Friday, November 30, 2012

ASKING FOR HELP WITHOUT ASKING

And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Counselor, to be with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him or knows him . . . (John 14:16-17).

I was looking around in my library, trying to break writer's block, when I stumbled on this quotation from Dr. William Glasser's book, "Control Theory".  I thought it worth repeating.  Notice that Glasser uses "depressing" rather than depression.  We think that depression is a illness that happens to us, and in a few cases, it is.  However, Glasser's use of "depressing" is an attempt to communicate that, for the vast majority of cases, depression is something we do.

Depressing, painful as it is, is the most powerful way that human beings have found to ask for help without begging.  Many of us have become so skilled at the "art" of depressing that we are able to depress just enough to get help without asking--to choose to depress more would be to suffer needlessly.
  
Depressing, therefore, allows us to plead for help and at the same time maintain our self-esteem by denying that we need it.

Often, the help we need and the help we want are two different things.  Our heavenly Father has supplied us with a counselor who will walk with us and strengthen us to face the challenges of this life.  He wants you to ask. 

Our Father's Blessings,
Tom

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