Question: I’ve tried to work but can’t get beyond a major depression. My home has been stolen from me by one of the banks that our government has bailed out, and my credit has been destroyed. Can I move forward? No. At this point I feel my family is better off without me. Yes, it will be tough on them. In time, I hope they can forgive me for being so selfish but I cannot take this agonizing nightmare any longer.

Answer: Think about what you’re saying here; my life — this sometimes terrible gift of being, but always precious possibility of knowing that I’m loved (and can feel love for others) — is worth less than a house, or whatever!

Snap out of it! Yes, times are tough, maybe the worst you’ve ever seen to date. Yes, you’re looking at an uphill battle; but the key word here is “uphill” — meaning towards something new, something that can be brighter and better than anything you’ve known before. The dark parts of you — the deeply depressed negative parts that are whispering “take the easy way out,” don’t want you to know it’s possible to start life over, that you can realize new values in life that aren’t measured in terms of possessions. These dark spirits (and they are dark spirits) want you to feel that all is at an end so that they can end your chances of freeing yourself from their punishing presence.

There is no escaping life, plain and simple; we can’t end our pain (as dark spirits would have us believe) by running from it. We either meet what the moment reveals with a wish to learn what God would have us go through (in order to love Him more), or we turn away from this light of what we’re being shown about our character. God never places us in a situation greater than the strength he will give us to deal with it…IF we remember Him first in these times.

Everything passes. This storm will too, if you face it and ask God to help you find what you need to go through it. The storm that never passes is the one we run from.

Lastly, the voices in your head, the dark and despairing ones, are liars. They do not know what will happen to you; in fact, they tell you what they do about your possibilities in order to keep you from realizing possibilities that they can’t know anything about! Listen to truth. God loves you. Give this love back, even when you don’t feel it… by acting as though you do, because you know it exists… and you’ll be given all that you need to turn this dark hour into a life of light.