The Weather Outside Is Frightful

These last two days have been bad days.  I've been angry, irritable, and numb.  It's very likely to do with the streak of gray, rainy days we've had this week.  You might have even noticed a dip in your happiness as well.  Serotonin needs sunshine (they are still kind of figuring out why).  Low serotonin equals an uptick in depression and anxiety.

I feel terrible. I spent the morning screaming at my children and rebuffing the affection of my husband.  Everything I touched dropped or broke or spilled. Now, I'm hungry and tired.   All I want to do today is get through until nap time when I can sleep for a few hours. 

On days like this I not only wrestle with my sadness and anger, but I struggle to figure out my faith as well.  The pond of sinful behavior and biblical living is muddy to me.  I can't discern if my anger and hopelessness is willful disobedience to God or if it is just a physical/emotional response that I really can't control.  Not everyone has this element in their struggle with depression.  God chose me.  My heart wants Him and wants to love Him and please Him.  Thinking that I haven't makes me feel worse.

Paul's explanation in Romans 7 make sense to me when I am feeling this way.

"19 I don't do the good things I want to do. I keep on doing the evil things I don't want to do. 20 I do what I don't want to do. But I am not really the one who is doing it. It is sin living in me. 21 Here is the law I find working in me. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 Deep inside me I find joy in God's law. 23 But I see another law working in the parts of my body. It fights against the law of my mind. It makes me a prisoner of the law of sin. That law controls the parts of my body. 24 What a terrible failure I am! Who will save me from this sin that brings death to my body? 25 I give thanks to God. He will do it through Jesus Christ our Lord. So in my mind I am a slave to God's law. But in my sinful nature I am a slave to the law of sin."  Romans 7: 19-25

For me, on this day, I know that I delight in God's law.  As far as "sin living in me", it's not the hopelessness or the hair-trigger temper that is the sin today.  Rather, it is an overarching, abstract sin.  It's the result of living in this broken world...a world without the perfect peace of God.  My body and it's damned chemical imbalance wars against my heart.  My heart wants peace, love, patience, and kindness and all of the good that the Lord embodies.  My body keeps me a slave to selfishness, sadness, and rage. 

These are the words of PAUL, a hero of the faith.  He did hard things for God...very hard things. If he had this struggle, I can feel more comforted when my body and my heart vie for control of my being.  I can rest on some level know that God's really already addressed this.  Today and tomorrow and the next day are forecast to be gray days.  I will probably still be depressed.  But, it is well with my soul.