This is from a letter I sent to a person who felt overwhelmed by feelings of despair. She e-mailed me from our Church Web Site. I thought others might find it useful. - Dave

I’m so sorry to hear of all the mental anguish you have been facing. I am going to offer some words of advice which I pray you will consider. God loves you, and my prayers are with you. One danger you might be facing is thinking that God does not love you as much as others - that somehow you are not as "worthy" of God’s attention. I hope you realize God loves you as much as any other Christian. There are no second-class Christians. If God has delivered others, he can deliver you.

Many times we place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, or parents or other authority figures have placed them on us over the years. It causes us to make unrealistic goals for ourselves and have unrealistic expectations for others. The result is that we often feel like a failure and we feel
that others have disappointed us and let us down. You may be a perfectionist, and you may want to be in control of your circumstances and the circumstances of others. You may have trained yourself for a lifetime to have this unrealistic outlook. It will take time to re-train these thinking patterns. When we are trying to control things, we are not allowing God to control things. We need to slowly let go of what we have considered to be our responsibilities. And we must let go of the
baggage from the past - other’s images of us, guilt over sin, feelings of failure based on some awful things we’ve done.

Much of your day may be based on how you "feel." When the feelings of darkness, despair, and hopelessness come, you don’t "feel" like praying, trusting God, attending church. In fact you may even get angry with God for not removing these bad feelings. Part of your climb out of the abyss of despair requires you to base your actions and your responses on faith, not feelings. This means that no matter how you feel, you will pray, you will sing, you will attend church, you will smile, you will be pleasant to others. The reason you can do these things is that you have faith that God is delivering you. Faith is not a feeling which comes and goes. Faith is a commitment that we make to God - we commit to trust God no matter what our circumstances tell us, no matter what our feelings tell us. You will find that if you begin ignoring your feelings and stop basing your actions on your feelings, you will slowly see a change. It will take a while to re-program your thinking processes. But with God’s help it can be done.

It all begins with a commitment to faith, and a determination to not allow your feelings to rule your behavior. You can never allow your feelings to hinder your commitment. You can never stop the journey because the despair and agony is too great. No matter how you feel, you will continue by faith. It will happen because God will give you strength to overcome. It may take times of walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but God will be with you each step of the way. God will help you through this difficult journey.