Well today…or the power of praying

Well today has been a seriously “interesting” day, and not in a good way.  This is an old-fashioned term, but I’ve definitely been in some crazy funk all day – please don’t misread that word!  And the thing is that I’m usually really, really good at regulating my emotions, or at least identifying why I’m feeling a certain way – but not today!  You know, once again, here I am conceding that I have not written on this blog for a while!  So I actually had a couple of really interesting ideas that I will hopefully get around to writing on soon.  And I was really excited and hoping to be able to write on at least one of them today. But then this dark mood descended.  And it would probably have been fine, and I would have been able to shake it off as if it had never happened, but unfortunately it coincided with physical pain and physical tiredness. Long story short, I’ve been feeling a weird mixture of grumpy and depressed, for absolutely no reason whatsoever! In fact, in some ways, today should have been quite a happy and positive day!  There is absolutely no reason in the world for me to be feeling less than positive.

Is this something that any readers can identify with?  When you find yourself in a strange mood for no apparent reason at all?  I say “no apparent reason”  however the weird mood is probably 80% down to physical tiredness –  for me “tired” and “grumpy” are synonyms! (Huggie-Wuggie you have been warned!) And the physical pain kept me alert even while I was trying to get rest, meaning that I remained tired and this was apparently a fantastic breeding ground for all kinds of negativity in my mind.

But what I want to talk about here is the power of prayer regarding negative moods like this one.
On one hand, I really want to be careful. I don’t want to make it seem as if I am in any way taking advantage of anyone’s possible emotional vulnerability out there to push my faith. Please know that I sincerely would not do that.  However in all candour there is a special kind of peace that comes with praying.

Let me please explain to you what I mean by praying. I definitely do not mean that kind of “religious” prayer that they do in church, although I am talking about praying to God. Do you know what I mean?  That kind of prayer that sounds almost like chanting and is all about repeating set phrases, and memorising specific things, sometimes to music – that is definitely not what I mean by praying, at least not in private. When I say “praying”, I mean literally just talking to God, and saying my feelings out loud to Him. Now to be fair, I did do this all day – I spoke to God, I tried to be candid with Him, and yet the funk persisted. It was when I finally pulled out my long neglected Bible, and decided to read a few Psalms, that a kind of peace finally descended.  However that is not normal. What is normal is that I would praise God in singing, and then I would pour out my heart, and just try to be as honest as I possibly can before God about how I am feeling, and why I am feeling this way. And then usually peace and a positive outlook would descend quite quickly.  So where I may have been feeling upset beforehand, I would usually have a positive new perspective to use to look at the same issue, and I can move forward in optimism.

So if you as a reader have been struggling with negativity, or inexplicably feeling down, and you’ve tried other things, then might this be something you could try?  Yes, I’m a Christian, I would say this, but please believe me that I would not recommend this if it did not really work, and consistently too.  You know, there are certain promises made to us in the Bible that I am yet to experience, that I am working hard to experience, such as the power of God to perform supernatural miracles – and yes, I sincerely believe that God can and will do that!  But I cannot yet explain to you how to see that because I myself am yet to experience it.  But the power of God to overcome negativity and feeling down in my mind is something that personally I have sincerely experienced, so many countless times, which is why I can wholeheartedly recommend it to you. If negativity is something that you are struggling with, and you’ve tried other solutions, which have not really worked, why not give it a try?  After all, it is not like you have anything to lose, is it?  And you know, I’ll never know, unless you choose to tell me!!! 🙂  And on that note, I am going to go to bed, and hopefully everything will have lifted in the morning!  🙂

Actually, no, wait, something else I realised is how blessed I am to genuinely be able to live life from a resoundingly positive outlook.  Feeling negative like this is so abnormal for me! (Even though yes, I mentally criticise people all the time –  God and I are working together to help me to cultivate gracious thoughts towards everybody!) But to feel negative like this in and of myself, and for it to last all day – that is practically unheard of in my life.  For that I am extremely grateful, because I’m guessing that that is not necessarily the case for everyone, or even most people.