Oddly enough, one major factor in depression is the frustration (a.k.a. anger) found in the struggle to find happiness and, when we do experience it, we discover that it never lasts long enough to put a dent in a deeper sense of lack. Happiness is a temporary emotion, anyway. Joy is what a person needs to always have a general buoyancy throughout life. Have you ever tried to fool others by acting happy? That requires a lot of mental energy and can become a contributor in feeling lethargic.
“Never “Fake it ‘til you make it” because you’ll never make it if you fake it. ”
The stress we have placed upon ourselves in the pursuit of happiness can become a burden all its own. Just like how an addiction becomes a new problem in our lives, we have discovered that depression arose from the very struggle we undertook to find happiness and inner peace in the first place!
Image by Peggy and Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay
A depressed soul says, “I should be happy. Why am I not happy?” We know, deep down, we should be happy. Not a “bouncing off the walls” sort of thing, but in a general sense of copacetic calmness within oneself - an “at home in your own skin” state of being. We want it and we know that, somehow, it is possible - even if it requires a miracle. God has long been in the miracle business.
I had a profound breakthrough when Holy Spirit alerted me to the general psyche of most people. I paid attention to the way people just had a way about them that communicated that they really just felt okay with the way things were. I was not. Very much not … and that was the crux of my then-current dilemma.
If others can be okay with things, why can’t I?
I deeply considered what Holy Spirit revealed to me and decided that I would no longer be satisfied with that old level of consciousness. I was seeing what was possible. It was a “coming out of the box” kind of moment for me ... like when I saw a Lamborghini Countach for the first time in my life, I fully realized the candy apple red 1968 Ford Mustang with racing stripes was not the most bad ass car on the average road. It was that sort of an awakening.
Photograph by SCOTT597 on Flickr
A symptom in the lives of many people with depression is being a “People Pleaser.” If you’re always trying to make everyone else happy, how will you ever be able to focus on your own happiness? Why should we try so hard to “make” others happy at the expense of our happiness?
It may be rewarding to boost another person’s attitude for a little while, but we must have proper boundaries. You can’t make anybody happy just as you cannot make anybody fall in love with you. You might influence a person with jokes, attention, kindness, and gifts, but the decision and response must be all their own, for there is no coercion in love.
“We are responsible for our own happiness. ”
What have you done in your search for happiness? Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll? Obsession over money and prestige? Shopaholism/Retail Therapy? Pornography, swinging, or prostitution? How about overeating and binge drinking? We inevitably grew frustrated with life the more we indulged and the more we realized our personal inability to control even our own sense of peace, joy, and happiness as we sought to stuff our God-shaped hole with “stuff."
“8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Consider this: if God made you a hammer, so to speak, and you have a deep sense and desire to bang on things, your self-conception of being a screwdriver is going to fail you miserably. Imagine what a hard life the screwdriver would have! If you have been “bent out of shape,” getting back into shape might be as simple as discovering your life’s purpose.
Drawing courtesy of ChristLutheranLancaster
The key to happiness is doing what God designed you to do. Isolating is a deeply negative lifestyle choice as human beings are social beings. Since this is so, make a list of people who have harmed you and systematically deal with the feelings that accompany each person and situation, handing them over to Jesus so He can deal with them while He heals you.
When we realize we have been created for a purpose and life overall has profound meaning, we will inherently live our lives focused on pleasing God and not just ourselves. Selfishness wanes as our personal relationship with God grows. The more we come to the profound knowledge of Father God as our Blessed Creator, Jesus Christ as our divine Redeemer, and Holy Spirit as our Counselor, Advocate, and Comforter, the more we divorce ourselves from stubborn preservation of the old, dead self. We will less and less seek to gratify the sinful desires, but seek to please God in all we do … and we will finally allow the old self to die so the new man/woman can arise!
Please check out this website so you can learn more about your spiritual gifts: https://spiritualgiftstest.com/spiritual-gifts-test-adult-version/
“13 May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
This is what eventually happens to ALL people when they are the captain of their ship, but hallelujah that we have a friend in Jesus who will set us free and bring us to new life!
Prayer
Father God, I thank You for Your goodness and grace. I thank You for reaching me in my down times as well as my good times. You are so faithful to me! I have been searching for happiness in many ways and some, as You well know, have not been good. I bring these before You today (name them) and ask that You would forgive me for engaging in sinful activities hoping to receive only what You can give me — true, lasting joy. Help me to be the best person You made me to be and I choose, right now, to repent of, renounce, and reject my old life because it brings me no good benefit, but causes me hardship the longer I hold on. I release my old life to You, Lord! I ask that You would purify my heart from these sins and refine me in the Refiner’s Fire. In Jesus’ name, amen!
Banner photo by Michael Dam on Unsplash