When You Wake Up Feeling Blue
For me, waking up down like that means that as soon as the fog lifts from my brain and I remember where I am, my mind is flooded with feelings of hopelessness and isolation. I have hardly had time to think, butintuitively I know that I feel rotten inside and that I don't have the emotional energy to face the day.
That day, when I woke up down, I lay in bed for a minute thinking about the handful of other times in my life when I had felt that way.
I thought back to the time when my two best friends and I tried out for the Little League baseball team. We had practiced together for hours and had bought matching gloves and hats. They both made the team, but I did not. For the rest of the summer I awakened feeling lonely and humiliated.
I thought about the college class where even my best efforts had brought a devastatingly low grade. Morning after morning that semester I awakened feeling inadequate and stupid.
And then I thought about the young woman for whom I had cared so much, the one who I had thought might be "the one" for me. When she told me that during Christmas vacation she had rekindled a flame with a former boyfriend, I was completely surprised. For weeks I awakened feeling emotionally sideswiped and disoriented.
As I reviewed these times of feeling down, or "blue," in my life, I quietly talked to God about them, and I made two observations.
My first observation was that feeling blue the first thing in the morning is particularly painful. It means that my depression has spent the night--it has remained. And the more I thought about blues that remained, the more I thought about a familiar Bible verse that includes the same term: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."
As occasionally happens in my life, the Bible was standing in stark contrast to what I was experiencing. I was experiencing blues that remained. The Bible was talking about faith, hope and love remaining.
This led me to a second observation. During the blue periods in my life, my blues seem systematically to "evict" faith, hope and love--the very things that God says should remain.
When the Blues Remain Instead of Faith
The deep "downs" of my life tend to begin after I have experienced a devastating hurt, loss or change that makes me feel powerless in the present, with no optimism for the future. Things that used to seem reliable or true may not seem that way anymore. I may feel disoriented. Confusion and fear may set in.
These devastating experiences trigger feelings that challenge the truth of what God says. God says that he will protect me, but I feel vulnerable and violated. God says that he loves me, but I don't feel loved. God says that he is in control, but I don't feel as if he is. I fall into a crisis of faith. Do I believe what I am experiencing and feeling, or do I believe what God says to be true? If I believe my feelings instead of what God says, I am evicting faith and opening myself to the blues.
When the Blues Remain Instead of Hope
When I didn't make that Little League team, my entire summer--which at that age seemed like my entire life--seemed empty and meaningless. When I received that low grade in college, I could envision only low grades for the next four years. When my heart was broken because that young woman left me, I couldn't imagine caring about anyone else again.
In each case, an expectation of future good was not part of my thinking because I didn't expect God to give me something better in the future than what I was facing in the present.
But in each case God did give me something better. I started playing basketball instead of baseball that summer, and I developed a love for basketball that led to varsity letters and a college scholarship. The low grade in college was the only low grade that I ever received. And I can't begin to describe the depth of my love for my wife and how far it surpasses anything that I felt for that other young woman.
When I refuse to believe what God says and I focus instead on what I feel or experience, the blues evict the hope that God tells me should remain.
When the Blues Remain Instead of Love
Perhaps the main reason that the blues last so long during the down times of life is that I choose self-pity rather than the love of God and love from those who encourage and help me. The Bible says that "the greatest" of the three things that God wants to remain is love. If I shut out people--and God--during my down times, the blues will remain instead of love.
Facing Life
Sometimes getting out of bed to face life and to press on requires inner courage that can come only from God's grace. The important thing to remember during these blue times is that I am not designed to remain down. Faith, hope and love are the enduring realities that God gives to carry me through the valleys and the storms.
When I believe God's promises in spite of my discouragement, when I look to his control of my future, and when I embrace the people around me and the Encourager beside me, I find that God takes away the lingering blues and restores my faith, my hope and my love.
VB personnally think that if we sleep with blue, we will wake up with blue. Experience tells VB that if VB sleep with singing praise/worship song in the heart, the song will still remain in VB's mind. Unconsciously, VB might wake up humming the same song. So, in VB's conclusion, if we sleep after throw all our blue and black to our caring Father in heaven, we won't wake up with blue or black, instead,we will wake up with bright light in our heart.
© 1997 vinebranch@hotmail.com
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