The Good Portion

(You may read Part 5 in this series here .) When the Dark Cloud Looms The other day, I mentioned to my husband that in that this next post I was planning to finally relate what I do when I feel an episode of emotional distress brewing. His thoughts went immediately back to my most recent occurrence of severe emotional torment, which was nearly a year ago. (He remembers it well.  He was the helpless soul I clung to for dear life but who could not find anything to say that would calm me.)  He asked me what I thought I could have done differently that dreadful weekend that might have diffused the darkness. It was a very good question. I thought for only a moment before I realized that the answer lays in all the posts I've written in this series up until now. If I had laid that solid foundation beforehand, I would have been better equipped for that particular storm. In fact, I may even have been able to navigate clear around it. I'm not free to explain exactly what i...

My, how time flies!  It's so hard to believe it's been over two years since I heard an interview with author Ethan Watters about his book, Crazy Like Us , on NPR's Talk of the Nation program. I was so intrigued that I determined to run right out and get a copy. Typical of me, I promptly forgot until a few days later when I learned that this same author was not only a native of our community (his mother still lives here) but was going to be giving a lecture and book-signing right here in Chico. This was too good to miss. Paul and I were there at the locally owned bookstore  on February 11, 2010 with bells on to listen, meet the author, and purchase a copy of his book. As interested as I was in the subject matter, life's events would conspire until just a few weeks ago to keep me from reading it. The subject is the Americanization of the world's psyche, how we are "homogenizing the way the world goes mad".  As far as I can tell, the issues it raises are...

(You may read Part 4 in this series here .) The Priority of Prayer If you've ever been caught in the quagmire of depression or anxiety you know how impossible breaking free from the grip of those grim or terrifying thoughts feels. No amount of "reason" can out-reason your darkness. No matter what your actual circumstances are, you feel as if you are teetering on the thin line between life and death. "...for there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.... O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. " - Hamlet Shakespeare demonstrates, through his tempted and tormented Hamlet, what any mental sufferer knows: no external force can directly destroy the soul of a man. It is the response of the mind and heart which directs it down a path which leads either toward spiritual life or death. Long before Shakespeare, t he writers of Scripture taught that spiritual warfar...

(You may read Part 3 in this series here .) The Priority of Scripture In my previous post in this series I introduced Scripture's critical role in transforming our minds and creating emotional stability and a sense of inner peace . Today I would like to expand on that thought by addressing how important our attitude toward Scripture is in this transformation.   Five years into my life with Christ, a series of events, deaths mainly, but other painful experiences as well, heaped one on top of another culminated in a crisis that violently shook my spiritual house and nearly crushed my faith. The crash was frightening, but when the shaking ceased, the foundation and a few  supports still stood.  Christ was that foundation. The pillars were my deep belief that the Scriptures are God's words to man.  So, with Christ as my hope and Scripture and solid teaching as my guide I began to rebuild, sifting through the rubble to salvage what I could.  I carefu...