Sorrow

In this room was more than my brother.  I struggle to deal with sorrow.  Sad movies and books.  I made great strides a few years ago when a couple things happened and it came down to trusting God for my good, despite circumstances.

However, this was a little different.  I still avoid sad things.  I wanted to read The Gathering Place by Corrie Ten Boom, but when the war started, I had to stop, I was getting depressed.  This is just one example of how I avoid sorrow.  I sometimes can handle sorrow in fiction, since I know it isn't real.  But Corrie's life was real and it breaks my heart for the sorrow in this world. 

It's different if I'm involved in someone's life, someone right here.  I don't avoid to protect myself, but I do live a somewhat protected life where real sorrow does not happen on a everyday basis. 

I read Titus 2:3-4

³ Bid the older women similarly to be reverent and devout in their deportment as becomes those engaged in sacred service, not slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to give good counsel and be teachers of what is right and noble, ⁴ So that they will wisely train the young women to be sane and sober of mind (temperate, disciplined) and to love their husbands and their children,

That little word temperate stuck out to me again.  God revealed I wasn't being temperate with my emotions.  He enables me to be me despite circumstances.  I was allowing circumstances to affect my emotions.  It's not easy.  It is ok to have emotions.  It is not OK to allow those emotions to keep me from following God's will for me.  I need to be temperate in my emotions.  If I must swing to one side of emotions, it should be to joy and exuberance, not sadness and depression.

And when this fully occurs in my life it will be God fully manifesting Himself in me.  It is not natural to me.  I'm prone to depression and sadness.  Yet going forward, what I want to counsel will be messier than suicide.  I will listen to women and children who have been through worse.  I will need to be able to cry with them and still point them to a God who wants their best.  A God who wants to take the evil they endured and redeem it.  

Just like God is redeeming the sorrow I endured.  The depression I went through.  The struggle I had to commit my life to Him.

In my daughters daily devo, it reminded me that I am to have a thankful heart always.  It reminded me of:
give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thes. 5:18

I am to give thanks in the good and bad times.  I am to be thankful for what Corrie went through so that I may learn and grow from it.  I am thankful for any opportunity that strengthens my faith and helps me all the more to rely on my God.  A thankful heart does not allow depression to overcome it.  Thankfulness is a sword to defeat it.

I plan to finish The Gathering Place.