Down The Dumps

Sometimes we can wake and don’t want the day to start just yet. We can find ourselves reflecting, searching for words, moments, sweet things, something wonderful, peaceful, special and joyful. We go back to that dimmed place in our head and the memory is  faded. But there is still some recollection of colors, sound, words, thoughts and even feelings. We can often become nostalgic, then move the thoughts to something else. All these things missed, yet left to be forgotten and a part of a forbidden past called death. We can’t be a prisoner to that. 

What if time really did stop? It can’t. So we keep living in a moment, living in a memory that’s still a buried and painful place. Hating the memories and desperately seeking new ones that replace and exceed the past and present situation. There is a venue where one can hide from the world. Hidden even from self because it just got that bad. Only in what could never be or what really mattered at that moment. Then all is dissolved—all intoxication has ceased. And you come to realize that being sober doesn’t always feel so great.

This is called down in the dumps!

But there is nothing there. Nothing left. It is called GONE! And gone could make you feel a certain way.

Gone is a strong word of what is departed, left, lost, hopeless, ruined; that has passed away; dead, weak and faint; past; absent; astray, consumed, done, dried up, elapsed, ended, finished, lacking, missing, moved, no more, out the window, over, quit, removed, split, vanished and withdrawn.

In one fell swoop—that is what God did in the rescue!

Now we are left feeling that way…often withdrawn…what is this new life? This is really different.

“Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.
THE OLD LIFE IS GONE;
A NEW LIFE HAS BEGUN!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

What do we do with this new life and new way? It is SO different. When God meant the old life GONE He meant it—that is part of the recovery. Can you deal? That’s whats real!

In a recovery journal, “New Day, New Me; Devotions of Acceptance, Courage and Surrender” by Mike Shea, he writes the following eye opener statements with such depth and realness to the recovering addict’s situation.

“He’s making us into extraordinary, new creatures—renewing us day by day. God says we’re no longer alcoholics, addicts or compulsive gamblers. We need to REMEMBER when we were SO broken, beat up and powerless, that we cried out to God to save us, and He did. He listened, responded, and sent His Spirit with a sledge hammer and crowbar to begin His demolition project, and rebuild us stone by stone. He’s making us new. There’s only one thing that has to go—EVERYTHING!
God’s Word says out of our mouths are spoken words of life or death. We barely survived to get to recovery and absolutely do not need to speak works of death over ourselves. What’s right for us to speak about ourselves? God says we are CHAMPIONS; He blesses us with HIS GRACE and declares our worthiness to be made new.”
~Page 50 of “I’m Me, Free Indeed”

This is definitely an eye opening reminder indeed. Walking through the streets like a behemoth and crying out from the depth of the soul!

Lord, I am broken.
All my bones feel it.
I am powerless.
I am severely pained within.
I have died inside now make me alive
in YOU! Save me…
For I can’t live this way anymore.

And He did. He came and rescued me. He came and rescued YOU… now everything is GONE. HE ANSWERED US! It is gone! Finished! Over! Done! Killed! Destroyed! The ‘old you’ had to be destroyed or else it would have crushed you completely…yet you cried out.

Don’t visit the past… don’t go back to the dumps…there is nothing there. It is all GONE! That is why just the thought of it brings a forcible drag back down! It is complete history! Abolished! Vanished! Sure you will notice that…you will feel that indeed. Down doesn’t get you any place. Now we live for the upward call in Christ Jesus.

“Brothers and Sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Philippians 3:13-14 (NIV)

You have to know that the huge gap that was left –is for GOD TO FILL it back…brick by brick; stone by stone; block by block. And it will be stronger. Steady in Him.

He saved me! And He saved YOU! This is our recovery—we will feel that demolished absence so that we recognize it is Him who remains forever. That immediate work had to be done. God wants to take what is gone and now give us hope, belief, ambition, confidence, faith, expectancy, promise and security in Him…nothing else could take that everlasting place.

Now pray—come fill me up Lord! Make me NEW—everyday with the POWER OF YOUR PRESENCE!

“I waited patiently for the Lord;
He turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me OUT of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
He set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.”
Psalm 40:1-3 (NIV)