Memories & Feelings Unleashed….

By: Melanie T. Lim
Wide Awake

THERE are times in our lives when all the lights go out—when hopelessness and despair fills our every waking hour. When finding temporary sanctuary in slumber, we are still awakened the following morning by the same overwhelming grief and pain.

Many people do not understand what depression is like. 

I used to be one of those people who could never imagine why people racked by pain would take their lives. You see, having lived with debilitating migraines through most of my adult life, I sought solace in pain management.

In many instances, I could work, smile and circulate at cocktails through a splitting headache that threatened to make me throw up.

What I didn’t realize, however, was that unlike a migraine, black coffee and a pill could not fix a broken heart.

I used to not be able to understand why people sought solace in death when there was so much to live for. In my naiveté, I failed to understand that for those in great pain, there is nothing to live for—that death dangles the promise of peace and the end of pain when life is completely bereft of joy.

I used to think that people who took their lives were shallow and of unsound mind until the day I found myself in my own bottomless pit of pain.

What could a woman like me possibly be pained about? You’d be surprised. I always imagined that some great love affair would break me one day. That I would die a thousand deaths when my significant other would no longer find me significant. But that’s not what happened.

Sometimes, life just deals you with an unexpected card. You can be prepared for everything except the one thing that just has to happen at the worst possible time. Still, I have always believed that God sends me a message each time he breaks my heart. And so I struggle on a daily basis to decipher what God wants me to learn in my life.

My 12-year old niece writes unbelievably moving poetry. In many ways, her writing is much more mature than mine. She is no less cynical than I. But where deep down, I remain the child who desperately clings to the hope that life can end happily, she is the child with the heart of a 42-year old who fervently believes that life can never end happily.

I want to tell her that she is wrong. But I cannot lie to her. It is a struggle to understand life and be able to appreciate it for all that it is. It is not easy to be happy. But one does not have to be miserable if one cannot be happy—that is the invaluable lesson my 12-year niece is teaching me everyday.

Pain does not last forever. Like the six-day migraine, it will run its course eventually. And when it’s over, you’ll have the most incredibly beautiful mornings to wake up to. So when the lights go out, take heart. “The darkest hour is always the hour before the dawning.” I live for those beautiful mornings.

by: Mike Barres (www.hearlight.org)

High winds accompanied a storm that blew through our area. Some of the wind gusts reached sixty miles per hour. The trees were swaying back and forth and some branches were falling to the ground.

Looking at the trees, you had to wonder why they didn’t end up blown over on to the ground. The key seemed to be that they were flexible — they could bend and sway in the breeze instead of break.

Life has its storms. Sometimes our circumstances are like the high winds threatening to harm and uproot us. Are we going to be flexible as we face these storms?

Sometimes things don’t turn out like we had hoped they would. We may have had our heart set on something, and it didn’t happen. Will we be flexible?

Our flexibility allowed God to do even better things.

Let’s admit that flexibility isn’t easy. We only have to be flexible when things don’t go our way or aren’t on our time table. As the Wise One said, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick … " (Proverbs 13:12). Flexibility means we’re having to deal with problems. But the apostle Paul, who seemed to always find himself in the middle of problems, learned the secret of being flexible. He said:

I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want (Philippians 4:12).

I have been on many short term missions trips. We always talk about being "flexible." We always have our trip mapped out, but often we have to change our plans. Being flexible was always critical on those trips. Often that flexibility provided wonderful new opportunities that we could never have imagined. More than responding to a problem, our flexibility allowed God to do even better things than we had planned.

The next time you experience one of life’s storms, stay flexible. Like Paul, learn to be content whatever your circumstances. While your plans are changing because of life’s storms, look for a new wonderful unexpected opportunity God has provided. God’s gracious care and our flexibility can make our lives more productive and overflowing with God’s joy. Let’s be flexible.

Strange…How something beautiful can become ugly,

                 How something whole and perfect can get shattered,

                 How something real turns out to be fake.

Its sudden impact hurts us to the very core of our heart and tears us apart. We lose our sense of balance and we are reduced to bodies and souls writhing with pain.

With the shattering we are no longer the same. We have become fragments that can no longer be patched up to form the person that once was. Something — somewhere has been lost. If we don’t watch out, hardness, even meanness, may rear its ugly head. Cynicism may creep in too and we start building walls around ourselves and end up getting afflicted with one of our world’s diseases —DECEPTION.

Why do we have to be jolted in such a manner? Perhaps, I may venture and say that life is not as simple as it seems to our young innocent eyes. There is a lot more unexpected that lurks around us in life that we do not know of. It cautions us from being vulnerable and naïve to certain cruel realities in life. But most of all, these happen… I think, to give us the opportunities to grow, and top the hidden depths of our personal strength and resiliency to overcome such pain and still survive a winner without losing an ounce of our goodness, generosity and faith in SOMEONE up there and here — who cares for us very much.