate and thinking that you should be more than you are.
It's a word that in some ways, I relate to more than I really feel comfortable with.
I think it's worth noting, though, that even as we probably all feel litost at some point -- we don't have to. We can get help for feelings of depression and other mental health issues -- and when we look at our lives and aren't content with them, we can and should take it as an opportunity to do better, to be better, rather than letting it become something that drags us down further. Feeling those things happens, it's a part of life -- but we are none of us alone in them.
It's ok to have regrets, it's ok to be sad and wish you had done things differently -- what's not ok is getting stuck on those feelings, and letting them become a cycle.
Jesus died so that we could never be separated from God's love -- so no matter how miserable we are, no matter how dark it seems, there's always hope, always a path back to the light. There's always a way out of the labyrinths of doubt and fear and misery and regret that our minds may try and trap us in.
