This time of year, causes me to look back and reflect. That’s just what I have been doing this week. I have been reflecting on the second Christmas after we buried Jesse and then Tanya.
It was the holidays; my grandchildren were so excited. Me, I could not shake the depression and darkness I was feeling.
No one knew what I was feeling because I continued to do all I was supposed to do. I got up, went to work, wrote motivations, came home, went to bed and stayed there until I had to do it again. During the days, I smiled, I said, ‘Praise the Lord’ and I prayed for people…but my evenings and nights were the darkest times of my life. And no one knew, I told no one.
I knew the word. I had lived it for many years. I knew the faithfulness of God, and I could not understand why I could not pull myself out of this dark place, but I couldn’t.
During that time, God showed me that it wasn’t burying Jesse, or Tanya or my dad that had brought me to this dark place…those things were just the straws that broke the camel’s back, so to speak.
He showed me that it was a culmination of the things that had happened for the past few years. The disappointments, the betrayals, the loss. All those things I had walked through but not truly dealt with in my heart. Those things, not dealt with, kept piling up and finally all came crashing down.
It’s not good to walk through hard stuff and not deal with it. Refusing to acknowledge it doesn’t make it go away, it is still there, needing to be dealt with. I have learned, until we do that, healing cannot come.
I never knew that. I thought with each disappointment, if I simply kept moving forward, kept speaking the word, that the losses, the betrayals and the disappointments would fall away. They didn’t. They remained until I came to a place that I had no choice but to deal with them.
So, it was the holidays, and I knew something had to change. I knew my focus had to change.
I bought a pager type thing; I had my son-in-law set it for me. It vibrated and buzzed every 15 minutes. Each time it went off, I stopped whatever I was doing and praised God for something. Whatever I could think of, every 15 minutes I stopped and praised God.
I wore that little pager for three months, every day, no matter where I was, I praised and thanked God every 15 minutes. Amazingly, it brought me out of that dark place. How? I shifted my focus and got it off me and all I was enduring and back on God.
Thanksgiving and praise have amazing effects. Darkness and disappointment cannot stay where thanksgiving exists.
So many people do not feel joy at this time of year. We get our eyes on the loss, the darkness or the challenging days we are walking through – this keeps us in a bad place. We simply must do whatever it takes to get our eyes back on Jesus! For me, it was being reminded to worship God every fifteen minutes and even then, it took months to come of the darkness.
I don’t know where you find yourself today, but wherever that is, don’t allow darkness to remain in your life another day. Worshipping and praising God will bring you out into the light – God does not want you to spend another day depressed, anxious or fearful. No, He wants you walking in perfect peace and walking in the light of His word. Do whatever is necessary to get you there. It’s not impossible. I am living proof.
