What high school grad would skip her banquet to dash away to help a friend in a crisis? Would you? Ruthe does this right at the beginning of this story. She can be quite daring for a shy, small town girl, when it is for others’ sakes. You’ll like her spunk! Get “Ruthe’s Secret Roses.” the softcover at Booklocker.com
[article 5 in series of six on Depression]
We’ve discussed various spiritual and emotional, even environmental causes of depression, but what if it is nothing more than that you are tilted at an angle?
Yes, physically. Just rolling over in your sleep in bed can cause misalignments in your spine. You might not even notice that you begin to list to one side while you sit watching TV or at your work desk. It creeps up on you gradually, until someone sees you walking across the room and says, “Are you limping?”
You might respond, “Well, I do have this strange back ache when I’m on my feet any length of time….”
In the same way, you might not have noticed the depression that crept up at the same time. Not until it begins to hinder your work.
There are a number of physical factors that bring on depression;
hormonal changes,
imbalance in adrenal glands production,
thyroid problems,
lack of deep sleep,
chronic illness,
post partum depression after child birth,
and some medications lead to unwanted sadness too.
Even if your sugar and fibre intake is off-kilter, you will experience mood changes.
It’s enough to throw up one’s hands in despair, isn’t it? Depression gets us coming and going in every direction. But the truth is that for many of these causes the cure is fairly simple.
Get your spine aligned by a chiropractor, get more sleep, bring your diet into balance, and take some supplements, particularly the B12 vitamin.
Try magnesium too.
My Uncle Isbrand said when Uncle George was getting all confused, “Give ‘em magnesium. That’ll make a gentleman of him again.” I’ve experimented a bit with supplements, and now believe he is right.
In our current culture in Canada and the USA, you are responsible for finding these nuggets of information yourself. When depressed, it is hard to get motivated sometimes, but if you exert just some effort, and ask knowledgeable people, perhaps starting in a health food store, you’ll get answers.
Keep asking questions of God too. Ultimately, He can lead you to the right sources, and supplies, and the wisdom you need to get your body and life back in order.
Keep in mind that if we have imbalance in one area, whether spiritual, emotional, mental, or physical, it will create imbalance in the others after a while too. Deal with your depression in a wholistic healing way, and you will have more lasting benefits.
[You can see the whole series of six articles in my Sharing Library ]
All last week we enjoyed a beautiful Indian summer. The weather was unusually warm for early October, the trees were shedding leaves so that in many places the sidewalks and lawns were several inches deep in golden and red leaves. Sunday morning it was all over. A heavy wind blew up and a strong, slanting rain.
This was day of the Life Chain, and for the first time in years, I’d seen announcements ahead of time, and was in the city, (nor did I have to wake up Dad from a nap to drive into the city) - I had resolved to take part. We were all to gather at Idylwyld Drive and 22nd Street and spend just one hour holding up prolife signs. Life Chain is an annual event that happens the first Sunday of October in major cities all across Canada and the USA. This year I intended to take part as that intercession was only a ten minute walk from my place. Surely I could give up from 2:30 to 3:30 for this.
But when I got home from church it was still raining cats and dogs and not looking like a good day for this at all. Since I’m no chicken, I spent half an hour dressing in my baggy blue jeans, double-layer socks, a fleece hat, and my old blue parka with a hood. I tried on different shoes until I settled on a sturdy pair of sandals with an inch-high soles to keep my feet out of the puddles.
Then it occurred to me that there might be a rained-out date to which this could be rescheduled. As I wasn’t on any notification list, I checked online to see if there were a website related to this where such a date might be shown. I found several websites and one showed a phone number for the Saskatoon organizer of Life Chain. I had to try several times to get through to her number. The lady assured me that she was praying and counting on God to clear up the rain within the hour. But if it was too wet, then they’d only stay out there for half an hour.
I decided that if she had faith to believe that, then I did too. I started out about 2 pm and held my umbrella in front of me to buck the strong winds and rain. Soon I was praying hard for the weather to change.
Then it occurred to me that to clear up the rain clouds, the Lord, would probably use a strong wind.
Sure enough, when I got close to the intercession, crossed to the other side where a woman was handing out signs in a parking lot, the winds let up, and the rain became more of a light drizzle. There was a huge stack of red corrugated plastic signs in the shape of a stop sign that read in large white letters,
STOP
ABORTION
NOW.
The woman suggested that we start going back to the other side, as this corner had a number of witnesses already. A tall man with a larger umbrella, suggested we head to the north side. He seemed to have done this before, so I followed his lead.
To my astonishment, people kept coming. They picked up their signs and spread themselves out around all four corners of the very busy intercession. (There were at least two police cars during the hour, giving full-siren chase down 22nd Street).
The secular media usually ignores these events totally, but just as I had read in the prolife literature that I get regularly, the majority of the people driving by seemed to be on our side. Only one man rolled down his window to shout angrily at us. Most of the others honked or waved approval. Some women, I observed, averted their eyes.
A small contingent of women from the group, “Silent No More” joined our corner and they put large clear plastic bags over themselves and their signs which read, “I regret my abortion.”
If you only know what you read or hear or see on regular news media, you may think that prolifers are crackpots who hate people and try to kill them for not being prolife. Those are lies. People who make money from the abortion industry have bought up many media people, and politicians.
Prolifers are like me, or this Paul who stood tall and strong and held up his sign steadily, and who spoke encouragingly to many who came near him. They are also like the young mother with two young kids on the other side of me. Naturally, I could not resist making conversation with the little girl at my side. I asked her age, sure she was the youngest one out.
“I’m three and a half!” she announced. Her brother on the other side of their mother might have been five, maybe six. The mother encouraged her little girl by saying repeatedly, “You’re doing a good job! Just keep smiling and show people your sign.” Her blue paper sign read, “ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN.”
After a while the girl did get restless, so her mother reminded her of the hot chocolate she would get afterwards with lots n’ lots of marshmallows. So I helped entertain her, by guessing how many marshmallows she would put in her cup of chocolate. That made her giggle until she told me that her cup would be full right to the bottom.
My umbrella wasn’t a lot of help to me, and just more weight to hold up, so I hung it on the fence behind us, and rejoiced that I had come. However, my hands were getting cold. My gloves were soaked through and that didn’t help, so I took them off, but then my bare hands chilled from the rain and light breeze. However, I decided that if that little girl could stick it out for a full hour, then for sure I could too!
When the hour was up, the man who was collecting our signs on our corner was quickly surrounded. No need for a pep rally for these folks. We turned and headed for our cars, or in my case the walk home.
I still feel good about my Sunday afternoon witness.
I finished that inventory of tracts yesterday, but need to work the data into the shopping cart. I did share my ideas last week, but I suspect not much will happen until I take some lead, and demonstrate them.
I had a tutoring client on Saturday, and spent extra time yesterday setting up a blog on her new site. Another woman has called and we’ve set up to do something similar for her next week.
On Sunday morning as I was praying for my businesses and ministries, it occurred to me that I should make a list of them, as I get a little vague on some of them if they are not part of my daily routines. Wow, what a surprise!
I didn’t know I had eight business ventures on the go, and at least five ministries!
It is true that some of the businesses seem to be on a back burner until I can get to them, but that doesn’t mean they are cancelled.
Oh now you are curious, eh? I didn’t bring that list with me, but I think I can recall them.
1. I’m a writer and a self-publisher.
2. I consider my Aloe-Vera-and-Handy-Herbs.com site a separate business.
3. My Azaleas Virtual Assistants business, and the course I want to teach, and ocassional tutoring clients, is another.
4. I have some paying clients for web-design work.
5. I offer hosting service to a number of clients.
6. My novel promotion and the related site, Ruthes-SecretRoses.com, includes this RoseBouquet.
7. I have affiliate links on a number of my sites, including AdSense.
8. MyPowerMall is another gradually growing business.
9. Oh yes, sometimes I get clients for my translation service, though I don’t promote it at all.
(I had one on Friday night).
P.S. Another site on cookbooks is in the wings, waiting for me to get to it.
My Ministries include;
1. contract missionary for Western Tract Mission.
2. Web-design and hosting for some ministries that can’t pay.
3. mentoring various friends and clients by email, also some who find me through my sites.
4. Intercession for my lists of friends and relatives.
5. Giving!!
Hmm…? Maybe my novel and some of my donated articles should go on this list too?
I better get myself in hand and move on. My lists grow if I dwell on them.
In case you do not have a reliable source of prolife information, here are some sites that can help give you the truth; LifeSiteNews.com
The Interim is a monthly newspaper that keeps me informed, but it is also available online.
HH76.com - is a great place to order literature, videos and jewelry and even scaled unborn baby models.
LifeChain - Find your city’s contact person. Get involved next year.
http://www.40daysforlife.com/about.cfm If you’re brave enough to do something.
Children of the Heart - my friend Betty’s creative prolife site, with artwork to sell in support.
[article 4 in series of six on Depression]
This time let’s focus on the spiritual factors that cause depression.
If we have discovered God’s purpose for our life and have enthusiastically committed ourselves to carrying that purpose out, we’ve taken huge strides to keeping depression away.
The Apostle Paul is a great example. He could write, “Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not… We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed;” Paul knew what he had been commissioned to do, and that kept him from going under even though he was stoned, left for dead, shipwrecked, imprisoned for years, and wrongfully accused.
Most people when asked for their goal in life, tell us what vocational career they want, assuming that to be successful in such a career will make them fulfilled. That’s not what it means to have a life purpose worth dying for.
It is something bigger than yourself that God does in and through you to advance the cause of Christ. It is something of eternal value.
From God’s perspective, depression is a torment allowed to happen to those who refuse to forgive offenders. It comes on like a natural consequence, slipping in so quietly we don’t know we’ve become bitter until we see the results.
What can we do?
We must de-root, even de-forest ourselves of every instance of bitterness and secret sin. If we have let ourselves grow passive and full of self-pity because of our depression, this is going to be hard work. We’ll need to ask for help.
If you want to strongly enough, it’s possible to think back to every instance when you were hurt by someone, and to forgive them in your will. Then ask God to forgive your sin of bitterness, and believe the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from that sin. Finally, you must ask God to help you reclaim that area of your life for him. The lies you believed in that situation must be replaced with truth. This reprogramming of the mind has to be done deliberately.
Another clear cause of depression is secret sin. It is anarchy against God besides the specific wrong done. Choosing one’s own way first and foremost is iniquity, even if it appears to be good, and leads to sin.
The self-will (iniquities), not the specific sins, of our ancestors can be passed on to us as weaknesses in our character. Yet it is possible to confess those to God as wrong too, and be set free of them.
Serious traumas, the anniversary of things like an abortion, or the death of a loved one, a great crash of anticipation, or a moral failure can give us annual depression periods at the same time of year. All the emotions of that crisis flood back. We re-experience them with great sorrow and confusion.
But hallelujah! The way out is still the same. Confess the wrong and ask God to build new strengths into you for those times of the year. Deliberately praise God and do new positive things at those times to turn the old ruts into rich hills of blessing.
Do not allow yourself the luxury of self-pity and discouragement. Never mind that human nature says you have a right to some sympathy. Do not believe those who say your emotions are out of your control, and don’t think you can’t smile when you don’t feel happy.
Some studies have come out saying that if you smile anyway, after a while you will feel like smiling. One study in California showed that just moving the muscles into a smile affected the feelings of the subject. Forcing the muscles to frown made the subject feel sad. Try that for yourself and see if it works.
The joy of the Lord is the strength of a Christian. It depends on our spiritual fellowship with Him. If we start trusting in other things (idols) to accomplish what only God can do for us, we are going to lose that joy and end up depressed. It follows then, get rid of the things that interfere with or replace fellowship with Christ.
Recently I read of another idea that makes sense to me. It suggested that we lay our hands on the equipment we use, such as office machines, computers, or whatever we work with on a regular basis, and pronounce a blessing on the tools or equipment, or our co-workers, and our assignments. Stories are told of how this made projects go a whole lot smoother, and breakdowns or delays were eliminated. Now that should clear up a lot of little frustrations that can build up, shouldn’t it? I did that with this computer when I first got it, and I’m starting to practice this more often as I remember.
I’m convinced gratefulness is a huge key to dispelling depression too. Try it. Try to write one thank you note, or to verbally express gratitude to at least one person a day for the help they have been to you. It is such a tonic!
Great personal loss or chronic pain can bring on blues, but if we see these as things to drive us to His bosom they will lose their power to depress us and become stepping stones to spiritual health and life and vitality. Make an effort to peek through God’s lenses, or eyes, at loss and profit and pain, and we’ll catch the sparkle of jewels in our eternal souls.
Most depressions have spiritual causes and have the cures and remedies given above. Next time we’ll look at the physical causes and see if they can be solved too.