Mental Health/Emotions

When You are in a Dark Place

One evening recently a dear friend and I sat talking about the fact that though she was praying and seeking God for clear direction, she seemed to receive no answer and couldn’t “see” the way she was supposed to go. As I listened to her, it became clear to me (isn’t it always easier to see/hear God’s direction for someone else than for ourselves?) that God had her exactly where she was for a specific purpose. She was unable to see where God wanted her to go next because He had called her to hide (and rejoice!) for a season under the shadow of His wings.

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Wilderness Living

On God’s Green Earth I must confess
I much prefer the wilderness.
Cities, structured, hustling-bustling,
Dampen deep devotional rustlings.

Resound of pebble striking stream
Would disappear in cities’ screams,
Subtly shifting shadows cast
Escape the urban blare and blast.

Then there are those, though corporate bound,
Crammed and jammed in crowded aisles,
Who yet are tuned to sweeter sound
That sifts through stunted, stifling styles.

Attention theirs is caught and held,
Tendered to a higher power,
Municipalities do their best
But fail all folk in final hour.

So whether jet or Walden Pond,
When you’re immersed in worried ways,
Poseidon call bids you respond,
Kneeling, join the tide that prays.

Waters soon will lap your feet

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Hope


Slippery hope
Snaking horizon
Passionately pursued
Difficult to hold.

If caught…what joy!
New vision! New life!
Vitality bursts
Quenches all thirsts.

But still, in feast,
A niggling doubt,
Will wriggling hope
Abruptly leave?

Hearts afire
Often doused
When death and loss
Their loved ones cleave.

Hope cocooned
Kept for this time
Released by incisions
Fate’s cuts unkind.

It splits the horizon
That dams Life from death
Floods desert eyes
With visions of bliss.

No longer slippery
Or threatened by loss
This Hope is alive
Though death exhaust.

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Envy (Self-Esteem & Shame)

It simmers in angst ‘gainst any who steal
Attention, verve, ovation, praise,
It hungers to feel crescendoing zeal
And when deprived its hackles raise.

Unable to rest with unsettled scores,
Hapless, clapless, deeply annoyed,
Allies appear in gossip, half-truths
Searching the world for foes to destroy.

Reputations, torpedoed, fall
Amidst a din of warring words,
Slithering Envy, sated, slips
Unnoticed down a silent hall.

Its handiwork is plain to see,
How many Picassos, afraid to paint,
Bullied, shiver in shadows, reeds,
Bruised and battered, brushes castrate.

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Managing Your Persistant Fears, Depression and Everyday Anxieties

Everybody deals with anxiety and depression, however some people have a hard time in managing it. As a result, here is a brief list of techniques that a person can use to help manage their most persistent fears and every day anxieties.

When facing a current or upcoming task that overwhelms you with a lot of anxiety, the first thing you can do is to divide the task into a series of smaller steps. Completing these smaller tasks one at a time will make the stress more manageable and increases your chances of success.

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Fear: Flee, Freeze, Float or Flow

“THE CIRCUS WAGON”

One of my first memories was eating from a tin Barnum Animals Crackers box, painted to resemble a cheerfully colored circus wagon. But that wagon was also a cage. The animals pictured on the outside of the box were majestic, wild, and untamed beasts. They were also behind bars. The cookies inside the box were shaped into believable copies of jungle animals. These were not comic Disney animals with smiling faces and human characteristics. These beasts were the real things. I remember a rhino, a lion, an elephant and a hippo, and they all looked the way wild animals should look. They were just like the animals I had seen at the Bronx Zoo.

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