medicine for feelings

today is a rough day

my life is not going the way i want

nothing is going right.

my life is one challenge after another. i want to give up today.

everything seems to be a big deal.

my lying thoughts feel louder than anything else.

where is the still, calm voice?

i desperately need to hear it today.

i feel worthless, useless, purposeless, i might as well be dead.

where is the still calm voice?

my thoughts are so loud, the voice is too still, too quiet...

i'm frantic now, i need truth anything will do.

my thoughts are taking over they might consume me.

get me out of here, this can't be what God has for me.

wait, what?!

i can't hear you still, calm voice.

this is what God has planned for me today?

this has to be some kind of mistake.

this couldn't possibly be a good thing for me.

this is much too hard.

i can't do this, i'm too weak today.

wait, what?!

his grace is sufficient?

so being weak is ok?

i don't have to be together? everything doesn't have to go right?

i don't have to have all the right words and act the right way?

hmm, for some reason my heart is settling.

my mind is clearing.

peace is entering this rough day.

the truth is mending me.

i wrote this this morning, after having a long weekend. my emotions were all over the place. i just felt low and crappy. i think i was just consuming myself with how i was feeling and not on anything true. i started out writing the above feeling extremely depressed. what is so interesting is that as i typed truth to myself my depression broke for a moment. As I started to realize that this hard morning was ordained by God and that his grace would see me through it, my heart started to settle. God is so faithful to his words, they are the only medicine for a crushed spirit.

"avoid the mistake of concentrating overmuch on your feelings... above all, avoid the terrible error of making them central. if you put them there you are of necessity doomed to be unhappy because you are not following the order that God himself has ordained... after all, what we have in the Bible is Truth; it is not an emotional stimulus, it is not something primarily concerned to give us a joyful experience. it is primarily Truth, and Truth is addressed to the mind, God's supreme gift to man; and it is as we apprehend and submit ourselves to truth that the feelings follow."