Tag Archives: SAD

What’s on Your Mind? Well, Fear Not.

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What’s on your mind this morning? Something likely is. Or better said, “somethings.” On my part, I just got some weightier news this morning, and so I have a lot on my mind. Still, I’ll try to keep this light, practical, and worth your while.

For starters, I’m overjoyed by President Trump’s inauguration. And his speech—wow! What an indictment of the Biden administration, even as the former president and his associates were sitting just over Trump’s left shoulder. Trump’s words were bold in the best way. While listening to the speech, I tried to imagine what Biden, Inc. was thinking. Considering what Trump said, I’m sure several in the bunch were just wondering how much longer it would be until they could leave.

I was also overjoyed this past week by President Trump’s pardoning of the pro-life protesters who were jailed last year. One of them, Heather Idoni, lives in my hometown of Linden, Michigan. She’s a 60-year-old grandmother who was indicted and sentenced by the Biden Justice Department to two years in prison for protesting at an abortion clinic. However, sentencing came only after having already sat in jail for five months. As you’d guess, the pro-abortion opponents have falsely accused this gentle woman, a mother of five and adoptive mother of ten, of outlandish viciousness. But then again, the Devil is a liar. Abortion is his holiest sacrament. He will do what he must to protect it.

Nevertheless, Heather was freed on Friday. Praise God for this. I’ll be talking with her soon. I indeed wonder what she was thinking while in prison. When it comes to someone willing to go to jail for faithfulness to Christ, such a person’s innermost thoughts are worth knowing. Knowing what I know about her, I suspect she kept her thoughts occupied by God’s Word and prayer.

I read an article a couple of weeks ago reporting that most folks have 6.5 thoughts per minute and around 6,000 every day. I only found the article because I was reading a different study about how 47% of our average awake time is spent free-thinking or daydreaming. The remaining 53% is spent being task-oriented. What I found interesting about the results is that the more people daydreamed, the less happy they were.

I didn’t believe that at first—until I thought about it for a moment.

A quick scan of the societal landscape will reveal a humanity that’s in constant distress. Most statistics point to rising rates of anxiety and depression across most demographics, particularly youth. Perhaps worse, the increase in these rates appears to be speeding up rather than slowing down. If that’s true, it makes sense that the more free time people have to wander around in their own heads, the more open they are to bombardment from the dreadful thoughts already living there. People who spend less time doing this—folks who keep busy actually doing something—they’re happier people. I guess there’s something to Henry Ward Beecher’s saying that it “is not work that kills men; it is worry. Worry is rust upon the blade.”

I don’t suffer from depression. But I know people who do. Although, I should correct my self-examination. As I’ve shared before, I’m all but certain I struggle with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Happiness is much harder for me during the winter months. That said, whether summer, fall, winter, or spring, I spend a lot of time in thought, and I can say that few, if any, of the supposed 6.5 thoughts that happen every minute involve anxiety or sadness. I do have negative thoughts. However, they rarely outweigh or overwhelm what I would consider as my essential human wondering at the world around me. My thoughts certainly don’t outmatch my imagination, whether I’m working on a task or daydreaming. In fact, I get the sense my brain doesn’t really care what I’m doing or not doing. It’s going to wander all over the place, looking for whatever is most interesting.

In other words, I can be working on something important while at the same time catching myself thinking about something else absurdly innocuous. For example, while changing my grandson Preston’s diaper a few weeks ago, a rather messy one requiring skill and precision, I remember wondering how many diapers I’ve likely changed across all four of my children. Thousands upon thousands, I’m sure. From there, I thought about how I used to time myself to see how long the diaper changes took and how proud I was when I’d beat my record. By the time I finished getting Preston back into the bottom half of his sleeper, I was thinking how ridiculous the Star Wars universe would seem in hindsight when artificial intelligence is eventually given complete control over all future cars, fighter jets, and such. Star Wars spaceships, the most technically advanced crafts ever delivered from the human imagination—ones that can cross galaxies—still require pilots. The Millennium Falcon is nothing without Han Solo and Chewbacca.

I thought about all those things while changing my squirming grandson’s diaper and singing the made-up song “Everyone Loves Butt Cream.”

Conversely, my daughter, Evelyn, is absolutely enamored with her new nephew. She wants to hold, play with, and love on Preston all day long. But she won’t change his diaper. She’s terrified by the task. When confronted with the prospect, all she can think about are the risks of getting dirty in ways she’s not willing to experience. And so, when it’s time to change Preston’s diaper, she runs for the hills.

In a way, that illustrates another interesting dynamic in human thinking. Evelyn’s hesitation highlights how thinking rooted in anxious fear can result in a type of physical paralysis, ultimately affecting a person’s ability to engage in what everyday life requires. I suppose that’s one of the real dangers of depression. People become so burdened that they can barely do anything. Depression keeps people locked in a room with an uncomfortably low ceiling. They find themselves held down by the task’s worrisome details before they can even get started, while others can walk into a messy situation with enough emotional overhead to be reasonably unaffected by any potential messes.

Looking back at what I’ve just written, there’s one more thing that comes to mind in all of this.

Part of the reason a diaper change is no big deal to me is because I’ve done thousands of them. The whole process is more than familiar. This fact resonates with Michel de Montaigne’s famous words, “Familiarity confounds all things. It makes the most natural and uncommon things seem ordinary.” In part, his point is that familiarity can be effectually beneficial. Relative to diaper changes, familiarity made the activity’s grossness almost unnoticeable, maybe even fun enough to sing a made-up song.

In light of everything mentioned so far, here’s an equation worth pondering: First, what if there was a way to take some of the free-thinking time that comprises 47% of our lives and convert it to task orientation? Second, what if I told you there is plentiful research showing that the people who regularly immerse themselves in worship and Bible study are much happier, more hopeful, and have better mental health?

In other words, could it be that deliberateness plus familiarity might equal something better? Of course, I’m going to consider all of this through the lens of God’s Word. I’m also thinking back to Heather Idoni’s time in prison and her likely immersion in God’s Word.

I didn’t know until recently that the phrase “Fear not” appears 365 times in the Bible. When I did learn this important fact, an obvious “first thought” came to mind: there’s one “Fear not” for every day of the year. That said, imagine what it would be like to hear God say to me through His Word every day, “Fear not.” Imagine what it would be like to hear Him tell me every day why I needn’t be afraid. Old Testament or New Testament, the epicentral purpose of His Word is to give Christ—the One who is our comfort and courage against every fearful thing this world might try to throw at us.

I suppose one of the funnier things about all this is that secularists will agree with my previous equation’s premise, except their first suggestion would be to occupy oneself with golf or woodworking or whatever. Those aren’t bad things. But if there’s any particular framework in which to anchor our thinking deliberately, Christians already know that the biblical framework is the best one. Using our free-thinking time immersed in God’s Word, we have what our hearts and minds need for waging war against the sinful flesh and its anxious thoughts leading to despair. We find the promises of God there, and with those promises comes the assurance of God’s perpetual grace in every time of need.

Now, before I wrap this up, there’s something I should mention. Golf doesn’t bring me joy. I don’t enjoy woodworking, either. But there is something I like to do on occasion. After I’ve changed Preston’s diaper, I’ve been known to go looking for Evelyn. When I find her, I’ll ask her to throw the diaper away for me while tossing it at her. She usually screams and runs away. Indeed, when burdened by the doldrum-inducing winter, tossing a diaper at my screaming daughter brings me great joy.

Summary and Summery are Kin

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A couple of weeks ago, before venturing into Michigan’s dreadful mid-winter cold to retrieve our daughter, Evelyn, from basketball practice, Jennifer called to me, asking, “How do I look?” I came around the corner from the living room to see she looked the winter part. Hat, gloves, and coat—all were in place, as they should be. All except for one detail. She was sockless and wearing her summer flip-flops.

“You look summery,” I said, implying a momentary sense of a far better season’s intrusion.

“It’ll be a quick trip,” she replied, “and I won’t be getting out of the car.”

“Good idea,” I said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she replied, the door closing behind her.

Returning to what I was doing before, I thought how “summery,” a made-up word used to infer summer’s fresh, bright, and relaxed feeling, bore no audible difference to the noun “summary,” which is a word tinged with brevity. In other words, a summary is short. It’s a fuller portion of information distilled into its essential parts, ultimately telling us in brief only what we need to know.

Unfortunately, my mind, already suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), followed my disorder’s doldrums down into a moment of frustration. I thought that summery and summary are kin here in Michigan. Indeed, summers in Michigan are short. They so often feel like barely a synopsis of the season’s essential parts—the warmth, clear blue skies, sunshine, and all that makes summer so wonderful. What other states enjoy at full-throttle for four or five months, we barely get three, if that. I’ve mentioned before that Michigan is one of the states with the fewest number of sunny days. And setting aside for a moment the Upper Peninsula, where it’s entirely possible to have a foot of snow until the end of May, here in the Lower Peninsula, where I live, we’ve had snow dumped on us in the middle of May. Sure, it’s gone just as soon as it arrives. But it has happened. Back in 2016, we had an inch of snowfall on May 15. I remember because I was driving in it, and I recall questioning my geographical life choices.

But enough of my bemoaning about Michigan. As I said, when the door closed behind Jennifer, my SAD kicked in. I have to work hard to overcome those moments. That said, something else happened when I left home the following day.

Before leaving for the office, I sat down at the kitchen table and told Jennifer, “You know, I’m tired of this. I’m going to sit here and drink coffee until the sun comes up, and then, I’ll go.” I went on to explain that I’m thoroughly exhausted by leaving home and returning home in the darkness. This time, I was going to wait for the sun to rise before doing anything. I called out to our Google Home device, “Hey, Google, what time does the sun rise today?”

“The sun will rise today at 8:17 AM,” she answered.

It was 6:30 AM. Still, I insisted I wouldn’t leave until I saw the sun’s rays. Five minutes later, when I stood up to go anyway, Jennifer admitted to wishing she were a betting woman. She knew that sun or no sun, I’d change my mind and muscle through. And so, I grabbed my things, kissed her goodbye, and left.

That morning, I decided to shake things up a little and take a slightly different route, one that had me joining southbound US-23 just a little further north than usual. I’m glad I did because I saw something I wouldn’t have typically seen, and it was refreshingly recalibrating.

On the east side of the highway and just beyond the safety fencing, someone decorated a small evergreen tree with Christmas lights. Being on the highway’s right-of-way, I’m sure no one owns the tree. Not to mention, the tree is quite some distance from any of the area’s surrounding houses. With that, it’s a mystery how the little tree has electricity. Still, there it is, out in the middle of nowhere, all by itself beside the highway, piercing the perpetual Michigan darkness with its twinkling colors.

I had a thought when I saw it.

For as dark as things may seem sometimes, there’s Christmas right out in the middle of all the humdrum. There it is, a beaming reminder of the incarnation of God’s Son for my rescue. Because of His person and work, none of what’s filling the surrounding shadows of this world’s winter is forever, only the divine summer of Christ and my eternal future with Him.

At 70 miles per hour, I didn’t get to see the tree for very long. Within seconds, it was in my rearview mirror until, eventually, it was gone. In that sense, it was only a brief prompt, a summary glimpse of a summery illustration. But what it summarized in that moment was vast and powerful. Against a sunless landscape draped in the blistering chill of Sin, Christ’s arrival remains fixed. He came, and when He did, He turned back the rulers and authorities and the cosmic powers of this present darkness against which we wrestle (Ephesians 6:12). Defeating those dreadful specters, he gave “light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death” (Luke 1:79).

Passing this tree is now my usual route. Whether I’m coming or going in the dark, I want to see it. I like that it’s there, and I’m thankful to whoever is keeping it lit. It’s as if the tree, with its branches glistening cheerfully and waving in the highway winds, is saying to every passerby, “Rejoice! Christ was born for you!”