I have never really experienced depression and for that I am especially grateful. But when I was a teenager and had begun my high school years, I wondered just a little. I had to wake up before everyone else in my house and for some reason, this was just an awful thing for me. I don't know, maybe it was because my mother had always been the first one up and it was a type of security for me. Anyway, this began a pattern of life for me. When I would wake up I would be so depressed, so unhappy, and crabby, that I truly began to think that I was suffering from depression. The goofy thing, however, was that within about an hour, as I woke up more, the depression and crabbiness would pass and I would be my normal self. This never happened on the weekends, and as I got used to being the first one up, it was better, too.
As I entered college, work years, and then marriage, I really only had a problem when I had to get up early. If I slept until 7:00 a.m. or later, I wouldn't experience any problems, but earlier than that, I would again be depressed and crabby. Having babies and small children also played some havoc with my mood because of their erratic wake times. My poor husband quickly learned to stay silent in the morning until I was fully awake.
Considering my life in its totality, this played such a small part. Yet, increasingly, the depression became an every day affair. It no longer mattered what time I woke up, I was just miserable. It didn't matter if it was the weekend, I was crabby. And as a Christian this made me angry with myself. My life was good and I had absolutely nothing to be depressed about. So I began to pray that God would help me to be grateful and to end the depression and crabbiness.
I had heard from many others that upon waking it was good to pray before doing anything else. In this way, I could practice being grateful as well as take that depression to God and to deal with it. Still, the unhappiness remained. It still didn't last long, but it was plain irritating and prayer didn't seem to be helping.
I came out of Catholicism while I was in college. Most of the prayers that I knew from my youth were rote prayers, although I had always talked to God as a friend from my earliest days.After giving my life to Christ I was saved. In the first church that I found myself rote prayers were used, but there was some feeling that spontaneous prayer was better outside of the worship service. In the later churches that I was in, there really were no rote prayers at all. As I became Messianic I was introduced to the Jewish Siddur, their prayer book. It is filled with prayers that are recited. While there is room for personal additional prayer, the prayer used in worship is rote. I fell in love with many of them and I especially appreciated the Jewish focus on prayer that continues throughout the day. I began to use some rote prayer just as soon as I woke up in the morning. I memorized about four different prayers that I found meaningful. The first expressed my gratitude to God for giving me another day to live.
Oddly, enough, although I still wake in a bad mood, I pray and it's over. Perhaps, my spontaneous prayer was too often mixed with whining or it took too much effort to come up with truly grateful words. I don't know. But I have found that the prayer flows from my mouth and affects my thinking in ways that I had not expected. I will, of course, continue to pray spontaneously, but thank you, God for helping me to find a way for me to truly feel grateful in the morning!
No comments:
Post a Comment