Toys, Tools, or Trials?

Coping mechanisms.  What exactly is a coping mechanism?  Simple really it’s something we do to deal with feelings, thoughts and the actions, usually actions of others.  

Everyone has coping mechanisms.  They can be anything from counting to cross stitch.  Yeah I don’t know where that came from, but the point is we all have ways to deal with, to cope with things that happen in our lives. The truth is not everything we have to use a coping mechanism for is a bad thing.  There are good things that happen in our lives that can be overwhelming emotionally or physically and even in the joy and excitement of whatever that thing or moment in time is we have ways of dealing with it.  We cry or laugh or dance or sing.  Positive ways of expressing and coping with the good things, I’m sure there are more.  

Then there are the cruddy things that happen in our lives.  The hard things, the sad things, the things we have to walk through that are just not fun.  Many times, when we are in the middle of them or when we are watching someone else in the middle of those hard things, people around us will shake their heads and in their mind or under their breath they will say things like, what else will they have to deal with what else is going to happen to that poor person.  I know I’ve said those things before.  Usually when I begin to notice that I should be reaching out to someone it’s because one of their coping mechanisms is not so great.  I watch them going down a road that they have gone down over and over, I watch them and I cry for them because I know it’s a bad way to deal with the thing that is hurting or hard or even in their mind impossible.  That one more thing mentality that grips us all at varying times when we just can’t seem to accept that another bad things is happening, another hard thing is starting and we aren’t even in the middle of the first hard thing.  

The problem with unhealthy coping mechanisms is that they only offer a temporary jolt of serotonin.  They work for a moment but just like most things that are unhealthy for us, they come at a price.  

The thing that gets me is the acrobatics that I and others, and I mean, not to point fingers but I’m guessing you as well dear reader, go through to justify whatever our unhealthy coping mechanism is. As with most things that we deal with in this phase of our journey through this life self justification plays a huge role in what we are doing.  It offers excuses to ourselves and those around us for the thing we are doing.  

Donuts make me happy, I enjoy a good donut, there’s just something about them that makes me smile,  I mean my mouth is just watering now thinking about it.  There is nothing wrong with a good donut.  Especially when the light at Krispy Kream is on.  One of those warm pieces of ambrosia and a good cup of coffee just makes me all warm and fuzzy.  Donuts in and of themselves are not an unhealthy coping mechanism. A dozen Kirspy Kream donuts, eaten from the box that is sitting open on the car seat next to you as you drive down the street, making sure to go slow enough to hit just enough red lights so you don’t have to share with anyone else.  That is an example of an unhealthy coping mechanism.  

I am a tech head and somewhat of a geek.  I love what technology can do.  I enjoy taking a piece of technology and figuring out ways to make it do things it’s not supposed to.  There is nothing like the smell of opening a box with some form of technology in it, be it a laptop, or an iPad, or a monitor, or a game system or game for that system. There is nothing wrong with technology.  It can be an amazing tool to get work done.  Right now I’m writing on a computer, it enables me to communicate, to use my healthy coping mechanism of writing to work through the things in life that are good, bad, and even sometimes just plain silly.  Technology is not a sin or a problem, it’s a tool, and a toy.  The problem is not the things the problem is the supposed need to have new and more things, even when I don’t need them.  There was a temporary jolt of happy when I would buy a new piece of tech. Opening it setting it up, adding the Bible software I used and the photo editing and publication software, charging it up for the first time, but then…Unhealthy coping mechanisms always come with a huge price tag, in this case literally and figuratively. As soon as the new shiny thing was all set up and ready to go, this feeling of guilt and shame would slam into me.  I would look at it and shake my head and say to myself.  What is wrong with you?  You have a perfectly good fill in the blank already set up, it is configured just the way you like it, it does everything you need and want it to do.  That’s the thing, there would be that serotonin hit to my brain that would lift me for a moment out of the depression and angst and all the things that are wrapped up in my mental health issues but then it would disappear  and I’d be left looking at it and just feeling helpless and hopeless. 

The really messed up thing about unhealthy coping mechanisms is that even when a person, even when I, hated it, when I knew it wasn’t going to last I still turned to it because it felt good for the moment.  Short term fix, long term destructive behavior. 

It’s funny how the brain works, how there are certain things that our body produces that allow us to function in acceptable healthy ways.  It’s interesting to me that sometimes our bodies just don’t work right in that way.  Just like a diabetic has to have help with insulin, just like a person with a blood clot has to take blood thinners, just like a person with asthma needs their inhaler, or an epileptic needs their dilantin, a person without enough serotonin being made needs help.  

Now that I have that help the clarity is amazing and frightening all at the same time.  Frightening because I see just how awful things were and how awful my coping mechanisms especially the need for stuff had gotten.  I stopped looking at my phone or computer or tablet as a tool, or even as a toy that could offer a distraction when I needed one. Instead they all became trials.  My head was always down, if you think back and if you had any interaction with me you may remember that I would grab my phone at every little ding or buzz.  I realize now that I would look through people even when I was talking to them.  

I would head to breakfast with my pastor friends or to coffee with my buddy Patrick (also a pastor) and I had to have my laptop and my earbuds for the 5 minutes I would be sitting waiting.  I would be drawn to the electronics department in Walmart, or wander around Best Buy.  There were times that I would look around and I would force myself out of the place.  Proud that I had beaten the urge only to return a day a week even a month later and reach for that coping mechanism, reach for that serotonin boost.  Then came the spiral and all the stuff I mentioned earlier.  Guilt, shame, anger, remorse.  

I did it all wrong.  I cut people out, I isolated myself, I left myself vulnerable to the attack that the enemy knew to use. 

Hebrews 12:1    Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.  

See what that says.  I’ve underlined and made it bold just so neither of us miss it.  The enemy of my life, the one that wanted to render me ineffectual, knew all the buttons to push and knew just how to push them and the tragic thing is I let it happen.  

The beginning of that verse tells us that we are surrounded by a crowd of witnesses.  I used to read that as people that have gone on before.  This idea that Josie, and my grandparents from great to just plain grams and gramps, my friend Phil who was taken by cancer way too early, those were the crowd of witnesses, watching me from above, shaking their heads and wiping their eyes as I failed over and over.  But that’s not it, sure it may be a part of it but it’s also the people in my life that I’m supposed to be doing life with.  The ones that I’m supposed to confide in, to talk to, to pray with and to ask prayer from.  

The verse goes on to say let us strip off every weight that slows us down. Mental health issues are real.  They are just as serious as physical health issues. There are things that I need in order to be okay, and I was asked and told on a regular basis to get help for those things.  I was encouraged to talk to someone, to see if I needed more, to get medicine if that’s what it would take.  I wallowed in my disease for years for a myriad of reasons.  I did not strip off the weight of Depression and PTSD by getting the help that I needed.  Instead I used retail therapy for that momentary feeling of control and happiness, only to come down the other side and be deeper in the issue than before.  God told me in his word to get help,  Hebrews 12:1 says it all.  

Now that I have that help, now that I have the things I need to replace those chemicals,  I look at the stuff, at the game library (digital) at the sun glasses, and I am grossed out by myself.

As I actively throw off the weight of depression and ptsd through prayer, medication, and therapy all these things that I have are back in their proper place.  They are tools, and at times toys but they are not trials any more.  If you see me out and about, and if I’m wandering dangerously close to the electronics department or you see me getting out of the car and winding my way to Best Buy, do me a favor and grab my arm and ask me if I’m present, if I’ve taken my meds, if I’ve kept up with my physical real life connections.  I am not going after things anymore, I’m not self medicating anymore either but accountability is always a good thing and the more trustworthy people we allow in our lives to ask us the hard questions the stronger we become in our relationship with God and others. 

Thanks for reading.  

The Gaping Hole...

As I write each day, as I draw and clean and get ready for interviews, and go outside and well as I live, I want to not only use this space to let you know where things are with the journey that is happening, I also want to dip my toe back into writing about things that are going on in the world around us.

My political views have never really been a secret.  If you are curious, or just that bored you can pull up just about any random post before this month and somewhere you will find a political opinion or missive.  Sometimes I wasn’t very gracious, okay okay, most of the times I wasn’t very gracious. But that lack of grace was and has been reserved for both sides of the isle for a long time now.  

Last night Joyce and I were talking about a memorial that they are going to have at Josie’s school in Maryland today.  Joyce was putting together sketch books and stickers, she even got the Rice Crispy treats that Josie always wanted to get.  We used to tell her that we could make them and they would be better, but she always wanted the ones in the wrappers because of course Josie wanted to be able to share them.   

As we were talking about the event that is happening around 1:30 today, as we were crying and remembering the amazing person that God let us have in our lives, that pulled us closer as a family, that would try anything as long as it meant we were together our minds wandered to the tragedy that happened a few days ago.  Well, not so much wandered as sat there for a bit.  

In the last year I talked about the fact that Joyce and I had joined a club that no parent ever wants to be in.  The death of a young child is horrific in it’s own right for the community but nothing compares to the grief and anger and hurt that the parents in Uvalde Texas will be dealing with now and for, well forever.  There is a gaping hole left in the soul of the parent who loses a child, especially a young one.  I have been praying every day since it happened for those families.  For each Dad that has to wake up and realize his princess or his little man is no longer in the room next door, for each mom that has to look at the miss matched socks that were in the dryer when she got home from finding out a very piece of her soul was ripped away in a moment.  I’ve been praying for the teachers that are going to have to go back into that school next year, I have been asking God what can I do, what can we as a family do.  

The thing about senseless tragedies, senseless death is the very word.  Senseless.  It boggles the mind and if we aren’t careful poisons the soul.  It’s, very easy to get stuck on the day or day’s that the thing happened and slowly find yourself withering away to a tangled mess of weeds and briars.  This is what the parents of the little ones in Uvalde are facing.  Lots of questions, lots of banging on the floors of heaven, loads of overwhelming feelings of what now? Of anger, fear, resentment, hurt, pain, confusion, depression.  The list of what they are facing goes on and on and if they don’t feel it all, if they don’t let themselves feel it all life will get worse, trust me I know this first hand.  So I pray for them and I talk to Joyce and I pray some more.  

I started this post mentioning politics, and unfortunately it’s politics that has brought me to this space, today, it’s politics that has me waiting to post what I wrote Wednesday.  Because seemingly before the shell casings are even cooled the two sides have already dug in.  The narrative in Washington has already shifted away from the families to Gun Control, and the NRA, and Mental Health.  What makes me even more sad is what I see on Facebook.  You may notice I post very little.  The occasional picture, the blog or a comment from a show that I’m watching with Zoey that strikes me as funny.  I learned in the last 4 months that the rectangle in my pocket was keeping me from seeing people.  That the friends list was getting more attention than the friends, that the need to be seen, to get likes, to watch the numbers on the live stream that showed how many people had watched come Monday was more and more important to me than playing slobber ball with my dog.  

So imagine my sadness when I saw post after post today from people that I know and love and respect from both sides of political ideology using the gaping hole in these parents lives to make their point about gun control and mental health and background checks and don’t take my guns. 

Now you may be thinking.  “But Aaron aren’t you using that hole to make a political point?”  I sure hope not because here’s the point I want to make.  It’s Thursday, the shooting happened on Tuesday.  Think about that, as early as Wednesday I noticed people posting about their need for a gun, or the need to regulate guns, or the need to arm teachers or the need to take guns from people with mental health issues.  I’ve seen people saying that old tired line.  “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” or some variation of the same.  

I’ve read how congress is trying to come to some bipartisan agreement, even while they acknowledge that it’s not likely, all the while using that gaping hole as the reasoning.  It makes me sad and angry.  While all of those things are important to discuss in the long term.  What really matters in the short term is that a mom and dad are looking at an empty seat at the dinner table, that a brother or sister is sitting in the back seat unable to play the don’t cross this line game with the person that just a few days ago was sitting one seat over with the cup rest in the middle, that grandma and grandpa have a bunch of plans for the week that their grand child comes over that now have no meaning, that the cousins won’t be able to watch fireworks on the fourth of July after the family picnic.  That’s what matters right now, and to be honest.  For those of us that follow Jesus, even the broken ones of us that should be what matters in the long term as well.  

Isaiah 61:1     The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is upon me,   for the LORD has anointed me   to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted   and to proclaim that captives will be released   and prisoners will be freed.^a

We are supposed to be the hands and feet of Jesus.  I called it being Jesus with skin when I was preaching.  If we look at what Isaiah is saying through the lens of the fulfilled covenant we find in the New Testament we should realize that as members of the family of God we have a mission right now.  It is not to score political points, it’s not to give our opinion on who should and should not have guns, it’s not even to preach death and destruction and all that goes with it.  It’s simply to pray for and comfort the brokenhearted.  Trust me more than their hearts are broken, their very souls are shattered, and people who claim to follow Christ know the one that can mend that broken soul. 

Prayerfully submitted for your consideration. 

I took the Blue Pill

Writing has always been something that I have done to process.  The interesting thing to me is the fact that writing is actually a positive way to deal with things and if I look at the blog for the past year, well the writing is so very sporadic, contrast that with how much I used to write and I can begin to see yet another proof that I was listening to the enemy and falling to my mental health issues.  

Working through things in healthy ways really is preferable to taking the Blue Pill.  I should explain.  Back in the day there was this movie The Matrix.  I know right go figure.  In the movie Neo (Even though every time I see Neo on the screen I actually see Ted Theodore Logan, but I digress.) ANYWAY, in the movie, Neo is given a choice of taking one of two pills.  The red pill is all about the truth, what’s really happening in the real world. The red pill is about feeling things as they really are, about seeing things that are actually there, about facing the hard parts of life while finding good things and people to share it all with and to partner with and to get the job done when it comes to living, even in a decidedly dystopian world run by machines.  

Take the blue pill though and none of that matters.  Taking the blue pill lets Neo ignore truth, it lets him inoculate himself from reality, it allows him to continue in a virtual world where nothing real and tangible can touch him.  In other words the blue pill is the ultimate form of escapism and wall building. It isolates and protects and cocoons the person that takes it in a self imposed bubble of willful ignorance. 

Willful ignorance.  Think about that for a moment.  Those two words speak volumes.  Willful ignorance differs from actual ignorance in one glaringly obvious way.  The willful part.  People that choose willful ignorance, and yes dear reader that was me, know that things are not really the way they seem or are willing to accept.  They know the truth, things are not okay, but it’s so much easier in the short term to just remain locked in the Matrix they created. 

So I took the blue pill because the blue pill was so much more preferable to the world that I was inhabiting. I programmed my own Matrix, and with each new “line of code” I wrote, another wall went up, more isolation occurred. The crazy thing is I really did escape to a virtual world. A world I created with the help of people from all over the place, geography has no real meaning once you “jack in” to your matrix.  These people were just like me, probably in more ways than I or they want to admit, it’s easy to log into a chat room or a KiK chat, or to text some VOIP number that isn’t real. and become something that you’re not.  The reason those places exist is for people like me, depressed, angry, sad, alone. The reason they go there is the reason I went there.  It’s preferable to be some character that can do anything, can be strong, or wise, or the bad guy, or fun, or powerful, or magical, or in control. I created a reality that had nothing to do with real life and then actively chose my Matrix and each time I did, Agent Aaron would lock the real Aaron in a cage smirk at him for all his protesting and walk out of the dungeon he inhabited, all the while the red pill people in my life were getting further and further away.  Each time one of them would stand in front of me with their palm open holding those two pills the red and the blue, I looked at them and shook my head and cried knowing what I should do and still I reached for that stupid blue pill because that was easier at the moment, and preferable to actually feeling and dealing with the pain and hurt and isolation and depression and wanting to be dead.  

Red pill people are in our lives because God loves us.  He loves us more than we can ever really understand and he wants us to be what we were designed to be as opposed to the rabbit hole we ignore because our Matrix is easier to deal with, and that is the real problem.  The longer we choose to stay in our matrix, the longer we sit and write line of code after line of code, all the while knowing we want more and real and true, the harder it is to allow ourselves the freedom of the Red Pill.  We become what we all dread.  Our own Agent Smith the one that keeps the order in our world and locks us away from the truth.  That’s what Agent Aaron did.  He looked at the people around him and decided that they were better than he was, that they were stronger than he was, that they couldn’t handle the work that it would be to pull him from the Matrix, and help him learn and live and move in a world that was real and tangible and that offered true healing not from the sadness and depression and pain of life, but healing through the sadness and depression and pain. 

In Second Samuel, Davids Morpheus. (Nathan the Prophet) stands in front of him holding out the Red Pill, and at first David reaches for the blue one. 

2Sam. 12:5     David was furious. “As surely as the LORD lives,” he vowed, “any man who would do such a thing deserves to die! 

Nathan has just finished offering David the Red pill.  Giving him a clear picture of the sin that David has perpetrated on Uriah a man that was fighting for the country.  A man that was where he was supposed to be, while David stayed behind in the city,  all comfortable and cozy, all up in the Matrix of his own design.  In Nathans story about a rich man and a poor man and a pet sheep God is doing something really amazing for David.  God is reaching to him, letting David know that there were choices made that added to the lines of code that were actually walling David off from those around him. Davids response is one that has picked up the blue pill, and is searching desperately for some water to wash it down.  I mean think about it.  When faced with the real world with the truth of what He had become, it was preferable to protest and get all frustrated and angry in a desperate effort to remain in the Matrix, even as his very soul, that part that we read about when Samuel told Saul that he was no longer going to be king.

¹⁴ But now your kingdom must end, for the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart. The LORD has already appointed him to be the leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD’s command.”

God didn’t let David stay in the Matrix of his own Making.  God had sent Samuel to anoint David as the new king.  God through Samuel called David a man after his own heart, and so he sent Nathan.  

Why did I keep taking the blue pill, even when I didn’t want too, even when I knew better, even when I had people all around me more than willing to help me with the truth that the red pill offered?

Two things, choice and pain.  My un-redeemed flesh was in a lot of pain, sometimes physically, but more often than not, mentally and emotionally.  Being overwhelmed and hurt and sad and frustrated and depressed and suffering from nightmares and all of the things that go along with mental illness contributed sure, but in the end given the choice between the work of moving forward and of the comfort of my matrix I popped that blue pill in my mouth and shut the door and added the lines of guilt and shame and resentment and fear and doubt and anger and confusion to my matrix.  

And then God said enough, and I thank Him for it daily.

Did you need a picture of my Morpheus?

Call it what it is!

There is a secret that people that have positions of leadership, don’t want you to know.  The problem is the only person that really believes it’s a secret is the person that is in leadership.  

This secret is rooted fully in the sin of pride. I mean let’s be clear, I mean let’s let the Bible be clear as it tends to be more pointed and truthful than the best of us. 

Prov. 16:18     Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. 

I wrote about the elephant in the room last time.  Let’s be clear, there is no way to sugar coat a fall, sure people try and do it all the time but in the end it’s at best Splenda coated, or blue sweetener coated.  A false coating that doesn’t even taste good and in truth leaves a nasty aftertaste on the back of the tongue for just a bit too long. 

Anyway enough of the admission that pride is at the root of most of the sins that leaders, especially those in the church, especially me have issue with.  All the things that we fall to we do so from the cliff of pride. 

The secret that leaders don’t want to let anyone else in on is the fact that leaders are human.  Let that sink in for a moment.  I know that it had to for me, and I mean let's be clear this blog is my way of working through things and of letting people that want to know where I am. 

Now along with that humanity comes all the stuff that goes with being human. Along with that humanity comes fear, and anxiety, and joy, and sorrow, and depression, and stress, and trauma and positive coping mechanisms, and negative ones too.  One of the biggest secrets though that leaders keep is the one that I touched on a little bit in the last post.  That is the fact that suicidal thoughts and ideation are not relegated to people “out there.”  

Let me put it another way. 

Pastors can be suicidal too, I just knew as do many others that are out there in the same space that I was in, how to Splenda coat it.  So instead of calling it what it was, I would say something like this.  

“You know there are days that I just don’t want to exist.”  Now I am sure all of us have had those moments when we are embarrassed and we want to crawl into a hole and have no one notice us.  That is not at all what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about a daily wake up with the idea that it would be so nice to not wake up.  That being caught in a drive by, or a random act  of violence would be pretty good, the list goes on.  

Why am I telling you all this.  I want to give you a picture of what suicidal looks like.  See that, that right there is what suicidal looks like.  That was a selfie from last year right around this time. Now before you say “Well wait a moment, you had just lost your daughter, that doesn’t really mean you were suicidal, come on you were a pastor, you had people around you. Pastors don’t get that way.  So sure that picture is from this time last year when all hell had broken loose in a matter of days.  

Let's go with another picture months later, at a time that I was still hiding, a time when I was compartmentalizing and wishing with all I had that I didn’t have to  wake up. 

Recognize that guy from Facebook.  This is the guy that shut himself off from everyone that mattered, this is the guy that stopped going to breakfast with my pastor friends because I was tired of talking of politics, but lets be clear, that wasn’t why I stopped going, I stopped going because I was isolating myself away from everyone.  My wife, my kids, my family, people in the church I pastored, leadership all of them.  

The sin of pride was in full effect at this point because, you see, I was “protecting" all these poor people from Aaron.  I was protecting them from my pain and anger and sadness and hurt,  I was keeping them “safe” for that moment when I didn’t exist any more.  

What’s really sad is that fact that all those people I was cutting off, they were the people that God placed in my life that I was supposed to turn too, they were the ones that I was supposed to say “hey I’m just not okay.”  What I should have been doing was crying with Joyce, not isolating from her.  What I should have done was said, “Hey guys I know we are here for breakfast but I’m just not okay.”  What I needed to do was get into counseling and to actually be honest with myself and the counselor.    

 

What am I writing this?  What’s the point of going into this on the blog?  I can hear someone saying, “I thought you were better what are you doing this for?”

 

Let me show you the picture of a person that finally gets it, that has the tools that are needed to walk forward.  

Let me show you what it looks like to actually live in partnership with the one you love.  

People may wonder if I am still dealing with depression and PTSD. Yes.  I am, I will deal with major depressive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder all of my life.  It’s something that just is.  I can hear some people saying that I shouldn’t claim that.  That I can “speak to my depression.”  I appreciate that kind of faith, and I believe that healing does occur,  I also believe that we have doctors and medicine because God gifted and enabled people to use those gifts to help in our healing.  The thing that I had to do was come to the place that I was okay with needing more to be okay.  So while I am always going to deal with depression and ptsd.  I am not depressed and suicidal now.

I thank God regularly now for not letting me not exist.  I wish I didn’t have to learn the hard way but chalk that one up to being a hard headed Italian.  

So where does that leave this post.  Simply here.  For those that I have hurt, for those that were broken by my actions, for those that have the wrong picture of the God that I serve, because as I served him I was also serving myself in a desire to self medicate the pain away.  To those that I let down, and yes I know I let many people down.  I am truly sorry.  The great thing about God is he forgives and then he enables.  He has forgiven me.  I ask you to do the same, and know that I will do all I can in the days given to me, to walk and live and move and have my being in Christ.  

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week. 

The Elephant in the Room

I want to talk about, or write about the elephant in the room.  The thing about elephants in the room is that they are large they are obvious but no one really wants to accept them as being there. It takes a willful ignorance to not see a 6000 to 13000 lb animal.  It's huge and yet it's almost a comfortable ignorance not to see it. The question is what happens when you are that elephant, or when you feel like the elephant.  

That is where I am sitting right now.  Falling is something that we all do, even if admitting it is hard.  The thing about all of us falling is not whether or not we all fall but the distance of that fall.  Some people only stumble, some people are adept at falling gracefully and in doing so are able to move forward quickly and easily.  Then there is the big long ugly fall, the one that we see when a person is walking along their head down, not paying attention to what is coming, they run smack dab into a low hanging branch, or turn and don't see that clean window and so thy shop up and charge into the thing and end up sprawled flat on their back.  That is the best description for what has happened to me. 

With every fall there are factors that come into play.  State of mind and choice being the two major ones.  Sure there are others.  People that you are around, the environment that you find yourself in, wearing the right shoes...the list goes on. 

The question is does state of mind matter?  I don't mean simple things when it comes to state of mind, I mean mental health issues state of mind? Does the mental health of an individual have any bearing on the choices that are made.  Now bear with me dear reader because I know that may seem like there is an obvious answer to this question, but is there?  I don't mean that we as a whole don't give at the very least lip service to the idea of mental health.  Things like Depression, Bipolar Disorder, Anxiety, PTSD or any of the dream disorders that are out there. I know for myself it was lip service, even when suffering from some of the things in that list.  

I won't go into details that are any where deep.  If you are interested in some of it, it's littered across the past of this blog, I will say that wanting to be dead is not something that anyone really expects to happen, at least I didn't. I suffered from the small c christian way of renaming things or sugar coating them to make it more palatable.  I wasn't suicidal, I just didn't want to exist.  I wasn't depressed I was just stressed out and "in my own head." I didn't  have PTSD because I never went to war.  That last one was a surprise but if I look at it all logically it's easy to see how it was yet another excuse to keep from getting the help that I needed, and so I went down a dismal path of self isolation, electronics buying mayhem, and disassociation so huge that I created an alternate world to escape to, anything to get away from the ugly that was real life.  

There are triggers in everyones life, mine is no exception. The problem is when those triggers are dealt with using messed up coping mechanisms we make decisions based not on our redeemed self.  Following the footsteps of Jesus, taking our cue from Him and His word as opposed to that human piece of ourselves that is full of all the things that are wrong with the world.  When we let our hurt and pain and sorrow and damage guide us we are forgetting that we are supposed to be guided by that lamp and light, of course when we are not guided by God's word we are going to not just slip but slide pell mell down the hill of pain, isolation, sin, and death, and when we get to the bottom of that hill we look at the top and realize just how far we have fallen, just how much hurt, and pain, and sorrow and anger and resentment and...and...and...can trick us into believing that we deserve to do whatever it takes to not feel any or all of those things, if even for a moment.  Trust me it is only for a moment that we don't feel them, they all have a way of rearing their ugly heads within hours, sometimes minutes of their ending.  Then something worse sets in.  Self loathing and guilt and frustration.  

The elephant in the room dear reader is more than just me.  It's all of us and the mess of sin that we constantly have to fight, because while Jesus death and resurrection removes the stain of sin, there is also the whole armor of God thing that we are supposed to put on.  We put that on, God doesn't come down and dress us for battle, on the contrary we are supposed to dress ourselves for battle, and when we don't, or when we leave off a piece or two because it's so much more convenient and it's easier to do that than to face the peril we are setting ourselves for failure. 

What comes next is what matters.  What we do when the dust settles, when the muck is sprayed away by the grace of God and we are left to stand in front of the rest of the herd without the alternative armor we have been wearing that we've convinced ourselves is the real thing.  The armor that comes from the creator can't be duplicated or dressed up or hidden away, but what it can do and what it does is leave us protected from the enemy but vulnerable to the creator.  It leaves our hearts surrounded by a shield while at the same time showing those around us just how much of a mess we are without it.

I wish I knew what was coming next.  I know what I desire and for now that is enough. 

Stick around, there is so much more to come.