{"id":58,"date":"2011-03-24T17:11:00","date_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lrtministry.org\/lost\/"},"modified":"2011-03-24T17:11:00","modified_gmt":"2011-03-24T17:11:00","slug":"lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/lost\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been almost a month since my last post. I haven&#8217;t even tweeted much. Why? Feeling lost, alone &#8211; much like David in many of the Psalms where he cried out to God in despair. I do what I need to do, but it is just that, doing. Few things bring me the joy, the comfort I have had in the past. Work is just that, work. Life seems like a giant whirl wind and I don&#8217;t know what direction it is headed at any given time. I feel as though I have lost purpose or meaning. Lost hope? No. Lost joy? No, but it is hard to find. <\/p>\n<p>I find it interesting that I am so aware of my situation and at the same time unable to respond to it. Maybe I should be calling this blogging from the dark side. I have given up asking why, rather I think about what I am to learn. Who can benefit from my dark side ramblings? <\/p>\n<p>Let me try a poem &#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Hello darkness my old friend,<br \/>You&#8217;ve come to call on me again &#8211; yeah I know Simon and Garfunkle but it is a great way to start<\/p>\n<p>In reality that is all I have &#8211; darkness is an old friend who has been calling for years. Some times its a brief visit, other time it seems like a prolonged stay. I can put a name to this darkness, it is depression &#8211; not sadness, not spiritual warfare, not not doing enough &#8220;spiritual&#8221; things, no it is as chemical imbalance in my brain that results in me entering into dark times. My dad suffered from the same thing at about the same age I am at now. <\/p>\n<p>Today as I write this I can feel the darkness lifting. I am again able to listen for and to God&#8217;s still small voice. Hey, I&#8217;m even able to blog about it. I know my old friend will be back, may next week, maybe in a couple of months or a year. I just don&#8217;t know. <\/p>\n<p>If you are like me and know this experience, remember that even in the darkness God is there, seek Him out for comfort. Seek out a medical or mental health professional to help you through this time. Let a trusted friend know so that they can intercede for you in prayer.<\/p>\n<p>If you know someone who is in this situation don&#8217;t try and fix them, rather just be there when they reach out, pray for them. encourage them.<\/p>\n<p>I have been living with depression for the last 15 years or so. I lived the first 7-8 without diagnosis, and the last 7-8 under the care of my doctor. I don&#8217;t have all the answers, shoot I don&#8217;t even know all the questions &#8211; but what I do know is that God is faithful in all things and He will be with you even when darkness falls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been almost a month since my last post. I haven&#8217;t even tweeted much. Why? Feeling lost, alone &#8211; much like David in many of the Psalms where he cried out to God in despair. I do what I need to do, but it is just that, doing. Few things bring me the joy, the &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/lost\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Lost&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thoughts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4xZq6-lost","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesojournersgarden.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}