In the beginning, believe it or not, we knew depression, in its early stages, as anxiety/fear and anger/hatred. We mis-used those emotions because in our situations, they often made us feel like a powerful individual — even alive! It can be fun to experience chaos (life without peace) for awhile, even exhilarating, but at some point, we need to have a place in our lives that we call home. It’s great to go on trips and vacations, but it’s also great to come home for some peace and quiet. Roller coasters are great, but nobody wants to live on one.
Over the years, these feelings grew (follow me, please) from a precocious baby dragon into a full-grown, flying fire breather. There are two schools of thought: nip the problem in the bud when we’re both young OR wait and see how things transpire. If things ever got out of control, we would simply take charge of the problem and simply put it to rest. The only problem is the fire-breathers don’t go away quietly; they must be forcibly eliminated.
“Depression arises from an addiction to chaos. ”
Too much inner chaos and the world seems a turbulent place. Too much turbulence and we start feeling like we’re out of control. Living with chaos can be entertaining at times, but when we stop placing limits on how much chaos we can have (where the fire goes), our entire lives catch fire. The problem with depression is this: we played with fire and got burnt.
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In our desperation to gain freedom from the crushing pain and anguish of, I’ll call it “the dragon” (isolation and depression), we sought some unhealthy modes of pain relief. We sought ways to curtail our runaway emotions like how we would joke about how we dealt with things and we would tell people it was ‘no big deal’. We thought that the fact that there were millions of others who also suffered from depression that we were somehow validated and it made us to feel accepted and even wanted or at worst, pitied — yet we were being given attention. Positive attention (acceptance) is what everybody wants and needs on some level. That’s why there’s so much compromise to receive it and why it’s so consuming a desire to play with the anxiety fire.
However, the scaly underbelly of depression is this: it cost us a little piece of our heart each and every time we had to compromise. More so, we somehow justified and concluded that even though we compromised, we felt it was somehow a suitable risk, yet a critical discovery, and a step forward in our search for that elusive inner peace so many people talk about — all the while pushing away the very peace we were in search of!
Satan tempts us with a promise that only he can provide satisfaction for our deepest, most primal desires — even peace with God and with ourselves.
In our search for it, we compromised our thought life and spiritual perspectives to remain at a false peace within a faulty framework of friendship-seeking and peacekeeping that was based on the thoughts, needs, and actions of others. We determined we were somehow going to find a way out of this mess before our lives hit critical mass, though that’s exactly the end game of this Merry-Go-Round lifestyle. Once on the ride, we discovered that whomever is in charge does not want us to ever get off. The devil set the trap, we stepped into it, and we got stuck, plain and simple. The cheese looks tasty. The mouse rejoices for a split second right before the trap snaps. Very clean, very smooth, very evil.
The bottom line is this: we make choices, we have a conscience, and sometimes we just want what we want. We have to take ownership of our thought life and ask God to help us eliminate the thoughts and motivations that kept us mesmerized with the battle.
Prayer
Father God, You know my every motivation and desire. You have nothing but great things planned for me and I choose today to let You express Yourself in me and expose the things that caused me to remain stuck in addiction to chaos and stress. I confess I found joy and even comfort in chaos and it led me to compromise and confusion as to who I really am. I want out of this trap, my Lord and I am very sorry I fell for the devil’s schemes.
Please help me see the things I need to address in my life and guide me into Your perfect will. In Jesus’ name I break the power of addiction to chaos and stress over my life and I declare today is a new day for me and my family. I declare freedom for the captives and since I had been captive to the devil, I choose to break free from the patterns of self-defeating thinking and behaviors. Reveal them all to me, Lord, and I covenant with You now to accept Your plan for my breakthrough and continued freedom. I demand a seven-fold return of everything the devil stole from me during my time in addiction to stress and chaos and I know that, as a child of Yours, Father God, I am rightfully asking for what is mine according to the sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus. In Jesus’ holy name I pray, amen.