Category Archives: Depression

If You’re Feeling Empty

1 Reply

Sometimes, the times when you feel the most alone, are the times when God is freeing you up of false support systems so that you can fully come to sense His presence, His power, His love for you, above all else.

This past year I’ve seen the truth of this in a whole new way. At first it felt rather bleak, when things, dreams, and people got whittled out of my life. Then it got quiet. Distractions were few. God was persistent in letting me know there are few people who genuinely have your back and also have the power to lead you forward anyhow, so He repeatedly hinted that it might be best for me to get used to this new cozy relationship He wanted to have with me. So I finally responded with, “Okay, let’s do this then, God.” I didn’t have much left to lose, and I wasn’t expecting a lot. Maybe a bit of insight or some needed wisdom.

But then God blew me away this past year, in how He Himself made up for every lost and every broken thing in my life. 

Maybe you’re at a point of loss right now. The closed doors you’ve experienced in relationships or opportunities have been devastating, and you might be wondering where God is, in all that.

That’s what happened to Naomi, in the book of Ruth. Widowed and grieving over the loss of her two sons, she finds herself returning to her home town, with one daughter in law who refuses to leave her side– a daughter in law named Ruth, who had suffered loss too, but had not lost faith in the God of Israel that she had come to trust in.

And when Naomi utters how broken she feels and how she thinks God’s hand has gone out against her, she was speaking that all the while that Love was leading her home to Bethlehem, house of bread– and the place where important, life changing, prophetic fulfillment was about to take place in her life. Where a great filling up was about to take place, and literally spill over in generations to come.

You may feel empty right now, but God wants you to know, He’s looking to FILL you up….to overflowing. You don’t even have to be able to see how God could do such a thing. You just need to know that He CAN and that He WILL. Just open your eyes, and open your heart to Him as well. You may be in a scarcity mindset, but God operates so opposite of that. He’s waiting for you to take just a step closer to Him, open your eyes a little wider,  and discover that He knows how to redeem every last and every lost thing in your life.

“Do you not perceive it?  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:19

Something beautiful is about to rise from the ashes of your past.

Because Your Redeemer LIVES.

 

Post Mountain Top Pep Talk on FEAR & ANXIETY

Leave a reply

If you’ve recently made a breakthrough in your life, but now you’re struggling with fear or anxiety, I’ve got a pep talk for you that will cause you to stand up straight and march on!

I’ve recently spoken at 2 Women’s Retreats here in the Northeast and I can tell you that the women in this region are still strong, still kicking, and that we don’t go down without a fight. And that even if we go down, we come back up …because

NOTHING CAN KEEP YOU DOWN!

Sometimes after you’ve heard an invigorating talk and you’re ready to implement some new strategies in your life or determined to break an unhealthy pattern in your life, you get all fired up…only to get cooled down by criticism or naysayers, problems that balloon into obstacles, or just that old enemy of your soul who doesn’t want to see you break FREE.

So here is your Post Mountain Top Pep Talk, for any who need shoring up; for any who experienced a recent revelation and now things are a bit murky and gray:

  • You are not going back into a state of fear or anxiety. You’re done with that gripping attack on your mind, that lie that you are at risk, at a disadvantage, or that you are no match for the problems or challenges you face. That kind of feeling of panic comes from forgetting that not only is God for you, but He Will COME THROUGH FOR YOU EVERY TIME. Just remember, the way God comes through is never the way we thought He would. He’ll use a variety of interesting circumstances and people to reach out to us and pull us up to a place where we can stand on solid ground. When a scary situation occurs and your initial reaction is complete fear, remind yourself that God won’t drop you, and God won’t leave you. Remind yourself that the biggest battle is to keep your trust in HIM alone, so that your mind won’t become a playground for Anxiety and Panic to run about freely.
  • You’ve got a Sound Mind. The soundest of all minds respects God, experiences and knows His love day by day, trusts fully in Him, and can respond to Him in love- not out of fear or dread.  A sound Mind is clear, settled, and at rest. It’s at rest because it is set on God’s unlimited power and on the truth of God’s pure motives towards you– He wants you to be at peace. So accept the peace. Embrace it. Because what you dwell on is going to become more real to you!
  • When you go through the Valley of Disaster, just remember you are not going to live there permanently. You are just traveling THROUGH it.  And that you are going through it with God at your side. And He’s out in front. And He’s behind you as well. You’re covered. He’s like a Seal Team x 7. What’s more, He can work all things together for good, and can transform your trouble into a time of Hope. And Hope is not a light feathery thing– it’s an anchor for your soul!! 1 Corinthians 13 tells us that the alpha team of Faith, Hope and Love outlast anything.
  • Lastly, if you’re going to have an expectation of anything, which is a type of faith, have an expectation that GOOD is ahead. Have godly convictions that line up with God’s Word. Jer 29:11 says He has good plans for us. So we should learn to expect good from God and not dread what’s ahead! Dreading things is looking forward but only “seeing” bad things coming down the road. When you dread the future, you are anticipating and expecting negative things and literally experiencing the fear of them happening– before they’ve happened. Proverbs 11:23 tells us that the expectation or the hope of the righteous is only good! Dreading is a type of reverse Faith. Hebrews 11:1 tells us that we should have our Faith (confident assurance) in God and have the certainty that what we are hoping for is waiting for us. Is God’s good plan waiting for you– or is it a life of misery and hopelessness waiting for you? 

Let me shout out the answer to that last question: Nothing but God’s good plan is waiting for you. His peace, his path of abundant resources and abundant grace, are in His hands and those hands are stretched out to you today.

He’s saying, “I’m a Big God. I’m bigger than your fears. My heart is bigger than the heart of those who want to bring you down. My plan for your life is bigger than the plan you would have for your life. And my plan is for your GOOD. So, yes, I’m a Big God, a capable God, a powerful God. But I’m a Loving God too. Merciful and Compassionate and Strong and Wise. I’m telling you, you’re safe, with Me.”

As the song goes, He’s the God on the mountain, and the God in any valley you might walk through. I’ve found Him to be completely trustworthy. And because of that, I’m finding myself….Fearless and FREE.

Come join me on this journey.

Good Grief: Mourning a Past Relationship

Leave a reply
There’s nothing as heartbreaking as experiencing the loss of someone you love. Many people struggle with the delicate balance of moving on from their loss and the need to fully grieve this painful and complicated experience. Grief is a natural and necessary human response to loss that includes a range of feelings and reactions, from denial to anger to depression.

Our loved ones may understand our need to grieve when we experience the death of a loved one, though they might never know the depths of what we’re feeling. But the loss of a relationship due to breakup can also be hard to work through if people don’t “see” the impact the loss is having on you. Well-meaning friends might tell you to “move on” or “chin up” and your sense of grief can intensify under this type of subtle criticism. But it’s good for us to work through our grief and fully express our pain while still embracing hope for our future.

Love And Loss

One of the hardest things about loving someone is that we can often love someone who we know we shouldn’t marry. Whether it’s not having the same spiritual convictions, or whether there is some type of toxicity they bring to the relationship that you know will put you under, you can very much yearn and for someone that at the same time you know you must give up.

On the other hand, you may have been “released” from a relationship in a cruel way, blinded by the quick cut-off. Regardless of how the loss occurred, you may be in the throws of grief and wondering if there is a way out of the dark sad feelings you’re experiencing.

The following four steps can help you process your grief and come out on the other side of healing.

Feel It Fully

Allow yourself to feel and fully process what happened. This is an area most of us are not good at. To feel the pain of a loss is not something we want to soak in for long. But not only do we need to acknowledge these painful feelings, we have to also process them and work through them. We have to try to take the emotional reaction out for a moment, and critically look at what happened and evaluate all the facets of the loss and how it occurred. This takes time.

This is when grief can become a slowly realized truth.

Recognize God’s Love

Grieving and feeling sad over a loss does not mean you are not trusting God. Grieving is a healthy part of loving and of living, and God is the author of life. He does not expect us to act like robots, minimize pain, deny its reality in our life, or over-spiritualize and try to move quickly to the “victory.”

Grief is dealing with the truth of loss and hurt in the light of God’s love.

Take Time

Work through the resulting painful effects of loss in your life today. It’s not helpful to fill our hearts with replacements for what we find painful to deal with. Avoid making big, life-impacting decisions that might just be symptoms of your grief crying out and not reflections of your true self.

Be patient with yourself; acting impetuously out of grief will often bring you more hurt and loss.

Seek Joy

Allow yourself to feel joy when it rises. For many, it seems impossible to grieve over the loss of someone and still be happy at the simple blessings of life. Grief ebbs and flows; it may lessen for a season and return when it gets triggered by a memory. Feeling grief and joy is a complicated but natural experience.

Even in your Grief, allow for moments of joy.

……..

 
Read more at https://www.christianmingle.com/believe/mourning-your-past

Recovering From Rejection After A Big Breakup

Leave a reply

Rejection is one of the hardest things to handle and the most insidious in the way it does damage to our self esteem. Things can appear to be going so well in a budding relationship, when all of a sudden you get a text or a phone call saying, “We need to talk.” When the phone call ends and so does the relationship, we can be left broken hearted and questioning our self worth. But it’s really not the Rejection itself that does the damage– it’s often what we believe about ourselves when we’ve been rejected.

Lost And Found

After a painful experience of rejection, we need a time of recuperation. Recuperation isn’t just about recovering from something; it’s also about regaining something. Often when we’ve been rejected, we lose our confidence, and our self esteem plummets.

In order to recuperate when you’ve been rejected, you’ve got to re-interpret that message of rejection and replace it with one that more accurately reflects the work of your ongoing personal growth and your hope of a lasting future relationship.

Here are 4 ways to replace the message of Rejection with the appropriate message of Hope:

…

(Read the rest of my Article at BELIEVE– “Dating. Marriage. Relationships the Christian Way.”)

Depression: How To Let the Light Into Your Darkness

Leave a reply

Many Christians have battled depression, but few feel comfortable talking about this all too common problem. It’s often too deep for words, the darkness and sadness we feel. It can be caused by a clinical disorder that requires medical intervention. For many of us, though, depression is a complicated experience often having to do with our delayed response to a season of stress, grief or an earlier trauma in our lives that we never dealt with.

These dark places in our past leave memories we often don’t want to deal with or speak of, and that’s understandable. Unexpressed grief and sorrow, though, will only resurface in one way or another, often ushering in waves of depression. But there’s much healing and freedom when we bring these past painful experiences to the light.

Turn the Light On

Scripture tells us that in bringing our sorrows and grief to Christ, we can be comforted in knowing He understands our pain as he was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Is 53:3). There’s no judgment when we come to God in prayer about our weakness or pain. God has a way to bring light into our dark situation, and it begins with a simple but powerful word—Confession.

Confession isn’t just about the admission of sin or mistakes we’ve made. It’s also about an admission of our own need, our own pain, and the truth of our painful experiences.

Confession is part of the labor of love that is necessary for proper self love or self care. It’s also part of the work we must do of grappling with grief—not ignoring it, not stuffing it, not denying it. It’s got to be done. And when you do, you turn the lights on inside you, and find that there is nothing hidden there that God can’t heal.

Here are 3 aspects of confession that we can incorporate into our lives that will help us when we are experiencing a season of depression…

(Read the rest of this post at  Believe)