This week...

This has been a hard week...Not a day has went by where I haven't found myself in a difficult internal struggle...

One of the hardest in a long time.  The attacks have been incredible.  The onslaught absolutely non-stop, but through the Lord's strength I have stood firm...

There have been several moments in the past week where I have begun to see things with different eyes...

For example, Tuesday I felt pretty good and felt like I was dealing with everything pretty well.  I went to bed that night (as usually, had horrible dreams again since all this started) and when I woke up the next morning the darkness was heavy.  It was about 6:30 in the morning and I was brushing my teeth.  I was in the bathroom by myself and all the sudden "thoughts" started coming to me...

"You don't really want to live anymore." "You can't keep doing this."  "No one will miss you anyway."  "You need to finish what you have wanted to do so many other times."  "It will be better for everyone if you aren't alive."  "No one wants you anyway."  "You aren't worth anything."  "Just go sit in your car, turn the engine on, and go to sleep."  "Take alot of pills, that will be another easy way."  "Just get it done, fast and quick." and so on...

I brushed my teeth and listened to the all to familiar talk inside my head...

I'm tired...I'm exhausted...I'm confused...I'm hurting...I'm angry...

Staring in the mirror and listening...

Not only was I listening I began to think to myself..."Right, I don't really want to live.  I can't keep doing this...no one really loves me...I'm a piece of shit...I'm worthless...If I kill myself it will be better......."

All this "talk" takes less than a minute...and then all the sudden I think...where is this coming from...Yesterday, I didn't feel like killing myself and today I'm ready to jump off a bridge...

And then, I thought some more...Actually, I really don't agree with anything that was just "said"...But I am so used to believing those things that it just came naturally...and the hurt parts of my heart do feel worthless, so it is easy for them to make conclusions like that...

But anyway, this incident and many similar ones this week have really made me pause...and reflect...

Tonight, I was driving and a verse came to mind...a familiar verse...

"But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”

and earlier in the week I was reflecting on this passage in Numbers 13...

They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community at Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. There they reported to them and to the whole assembly and showed them the fruit of the land. They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. We even saw descendants of Anak there. The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.” Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.” But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”