So last week in my connect group, we were asked to describe our week with a color and then explain why we chose that color. I chose brown. Why? Because I was having what I would consider a crappy week. That week I dealt with a lot of stress between several tests and assignments on top of work and moving into a new bedroom. That Friday I was happy to see the week gone. Of course I wasn't the only one having a crappy week, and I'm sure in comparison to how the week went for others, it wouldn't have seemed so crappy.
This week I'd consider another brown week. I have a tendency to get so self-absorbed in my own life with all the stress involved that I tend to give myself these self pity parties. "Whoa is me! These allergies are making me sick, but I still have to go to these 3 hour long classes. My cat is being a brat. My hot chocolate is all watered down. I have so much to do this weekend for classes." I find it easy to find crappy stuff in my week and become self-absorbed. The thing is, once I began looking around me, other people are going through tough times. Situations people around me are going through make my complaints about a simple watered down hot chocolate seem ridiculous (althought my complaint is really ridiculous). For instance, one of my coworkers' wife just had a miscarriage. Worse than that, she had to still be induced and deliver the baby boy. What a crappy week, month, even year for him and his wife! One of my friends just had a second car accident within a month. What a crappy month for her! Just found out one of my sixth grade girls experienced a break-in of her home while she was there. What a crappy week for her and her family!
These are just a few examples of how other people are going through tougher times than me. Sometimes we (and when I say "we" I mean "me") need to just step outside of ourselves and our concerns and worries and look at other people in our lives. Suddenly my week doesn't look crappy any more. It seems like a pretty good week for me compared to others. Only when I stop looking at what is going on in my life and look at what is happening in the lives of those around me can I begin feeling compassion and concern for others.
Philippians 2: 3-4 says, "Don't be jealous or proud, but be humble and consider others more important than yourselves. Care about them as much as you care about yourselves." (the rest of that passage is really good, so take a look for yourself)
Wow! What a thought? Caring about others as much as I care about myself....had I been doing that this past week? It isn't that I don't care about others, it is that sometimes I get so caught up in caring about myself that other people are not at the forefront of my mind.
For those of you going through your own brown weeks, here is a verse to encourage you:
"The LORD will hold your hand, and if you stumble, you still won't fall." -Psalm 37:24
I also want to apologize for being self-centered the past week or two. God is working on this in my life.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Pyschopatha..waa??
Words of warning: I like to tell stories…
So last night a friend came over as I was working on moving my stuff in my new bedroom and bathroom (finally getting my own room!) and she came across my DSM-IV TR. Not a strange thing to find in a room of a psychology grad student. If you don’t know what the DSM is, it is a diagnostic manual for diagnosing mental disorders. Well we then started a conversation on disorders. She’d give me a situation, and I’d go look up my first guess of what kind of disorder that person could have and look up the symptoms and kind of do my own diagnosis with what limited information I had. I have to say, it was kind of fun. Well, I’m kind of getting off subject here so I’ll get back to my point of the story. At one point the question was asked about if most people could be considered as having a mental disorder. Luckily I had just had a test the night before over that kind of information so I had an answer. Of course I cannot remember the exact percentage listed in my psychopathology book, but I want to say around 80% of people could be diagnosed with a disorder at one point in their life. This doesn’t mean that the person still is suffering from the disorder, or that the person sought professional help. What it does mean is that it is normal to go through spurts of anxiety or depression. Most of these disorders have a precipitating event that brings it out of us. For instance, the stress of school for me is causing a lot of anxiety for me. Some of the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include easily fatigued, irritable, unable to concentrate (mind going blank). I often find myself more irritable lately, also very tired all the time, and often my mind goes blank and I have a hard time concentrating on a task. I am sure as soon as the semester ends or slows down, I’ll be back to normal.
What I am getting at is that if we didn’t have times of depression or anxiety or any other disorder, we wouldn’t be human. We are vulnerable; we are affected by situational factors and our environment. As Christians, we have a tendency to think that if we had enough faith or were “real Christians,” we would not suffer from things like depression. In my devotion for today, the title was “Taking the Initiative Against Depression.” The verse was 1 Kings 19:5. Of course to fully understand the situation the verse is describing, I read 1 Kings 18 too. The story is about Elijah and how he challenged the Baal prophets and of course the God of Israel is the winner. Elijah ends up killing all of the prophets and then flees into the wilderness. This then brings us to chapter 19. In 19:4 Elijah had enough, “…He begged the LORD, ‘I've had enough. Just let me die! I'm no better off than my ancestors.’” Even Elijah, a prophet of God came to a point where he was ready to give up. Does that make him a horrible person? Absolutely not. One thing the devotion said really stuck out to me, “If human beings were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness and exaltation. There are things in life that are designed to depress us; for example, things that are associated with death.” The great thing is that in our weakness, God is strong. He is there to step in during these times, and be our strength when we need it. Sometimes His help doesn’t come in the form of some spiritual miraculous change like *boom* no more depression and you’re suddenly happy all the time. Sometimes His help requires us to do something on our part.
1 Kings 19:5 “Suddenly an angel woke him up and said, ‘Get up and eat.’” Sometimes God requires a simple task.
So my whole point this blog is to say we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for feeling depressed or really anxious. We are human, which means imperfect. The great news is God is strong in our weakness, but we have to remember, we sometimes have to take the initiative to work towards a change.
So last night a friend came over as I was working on moving my stuff in my new bedroom and bathroom (finally getting my own room!) and she came across my DSM-IV TR. Not a strange thing to find in a room of a psychology grad student. If you don’t know what the DSM is, it is a diagnostic manual for diagnosing mental disorders. Well we then started a conversation on disorders. She’d give me a situation, and I’d go look up my first guess of what kind of disorder that person could have and look up the symptoms and kind of do my own diagnosis with what limited information I had. I have to say, it was kind of fun. Well, I’m kind of getting off subject here so I’ll get back to my point of the story. At one point the question was asked about if most people could be considered as having a mental disorder. Luckily I had just had a test the night before over that kind of information so I had an answer. Of course I cannot remember the exact percentage listed in my psychopathology book, but I want to say around 80% of people could be diagnosed with a disorder at one point in their life. This doesn’t mean that the person still is suffering from the disorder, or that the person sought professional help. What it does mean is that it is normal to go through spurts of anxiety or depression. Most of these disorders have a precipitating event that brings it out of us. For instance, the stress of school for me is causing a lot of anxiety for me. Some of the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include easily fatigued, irritable, unable to concentrate (mind going blank). I often find myself more irritable lately, also very tired all the time, and often my mind goes blank and I have a hard time concentrating on a task. I am sure as soon as the semester ends or slows down, I’ll be back to normal.
What I am getting at is that if we didn’t have times of depression or anxiety or any other disorder, we wouldn’t be human. We are vulnerable; we are affected by situational factors and our environment. As Christians, we have a tendency to think that if we had enough faith or were “real Christians,” we would not suffer from things like depression. In my devotion for today, the title was “Taking the Initiative Against Depression.” The verse was 1 Kings 19:5. Of course to fully understand the situation the verse is describing, I read 1 Kings 18 too. The story is about Elijah and how he challenged the Baal prophets and of course the God of Israel is the winner. Elijah ends up killing all of the prophets and then flees into the wilderness. This then brings us to chapter 19. In 19:4 Elijah had enough, “…He begged the LORD, ‘I've had enough. Just let me die! I'm no better off than my ancestors.’” Even Elijah, a prophet of God came to a point where he was ready to give up. Does that make him a horrible person? Absolutely not. One thing the devotion said really stuck out to me, “If human beings were not capable of depression, we would have no capacity for happiness and exaltation. There are things in life that are designed to depress us; for example, things that are associated with death.” The great thing is that in our weakness, God is strong. He is there to step in during these times, and be our strength when we need it. Sometimes His help doesn’t come in the form of some spiritual miraculous change like *boom* no more depression and you’re suddenly happy all the time. Sometimes His help requires us to do something on our part.
1 Kings 19:5 “Suddenly an angel woke him up and said, ‘Get up and eat.’” Sometimes God requires a simple task.
So my whole point this blog is to say we shouldn’t beat ourselves up for feeling depressed or really anxious. We are human, which means imperfect. The great news is God is strong in our weakness, but we have to remember, we sometimes have to take the initiative to work towards a change.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
God Answers Prayers
Prayer changes things. It always amazes me. I never really ever used to take the time to write down all my prayer requests in my personal life. I figured I could always keep a mental list as God laid things on my heart. Since I've been using my new prayer journal, I've written down prayer requests with the date I began praying over each one. As each one is answered, I write down that date. The past couple days when I've opened up that page, I've just been in awe as to what has already been answered. All I can think is "Wow, God is amazing."
God is truely amazing. The other night I went to bed with a certain subject matter laid on my heart. I was so desperate for an answer. The next day, a friend came to me with the answer God had laid on her heart. An answer to my prayer.
When I think about prayer, I am reminded of something I learned from one of my Bible classes at Evangel with Smallwood (yeah, I actually learned something from his class believe it or not besides not reading things word for word off of his power points because I end up saying "epople" instead of "people" due to typos). He told me that God does not work on our timetable. It is so true. When I pray, I want immediate results. If I don't get that immediate response, then I'm disappointed or feel God did not listen. The truth is God does answer every prayer. The answer is either yes, no, or later. Sometimes the things we ask for, God plans to give us, only not as soon as we'd like. God sees the big picture and knows exactly when we need something.
I know I've mentioned this a thousand times, but I view life as a big jigsaw puzzle. God has the box with the picture and hands us each piece and tells us where to put it. Because we don't see the big picture, each piece makes no sense. Sure some pieces seem obvious where they go like the corner pieces. While others we have a good idea where they go like the side pieces. But most pieces fall somewhere in the middle. We look at each piece and do not understand where that goes in our life. Or we grab a piece from another puzzle that looks really good and like it belongs, but it really fits no where. We can shove and smash that piece all we want, but it never will be a perfect fit. We instead should just listen to God and take the pieces he gives us and put them where he wants us to put them. Only until we see the finished project (aka our life) will we see the reason for each piece.
All I have to say is God is amazing. He really does answer prayers, in his perfect timing, and in his perfect way. We will never understand exactly why he answers the way he does until we take a step back and see the big picture at the end of our lives.
Sarah Trusty, this blog is for you because apparently you were upset I hadn't blogged in a while. Here you go.
God is truely amazing. The other night I went to bed with a certain subject matter laid on my heart. I was so desperate for an answer. The next day, a friend came to me with the answer God had laid on her heart. An answer to my prayer.
When I think about prayer, I am reminded of something I learned from one of my Bible classes at Evangel with Smallwood (yeah, I actually learned something from his class believe it or not besides not reading things word for word off of his power points because I end up saying "epople" instead of "people" due to typos). He told me that God does not work on our timetable. It is so true. When I pray, I want immediate results. If I don't get that immediate response, then I'm disappointed or feel God did not listen. The truth is God does answer every prayer. The answer is either yes, no, or later. Sometimes the things we ask for, God plans to give us, only not as soon as we'd like. God sees the big picture and knows exactly when we need something.
I know I've mentioned this a thousand times, but I view life as a big jigsaw puzzle. God has the box with the picture and hands us each piece and tells us where to put it. Because we don't see the big picture, each piece makes no sense. Sure some pieces seem obvious where they go like the corner pieces. While others we have a good idea where they go like the side pieces. But most pieces fall somewhere in the middle. We look at each piece and do not understand where that goes in our life. Or we grab a piece from another puzzle that looks really good and like it belongs, but it really fits no where. We can shove and smash that piece all we want, but it never will be a perfect fit. We instead should just listen to God and take the pieces he gives us and put them where he wants us to put them. Only until we see the finished project (aka our life) will we see the reason for each piece.
All I have to say is God is amazing. He really does answer prayers, in his perfect timing, and in his perfect way. We will never understand exactly why he answers the way he does until we take a step back and see the big picture at the end of our lives.
Sarah Trusty, this blog is for you because apparently you were upset I hadn't blogged in a while. Here you go.
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