Mental Health

Today I saw a counselor at my church. Recently divorced, dealing with depression, it seemed a good move. I've seen several counselors in the past and you get the same general type of thing. Talk about the past, analyse it, see how it affects the now, modify reactions.

This was really different in a way I almost can't explain. First, there was a lot of scripture reading. It almost made me feel I was back in 5th grade Christian School doing sword drills (find a Bible passage first). =-) The counselor talked about the passages we were reading (started with Romans 7, don't remember after that except they were all Pauline epistles). He discussed how we can really observe ourselves - kindof like a meta analysis of ourselves. We can see ourselves doing good and doing bad - even doing the bad even though we don't want to. Kind of like trying to get off caffine yet pulling over to the Quickie Mart for coffee - even though you don't want it.

So, we do bad we don't want to do and we can do good that God wants us to do. Then there was some stuff about how we do the good - salvation and freedom. The thing that sticks with me is the counselors assertion that the way toward freedom is crucifying of the bad self. Not a revelation but he specifically linked it to the stresses of life like the depression, anxiety.

There's so much he said. I really need to mull it over. Writing here helps. Isn't it weird that just doing a diary only I can see seems fruitless but to bare myself on the internet makes my musings more important?