It’s been a couple of rainy, gloomy days here in Dallas as I sit to write this blog. I don’t know about you, but I think I may struggle with some seasonal depression from time to time. I definitely noticed it more drastically when I lived in New Hampshire, but even Texas winters get a little long with the cloudy, overcast days that seem to happen in spurts. I find myself very lethargic, not wanting to do anything, not wanting to go anywhere, making it hard to even get out of bed some days. Usually, it takes a good day of sunshine to shake me out of the depression and lethargy. I’m feeling much that same way today. Just very, I describe it as, blah. I’ve got a sinkful of dishes that have been piling up over the days of blah-dom. Last night I even used my free Dominos reward to order a pizza, because, as I said, sinkful of dishes, and I don’t like cooking in a dirty kitchen!
I’ve learned my lessons throughout the years of dealing with this though. I finally know better than to let myself stay in that head space for more than a day. It is more detremintal to me and to those around me to stay in blah-dom. My son definitely doesn’t deserve a mom who can’t get out of her own head all the time! He’s grieving too, after all. He’s got enough to deal with as a kid, he doesn’t need to be worried about adult problems yet. He deserves the better version of me, the one that God has helped me become!! The mom who cares enough to get out of her head, the one who loves on him, even when she’s sad about his dad.
In that light, this morning, instead of sitting in those lousy feelings, instead of MY mood dictacting how our morning played out, I decided to be deliberate about connecting with my Jesus, my Savior, right from the start. I pulled out my devotional, “Every Day In His Presence” by Charles F Stanley, and had a few minutes with God before I woke up my son. Then once he was awake, I had devotions with him, from Max Lucado’s book, “You Can Count on God”. It’s a fantastic kids devotional, by the way, I highly recommend it for kids, especially kids who are feeling big feelings like our grieving kids. His devotional was about how God takes care of us, and after we read it, we sat and talked for a few minutes about how God has taken care of us, sometimes in BIG, BOLD AND AMAZING ways! I told him some stories of how God has provided for all of our needs, and sometimes it’s been miraculous how He’s shown up for us!
When we got in the car to drive him to school, I put on some praise music, and my newest favorite band, We Are Messengers, kicked off the session with “A Thousand Times”. The first few lines are “Do you remember all those lonely nights, and every tear that you cried. Every broken prayer you prayed. He turned it for good, He lets nothing go to waste!” Once again, God spoke to me and reminded me that He will keep taking care of us, no matter how I’m feeling. I just need to keep turning to Him, and keep praising Him through every storm!
You know what, by the time I got home from school drop off, my mood had drastically shifted, from blah to HOPEFUL! You see, we can’t wait to “feel like” praising God. While He understands our emotions, He created them after all, He doesn’t want us using them as an excuse to NOT praise. That is simply the devil, trying to convince us, that God doesn’t care about us and how we feel. Instead of listening to the father of lies, we do what David did, and COMMAND our soul to praise the Lord! David didn’t want to be a seasonal worshipper, nor should we be. God deserves our praise ALL the time, despite how we feel. Worship, after all, isn’t about how we’re feeling in the moment. It’s about the goodness of God, the majesty of His name, the Holiness of the Trinity. Worship is about telling God how good He’s been to us, not about focusing on how lousy we feel right then.
In the early months of my own grief, those 1st few months being the hardest as we well know, I started going back to church with my son. My husband had severe social anxiety that kept us from attending regularly, but my soul craved it after he died. I needed to be back with a church family, I needed to be back in tune with God and what He wanted me to do then, because I had NO idea what I was going to do. It was so hard, those first few Sundays, to drop my son off at his kids class and then walk into this HUGE sanctuary all by myself. This is the largest church I’ve ever attended, where most of my home churches have had a congregation of less than 100 folks. So, it was so hard to walk into this huge place by myself, and sit by myself, but I knew I needed to be there. God wanted me there. I cried thru the praise and worship for months, my heart just hurt so much, I could barely sing. And for anyone who knows me, they know this isn’t the norm for me. I LOVE to sing, there’s always a song running thru my head that I’m singing along to, sometimes out loud! But my heart was so heavy with grief, that my worship poured out in tears. And God collected all those tears in a bottle, and heard my praise thru my silence. God met me there, and gave me that safe space to pour out my heart to Him in that way, and He kept on healing my heart, every Sunday that I was there. My pastor always spoke a message that had a little portion, just for me, it seemed. There was always a song that brought my heart back closer to Him and so while my praise may have been teary and silent, it was lifted up to Him.
Psalm 42:5 says “Why are you so downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” (NIV) David knew that putting his hope in God, bringing his praise to Him, even in times of dispair, even when his soul was downcast and he despaired, was the best thing he could do! In fact, this was so important that he repeated the same message again in verse 11, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” No matter that in verse 10, he asks why God has forgotten him. We know how that feels, at times, don’t we sisters? We know that God HAS NOT forgotten us, but in the depths of grief, it can feel like He has at times. But David was firm about this, even if we feel abandoned by God, we are to remember to praise Him!
On those days that are hardest for us, those big dates, the days where the grief bomb drops out of nowhere, we will struggle again. Please remember to be kind to yourselves on those days, because God understands it and gives us an extra measure of grace when we need it. Those times, they bring me to my knees again sometimes, where all I can do is cry out to my Savior, “Father, help me”. In those times, I know this verse to be true, as true as it was for the Israelites then. “YAHWEH will fight for you, you need only to be still.” Exodus 14:14 (NIV) It’s true for you too. If all you can do is get to church, stand silently with your hands lifted, tears streaming, He will fight for you. He will collect your tears in a bottle, and He hears your silent prayers, too.
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