Attention Deficit

Prov. 20:27 "The spirit of man is the candle of the LORD, searching all the inward parts of the belly."

Attention Deficit

I was sitting here this morning thinking, and like a dam bursting open my thoughts steered toward the attention span of human beings. It seems these days, this era is an attention deficit era where everyone is so wrapped up in themselves they can only see off in the distance. If someone were drowning, they'd have to let them and just watch the struggle from afar because of the distance between the two.

Basically, the only relationships that stay alive are the daily face-to-face ones because eventually everyone bores of any empathetic behavior unless it's going to benefit them. An email the other morning exclaimed, America's Loneliness Epidemic; how should we respond? I wasn't surprised at what the solutions were and being a Christian email I, a Christian knew where they were going to go with their line of thinking. 

With the rise of the 'me generation' loneliness is inevitable because everyone is focused on the 'me' of the equation and not the 'them'. From the email by Michael E. Stallard, Crosswalk:  "...loneliness triggers a host of negative effects, including a decline in physical and emotional health, greater incivility and violence, and a rise in addiction and suicide."

While the email went on with solutions, solutions I thought were pretty good but just one-sided and Bible Christian based. We don't live in a society of believers so I don't think any of these suggestions would rest well with a person contemplating suicide or a person so lonely they isolate themselves from the daily rush of traffic of ignorant negative people; being alone is a safer option.

It's very easy for me to say just trust in Jesus, but to a non-believer that might not go over well. It might be easy to say build lasting relationships with people who earnestly care but honestly, they are hard to find in an emotional deficit world of the 'me' generation. While the churches are catering to the generation by making their programs more alive and active with life, there is a depressed generation that is not turning to the church for moral support.

I totally get where these folk are coming from. The church sometimes is a big letdown. It shouldn't be that way but it is a fact to the people who need more than the church can give. The church that is supposed to 'accept all' winds up shunning the very people they need to reach. I personally think the church could benefit these lost souls if they helped anonymously. All of the programs I see where I live come with a nametag of "brought to you by the--name of the church". The lost and lonely want no part of the church so they miss out on the extension of help. Why does the church need to be seen as the one giving assistance/aid/love/compassion?

I know you'll say that God is the only way and spew all the scripture pointing to "no one enters but through me" scripture, I know, I get it! But the lost souls, the suicidal, the ones who NEED help don't understand at that point. They're lost, they're lonely and all we're worried about is having them know the bible? In time maybe spring the Word on them but right off the bat? They need compassion, an ear, a friend, not someone who is only there because Jesus called them to be there to spring the Word on them. Yes, they need to hear the Word but initially, they just need to be HEARD.

Community support groups, community activities brought to you anonymously by the church could reach the people without a nametag, reach them by not boasting of 'we helped you', reach them by opening a door of communication with the very society that has let them down. Lead them in a way that they should go. There ARE ways to help but again, the attention deficit society can only focus on the prize, not the race.

There has to be a starting point. Communities need to be willing to accept the church's help anonymously, the church needs to be willing to help anonymously, we the people need to be FOR the people in every sense of the word.

Non-coincidentally I stumbled upon one of my followers' blog posts this morning: 
I was already writing my post so when I was led to this one, it made me see I'm not alone in my thinking. He was writing basically the same line of thought as I was writing. It is so mysterious the way that God collectively links the Christian minds to universal thought processes. 

I believe Christians can aid the lost and the lonely. I believe showing people love, compassion, caring and understanding can all be attributed to our Christian faith without a bible-thumping mentality of connecting to the lost. People need to be listened to, they need to feel as if they matter. Tied up in the 'me' generation are people seeking help and not finding it because as I said, everyone is so wrapped up in their own thing, giving time to another person who might be on the brink is too much of an effort and cuts into your precious time of caring for YOU.

Yes, I understand that everybody has a life and their own struggles to deal with on a regular basis but is it too hard to reach out to someone who has seemingly become distant all of a sudden? Not asking the question of 'are you okay' leaves the window of help closed as you back off because you don't think they want to talk about something. Usually taking time to think can cost someone his or her life. 

You might be wondering how I know about this; I'll tell you I know because I've been there on the suicidal end and no one reached out. I know what loneliness feels like and I know that the blanket of inner struggle one deals with when no one is around to lift even one finger or an ear of compassion. And yes, Christians let people down more than you ever know. 

Why are so many kids on drugs for attention deficit disorder? Why are kids deprived of attention? I'll tell you why but you're not going to like what I say. Parents neglect children because they NEED an outlet too and in finding their 'outlet' the child gets left behind. We're not raising kids in a two-parent household. We're tossing kids in pre-school at an earlier and earlier age and sending them off to school to allow teachers to bear the burden of raising the children of the 'me generation'. We put kids on the ADD drugs (which by the way have the same suicidal side effects that you hear about from the drugs/medication YOU take) thinking the drug will help but the kid grows, can't afford to keep up the 'meds' and more times than not, the suicidal tendencies of the drug kick in while no one is looking.

While you were worried about you, someone died that you couldn't say, 'Hi' to or 'how are you' in a meaningful banter of words. I'm tired of talking about me and my disease, I'll live or die but somewhere out in the world as I'm writing this, someone is taking their life because YOU were too busy worrying about YOU. 

I reach out through words but slowly my words are not enough, the extent of my reach is not far enough, I'm alone in trying to convey a message that people are tired of hearing. Why are they tired of hearing it? Because they are busy with other things. 

Prov. 25:27 "It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory."

Eccl. 1:13 "And I gave my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all things that are done under heaven: this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith."

Tis the Season to be...

Depressed?

Neh. 2: 2 Wherefore the king said unto me, Why is thy countenance sad, seeing thou art not sick? this is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then I was very sore afraid,

While many of you find this the season of joy, sharing and caring with family, there are so many others out there that don’t see it as the season of joy. Depression hits an all time high during the holiday season and thanks to massive commercialism we’re hit with, it doesn’t help.

It seems like as soon as Halloween hits, Christmas is here in the blink of an eye and we wonder where the time went. I saw Christmas commercials BEFORE Halloween so the media coverage of joy, joy, joy begins in October thrusting what is deemed normal upon people, people who don’t feel the joy of the season; we’re left behind with a burst of depression.

I’m taking a course on Writing the Personal Essay and this has brought a joy to my life. I can now hone in on the craft of telling my personal story, hopefully with more concise precision. The class has hardly begun so don’t expect perfection right away. Why am I telling you this? Because of something I read in one of the books for the course.

Take little bits of memories and write something that comes to mind: Thanksgiving, turkey, family, food. From those four things it will lead you to more of the memory surfacing. In my case, nothing really great surfaced from the memory.

I have four brothers, a sister, a mother and father. Thanksgiving was the only day we sat around the table to have a feast of a meal. We said grace, but again, it is the only day of the year we EVER said grace. I remember wine being served. Did I remember the joy of the day; the celebration of being with my family? No, I remember the jell-o for dessert.

I’m wondering if never having family joy is going to be a catapult of some pretty ugly stories as I venture along this six-week class? I’m also wondering if this is the reason for many people to see this as a season of depression. Maybe they lost a loved one who can’t be here with them, maybe they have bad memories of their childhood and as the season gets underway, memories, not all good ones surface and take over creating a ‘Season of Depression’.

Sadness swells up inside of me right around thanksgiving. Not only for the non-memorable memories but for the more memorable memories that creep up like worms out of a hole.

One memory at the forefront is the loss of my unborn child. Eight and a half months pregnant my child was STILL born. That hung an ugly memory around my neck and has clung there for thirty-two years now.

Grief is not something you just get over and I believe there is no amount of time that can whitewash the event. Whether it is through death, or the loss of a husband or friend that is no longer a part of your life. The holiday becomes the season of grief.

I don’t allow the grief to ruin the holiday for others, instead I carry my grief like a sponge, absorb everything alone, smile and remain appearing happy on the outside but tightly woven grief is wrapped around my heart.

I can’t help it, I miss my son, I miss my mother and father back home in Maryland, I miss seeing and talking to my sister, I miss hugging my nieces and nephews who grew up without me in their lives. As warped as they are, I miss my family!

Now don’t get me wrong, I am extremely thankful that God saw to it that I was placed in a loving family so I could actually experience what a family does on any given holiday, a normal family anyway. I’ve had the love of this family for 11 years now, but only six years of actually being around them on the physical level; that was when we moved to Nebraska.

I had always wondered if I made the right decision in taking my son, Adam Omega, away from my not so normal family and placing him in Texas then moving to Nebraska. I got a somewhat confirmation last week when the mailman asked about my sons name. Low and behold, he shares the ‘unique’ name also! Adam never thought in a million years that he’d EVER meet another person with that name and there he was, delivering mail with the exact same name! I don’t believe in coincidence, so there was more to the meeting than meets the eye. I know now I made the right decision, but I can still miss my family.

I’m thankful Steven only has to work four hours on Thanksgiving (as the previous years he worked a full day AND Black Friday). This year he works 9-4 turkey day and is off Friday giving me the hope that he’ll help Adam and I get ready for Christmas.

I’m so not ready for Christmas. It’s going to be a lot different this year and it will just get more and more different in years to come. It looks like once again my writing will be the saving grace to a more memorable holiday.

So if you’re the kind of person who is surrounded by a family during the holiday, embrace them, be joyful and celebrate the love you are fortunate enough to have surrounding you. Also remember the people that have no one and nothing, remember those who are grieving, remember those who are missing their families. It’s not all about joy, joy, joy to them. We’re grateful for every little morsel of love that is bestowed upon us. Be a light of love for others.

This doesn’t have to be a season of depression, I CAN and WILL make it a memorable season of joy. With the upcoming season of Advent, I will reflect on the true meaning of the season.

God Bless…

Job 6:10 Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One.

Quotation Saturday

"The heart knows its own bitterness and a stranger does not share its joy" ~ Proverbs 14:10

I have chosen these quotes in light of the death of a beloved man who always made everyone else smile but was really crying on the onside. I know too many suffering with depression and maybe now is the time to bring this illness to the light of day. No more hiding!

SUICIDE

“…They think of suicide as a quick route to oblivion, an escape. Far from it. It merely alters a person from one form to another. Nothing can destroy the spirit. Suicide only precipitates a darker continuation of the same conditions from which escape was sought. A condition under circumstances so much more painful.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“If men only felt about death as they do about sleep, all terrors would cease. . . Men sleep contentedly, assured that they will wake the following morning. They should feel the same about their lives.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
~ David Foster Wallace

“A lot of you cared, just not enough.”
~ Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Did you really want to die?"
"No one commits suicide because they want to die."
"Then why do they do it?"
"Because they want to stop the pain.”
~ Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star

DEPRESSION

“As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.”
~ Richard Matheson, What Dreams May Come

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”
~ Laurell K. Hamilton, Mistral's Kiss

“Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time, not moving. Depression is all about If you loved me you would.”
~ Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation

“I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”
~ Sylvia Plath

LONELINESS

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
~ Jodi Picoult, My Sister's Keeper

“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”
~ Maya Angelou

“All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.”
~ Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved.”
~ Mother Teresa

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
~ Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

JUDGMENT

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”
~ Henry Ward Beecher

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they would have judged as we judge.”
~ Galileo Galilei, Frammenti e lettere

“You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better.”
~ Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

“With a hint of good judgment, to fear nothing, not failure or suffering or even death, indicates that you value life the most. You live to the extreme; you push limits; you spend your time building legacies. Those do not die.”
~ Criss Jami, Venus in Arms

The Demons Within

Isa. 38: 18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

From RST: “Robin (Williams) was blessed with a gift to bring joy and laughter to millions of people. NO ONE THIS SIDE OF HEAVEN FULLY UNDERSTANDS THE ABOUNDING GRACE OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST! Scripture tells us not to say this one will go to heaven or this one will not. We don't have the authority. I hope he IS a brother in Christ. How about instead of passing judgment or spewing malice and hardened opinions, we who are Christ's followers lift up his family and loved ones in prayer. After all Christ IS abounding, unfathomable, never ending love. Hope, faith, and love and the greatest of these things is love. Hope to see Robin Williams in the kingdom one day! He will be missed until then.”

I read a beautiful article on suicide here.

While I’ve suffered depression and rose from the ashes, on many occasions the flames still seem to smolder never really smothered. I do have Jesus as an anchor in my life and always have but I wonder, if on the edge of suicide, will Jesus reach in and pour water on the flames surrounding you, so you don’t die? Well, we know He could, but He doesn’t impose His free will on our free will. If we consciously made the decision to kill ourselves, that is OUR CHOICE to do so, and the Lord doesn’t stop the act.

The above article really hit the nail on the head for me. Depression often feels like you’re inside a burning building and the only way out is a window that you jump through to what inevitably turns out to be your death.

You see, depression stems from a loneliness. A place where you’re surrounded by people but always feeling alone. Sometimes even a rich person, who has tons of friends, is always seemingly happy is fighting on the inside the loneliness that has enveloped him in a fiery fan of flames.

How do I explain the inner demons that we humans struggle with on a daily basis? I don’t think *I* can and I certainly don’t feel a psychiatrist can. People and doctors can try; they can provide pills to dummy you up so you don’t feel anything or give you words of encouragement, or even hand you a bible and say, “Read this, you’ll get better.”

The loneliness pit is a place where you finally take a look at YOU and you’re not happy with what you see.  I had an uncle who was a sufferer of PTSD from the remnants of the Vietnam War. He sought help and while the government gave him help it was never enough to lift him out of the pit. He had friends and even turned to them on the day he committed suicide. He went around telling them, “I’m going to jump from a bridge today, I’m done with it all.”

They all laughed and scoffed saying, “Here have a beer”, or whatever the drug of choice that was offered him, gave him no comfort, no release from the pit. They had heard it before many times, many attempts, with no success.

He went and jumped off the Francis Scott Key Bridge to his death. The problems with his prior attempts was, the bridge wasn’t high enough, so this time, he made sure it was. He had cried out and no one heard, no one took serious the seriousness of a death threat.

I imagine before Robin Williams death (pure conjecture here) when on the night before his death as his wife was leaving the house, he assured her over and over, “I’m fine, really.” Always the people pleaser, he didn’t let on to his own wife the depths of the pit he had fallen in and brushed it off in a joke and sent her on her way. He would then turn, go up the stairs and have a conversation with his loneliness, the pit of demons that let him know, “We’re here for you!”

No thought of family dwells in the pit. No external love resides there. Jesus is certainly not hanging out in the pit of your worst thoughts, you’re dangling by threads of insanity, all of which are being held by demons edging you on to a place of comfort, coddling you, caressing you, welcoming you. A place you don’t need to please anyone, a place that surrounds your mind in a blanket suffocating any thoughts except that of YOU and what YOU’VE become.

You’re not dangling in thoughts of love and family, thoughts of joy and happiness, no, you’ve taken up with the demons of comfort that are whispering all the things you want to hear; things about YOU, there’s room for no one else in the smothering pit.

When someone says they’re depressed. Whether clinically or just depressed (sad, lonely, hurt, aching) Please don’t laugh them off and hand them an answer that works for YOU, this is their battle, one you CAN’T fight for them and one you can’t lift them out of.

Don’t tell them they ‘should’ do this, or they ‘should’ do that, that is the worse thing you can say. What they need to hear is that you’re there for them. They need to know you care, and often people ‘claim’ to care and be concerned, but then they disappear thinking the person is fine. The person is in a fiery pit with their inner demons and you think they’re fine? Nice assumption!

Don’t ASSUME, be willing to listen! LISTEN, not spew should’s and should not’s, LISTEN. More than anything, while in the pit of depression, people are too eager to please OTHER people, make them laugh and smile; when all they needed was for one person to LISTEN. And no one ever has the time, to just listen.

If the many friends and family surrounding Robin Williams had LISTENED, would we be talking about his suicide? I can’t answer that, I’m only talking from my pit.

I praise the Lord every day that He stands with me in my pit, dousing the flames bit by bit, but other people don’t have the company, they are in the pit alone; alone and smothering.

If you’re ever in the pit with no one who will listen and death looks much better than facing life, please call the Suicide Hotline – 1-800-273-8255. Keep the number in a handy spot on the fridge, sometimes we never know that the person right beside us is about to make the wrong choice.

You might give up on Him, but He will NEVER give up on YOU!

God Bless You!

Contagious Disease...WARNING!

Matt. 10: 16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
***

I have read where writers have this disease that they give to other writers. It’s called the writing bug. They go around encouraging them to write, helps them along in their WIP (that’s Work In Progress for those not in the know) and sees  their friends through the tough times.

I have many writing friends in various communities. I’ve had friends die, move on in their own lives, and some who’ve walked forward without ever looking back to see where it was that they came from. I’ve also watched successful writers hang onto those who've helped them get to where it was they were going.

We’re a strong breed, us writers. When we’re slapped in the face with diversity, we rise to the challenge and slap it back with words. When we’re clobbered by more people taking out money (just because legally they can), and no one putting anything IN to your bank, when people run away from you instead of run TO you, because they are afraid that this freaky evil gnome that has you by the hair, might see them and try taking them down, also.

What they don’t realize is that the gnome has spread across the gardens of the world because people have relished their adorable idealistic seeds for centuries.  Cute little harmless evil gnomes? When have you ever known evil to be cute and harmless??? NEVER!

I’m researching Writers Who’ve Committed Suicide and I’m finding that in some instances the evil gnome has won the fight. I was taken to a Wikipedia page and it listed over 275 writers, whether literary, poets, columnists, or historians, that have committed suicide, because the sword was mightier than the pen.

Just what is it that drives a writer to do the deed? I can bet it is loneliness. They’ve cornered themselves into isolation. All their ‘so-called’ friends abandoned them at their time of pivotal need, and they lay there and slowly sliced their veins, throats; cut out their hearts with a single blade; jumped from a cliff, bridge or overpass, all just to be rid of the nothingness that they felt.

Writer’s don’t carry diseases around and disperse of them. They have a pen in their hand and way too much love in their heart. As I sit here and tears stream down my face causing the puddles to form into a pond of hurt, I find solace in my writing, my isolation, my pain, because with of this clobbering me in the face and no one to hear the sobs, I find pieces of myself strewn all about, and it is up to me to put all the pieces back together, alone.

I watch as the hypocrites use the Lord for their own gain. I watch as they lurk around corners with smiles and pleasantries trying to attack that one little lonely isolated unsuspecting lamb who chose this fork in the road instead of the other. I watch as they become something deviant and I watch as I go, down the right path, into the Lords arms. 




I'm NEVER alone as long as I have Him!

Luke 10: 3 Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.