Category: You and God

Just Published – 10 Ways to Recharge Your Spirit and Experience Peace

~ Colleen Scheid ~ Leave a comment

More than anything else, I want people to experience God’s love.

For years I lived in a mist of mild despair, perceiving God as a distant, detached figure, assuming whoever made the world had little interest in me. This lifted slowly as I began to give God the time of day; rousing myself to the task of discovering what, if anything, was true.

It’s hard to search for truth. It’s easier to let a question mark hang over life and just float along with the culture; driven by the need to make money, or the longing to have fun, the lure of success, or other people’s expectations. Once you find out what’s true you have to live by it, and who knows what that might cost?

I rewrote some blog posts into a booklet to kind of break down the epic search for spiritual truth into manageable chunks. Anyone on this search, or anyone who already believes in God but wants to be closer and more at peace, should find it helpful. I really hope so.

“Ten Ways to Recharge Your Spirit – Simple Ways to Draw Closer to God”, is available in paperback or electronically from Amazon.

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Ten Ways Small Groups Can Save You

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 9 Comments

Churches are always trying to get people to join groups of eight to twelve people who meet regularly.

They call them ‘small groups’ or ‘growth groups’ or ‘house groups’. One church called them ‘lambs groups’, which I get the biblical symbolism of, but I can’t imagine guys who ride motorcycles or pump iron joining a ‘lambs group’. I would steer away from that one.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Church leaders know that if people just show up to services, or even volunteer, but don’t belong to a smaller friend group, they may not stick with their faith. These groups meet a number of needs – people get to know each other and develop friendships. They learn more about the Bible. They learn how to pray for each other, then seeing the prayers get answered draws them closer to God. They live out what they believe in good, supportive company.

Anyone who really believes in Jesus is swimming upstream in American culture. That’s just how it is, especially if you’re younger. Little in mainstream mass media, art or academia supports the truth of the Christian faith. No major network or streaming platform is putting money into stories told from a Christian world view. Even saying we believe anything is absolutely true makes us suspect – puts us in company with unhinged preachers and terrorists and people who preserve tons of peaches in preparation for the apocalypse.

So, if we’re going to stick it out as followers of Christ, we need authentic community. We need to be family for each other, minus the weird dynamics. On the path where Jesus is leading us, we need fellow travelers to urge us on, tell us good stories, share their trail mix, and pull us away from cliff edges.

Even when you’ve come to a careful, studied conclusion about what you believe, it’s hard to hang onto it unless the people around you believe it too. My small group, just by gathering together in Jesus’ name, reminds me of the reality that God is really with us. We share what we’re learning, how we’re changing, how prayers are being answered, and I leave bouyant. This is not how I would feel if I stayed home and watched “Fresh Fried and Crispy”.

I’ve had the honor of being in one of these groups for 28 years. I’m writing a series of ten posts on how it’s changed the course of my life, and what we do to help one another. I’ll also talk about some of our terrible mistakes, so you can avoid those. I’m hoping something I write will urge you towards joining or starting your own. Just don’t call it a lamb’s group.

Question for the Comments: Do you meet regularly with a group of people you really trust? If not, does that seem attractive, or not so much?

The Darkness of Depression Will Lift – Promise

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 5 Comments

What I find most heartbreaking about the high rate of suicide among young people, is that I know, if they could have waited, they would have come through the dark time and been glad to be alive.

The first time depression hits, and it gets hold to the point where life isn’t worth living, you think the rest of your life will feel like that. But you swing out. Most of us don’t just suddenly wake up feeling awesome – it’s a slower swing, but soon you look back, and think, “Wow. I was in a really bad place. Glad that’s over.”

So if you’re in the middle of it, please hang on! Even without doing any of what my previous posts suggest, we were made to move on from sorrow and failure and heartbreak and despair, to adapt and grow and thrive. You will too.

The Tools You Need to Fight Depression

Taking care of ourselves chases depression away, just like it does for other illnesses. When we get to a more solid place, that’s when we need to make the self-care stuff habitual. There are things we can make part of our lives that will keep us out of the deep hole of depression. Here’s my top ten, linked to the posts that explore the topics:

  1. Say kind things to yourself: If you catch yourself thinking self-critical thoughts, change them to positive ones and say them out loud.
  2. Bring your thoughts back to the present moment when you realize they’ve gone to weird or yucky places. Remind yourself that you only have to do one thing at a time and you don’t need to worry about what’s next.
  3. Don’t isolate. Make people part of your life even when it’s hard and get help when you need it.
  4. Deal with past trauma; not just big stuff, but little things that you don’t want to remember. Once you process it with another person, it loses its power to haunt you.
  5. Beware of avoiding things that make you anxious. Avoiding stuff that should be faced makes you more depressed.
  6. Eat food that helps your body function and drink eight glasses of water each day.
  7. Live in tune with the rhythms of the natural world, pausing to rest between segments of the day.
  8. Make your living spaces functional and beautiful, into places you want to live and work.
  9. Examine your world view. Ask yourself if it is consistent with reality and helps you to live through and beyond depression. If you don’t already, consider following Jesus Christ.
  10. Examine where your time on screens is going, and whether it’s helping or hurting you.

Depression isn’t something we have to put up with. There are so many steps we can take that will lead us out to a better place.

Homework: Journal what choices you’re making that help you feel good, and which ones lead to you feeling bad. Analyze one of the bad choices, and note what kind of help you need to change it. Then go get that help.

Anything helpful to add? Click on the top title, then comment below.

Happiness Needs to be Fed and Watered

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 2 Comments

(Sixth in a series on fighting depression. Click here for the first post.)

So far in this series on fighting depression, we’ve covered:

  • The need to affirm yourself, to speak kindly to yourself.
  • The habit of staying in the moment, using your senses to focus on now.
  • The need to process and heal past trauma.
  • Choosing connection instead of isolation.
  • Addressing anxiety by working against avoidance, since that feeds depression.

Foods that Help Depression

While we’re on the topic of what feeds depression, let’s talk about actual food. This is my least favorite of these posts, since I’m super fond of desserts, breads, sweets and chocolate in any form. I don’t want to face that what I put in my mouth can bring down my mood, but it does.

Ironically, when we’re down, that’s when we have least energy to prepare good food. We tend to grab what’s easy and gives us a little comfort.So here’s the dare: journal what you eat and drink for three days. Face up to it (no avoiding, right?) Note what you eat, and also write how you feel in the hours after until you eat again.

Nutrition blogs abound, so I won’t go over how to eat, but here are some tips I’ve made into habits that help give my body and brain what it needs to function and have a fighting chance at happiness:

Food Habits that Fight and Heal Depression

  1. Don’t skip breakfast. Include something with protein like eggs, meats, nuts or seeds, so your energy doesn’t dip mid-morning. That helps focus and get me into the day’s work. (And we generally feel better after we’ve gotten some work done.)
  2. Don’t pig out on lunch, or skip it. Both options are bound to lead to a long afternoon nap, at least for me. Work some fruit or vegetables into your meal. If you can’t do without the fries that go with a burger, add a small salad and eat it first. Put some lettuce and a tomato slice on a ham or turkey sandwich. Finish with a few strawberrries. You get the idea.
  3. Make yourself a decent dinner. Frozen meals heated in a microwave every day are a sure recipe for depression in my book. If you’re a meat eater, focus on fish and chicken instead of beef and pork. Fill half your plate with veggies.
  4. Buy stuff that’s easy to prep, especially snacks. If I have a choice between a salad with five ingeredients that all need preparing, and a nice little peel-top container of pudding, guess what I’ll go with! It helps me to buy individual yogurts, protein bars with natural ingredients, and nuts that go in little bags or an easy cannister. Baby carrots and celery sticks can be pre-washed and stored in jars, and most fruits can be washed and ready to eat.

Dehydration is Such a Downer

I think the single biggest difference I can make to my mood and energy levels is to drink enough water. Buy yourself a boujee water bottle, and make it your best friend. (Wash it well every night, you don’t want a stomach ache from bacteria in your water on top of depression!)

Changing how you eat and drink can’t all happen at once. If you don’t get close to eight glasses of water a day, start with that. Get used to one extra before you add a second, and so on. And remember the first post, speak kindly to yourself. “I’ll feel better if I go drink some water now,” is much more effective, and feels a lot better, than, “I’m such a moron. I can’t even remember to drink water.”

Homework

Pick one food or water habit to start working on. If you don’t get close to eight cups of water a day, start with that. Start small and add a cup every day or two. If you get down or stressed and forget all about it, start again.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below, after you click on the title.

You Can’t Let Go of What You Don’t Remember

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 8 Comments

(Fourth in a Series on Overcoming Depression. For the third post, press here.)

When I read or hear instructions to ‘let go of the past’, I get irritated. As if the past is like some heavy bag of groceries that you can just set on the table. Like you’re making some sort of conscious choice to carry it around to make yourself miserable.

This post is fourth in a series on depression, and gives some suggestions for how to deal with the past in healthy ways.

There’s a whole lot to unpack in that phrase, ‘Let go of the past.” There are some reasons why we don’t want to be in too much hurry to dismiss the past as irrelevant to now.

The Problem with Memory Gaps

Here’s the thing – our brains are wired for meaning and for wholeness. When bad things happen to us, we might forget them as a way to cope, but part of us will keep looking for the missing piece till we find it. Our mind needs to discover what happened in any memory gaps, to make sense of our own story. In that sense, we can’t let go of our pasts till we’ve got a finished picture.

A good current example of this takes place in the Neflix limited series, Maid.All through earlier episodes, we see the lead character, Alex, having a cold and fearful reaction to one of the other characters, who seems to be a fairly nice person. Not until a cleaning job in a creepy house triggers a very early suppressed memory do we find out what happened to plant that fear in Alex’s mind. Once she remembers, she has energy for a confrontation that brings her more peace. She’s released from having the emotions of a terrified victim without knowing why.

Getting to the Truth

Another reason we need to take a second look at our pasts through adult eyes is because bad experiences can warp our thinking. There’s no way out of that but coming to understand how we’ve been damaged, what lies we believe from those experiences, and what truth we want to replace the lies with. (See what I wrote in the first post about how we talk to ourselves.)

For instance, when a parent leaves a child, the child tends to blame himself for that. A child might think, “Dad left because I wasn’t nice enough.” He makes a vow to become the nicest person in the world. He may not even be conscious of the vow, but it becomes like a vice, holding him to niceness even when it keeps him from defending himself.

That’s a hard way to live. Not until the adult realizes how his compulsive niceness was shaped will he see that it’s been a trap based on a lie. At that point, he’s free to change his belief to something true, like, “I’m nice, but I can also be tough when I need to be.”

Making Choices That Heal

Another other benefit of looking back at the past and reprocessing it is that you can choose some new experiences for yourself that will help you heal and grow stronger. Take the super nice person above – maybe he’ll decide to enroll in a martial arts class to rewire his brain to be able to fight when he needs to.

Maybe he’ll decide that he’s got a friend who’s taking advantage of his kindness, and he’ll work with his therapist to set some new boundaries. Maybe he’ll start praying for wisdom to know when his compulsive niceness is serving him more than anyone else. Once we’re clear on what the problem is, we can address it.

It’s not self indulgent to take some time to look back and see how we may still be reacting to past trauma that we’re not fully aware of. It’s only after we’ve done that that we’re truly free to let go of our pasts and be ready for what’s next.

Stay in the Present – it’s Less Depressing

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 5 Comments

(Second in a series on taking steps that lead away from depression. For the first post, press here.)

Living in the present is the only thing that really works.

I’m particularly bad at it. But sometimes the people who struggle with something are the best teachers; they’ve had to figure it out the hard way and can make it easier for you.

Here’s what I mean by living in the present: You focus your eyes, ears, smell, taste and touch on the present moment. This causes your thinking to recede or disappear, giving you a mental break. It shuts out regrets about the past and worry about the future.

So often, we try to think ourselves out of our negative thinking, but that can lead us in mental circles. Try switching to right now. For example, thoughts about tomorrow creep into my head, and with them, a slight anxiety. Will it snow and cancel a program I’m in charge of? How’s my mother in the nursing home – did they find her missing blanket? Is there anything I should be doing right now that I’ve forgotten? You know the drill.

The thing is, I’ve already scheduled the day, and addressed those issues within it. So there’s no point thinking about them again. It’s a waste of energy. I can’t do what I’m doing now and do anything about those thoughts. Instead, I can take some deep breaths, look around and focus on what I see, listen and pay attention to what I hear.

Just stop thinking and be alive right here and now. After that moment of mental reboot, it’s easier to focus on the task at hand with a clear head.

But, you say, what if my life right now completely sucks? When we’re thinking that, we’re remembering the past and anticipating the future. If we’re in pain right now, then let’s focus on how to manage that pain right now. Don’t pile on top of it with the past or the future also sucking. I hope that makes sense. I don’t want any of us to suffer more than we have to.

This all sounds elementary, but many of us can’t control our thoughts. Our thoughts utterly control us and we feel helpless against them. But we’re not. We’re the boss of our thoughts. We can stop them, correct them, redirect them.

If we absolutely cannot do this, that’s when we know we need to get some help. Some of us have anxiety, depression, rage, obsession, compulsion or delusions that we really can’t control. If that’s the case, this is the best time in history to find the mental health professionals and medications we need to regain the power of choice. There’s no shame in this. It’s just like going to the doctor for the flu, or an asthma flare-up. More on that in another post.

Back to right now. Now is all we have, right? It’s the only time in which we have freedom to make choices and do stuff. Revisiting past pain is useless, unless we’re doing it in a healing setting. Past pain isn’t us. It’s just something that happened to us. We’re bigger than our past pain and we’re bigger than our future fears.

Homework. Close your eyes. Breathe in and think, “I’m the boss of my thoughts.” Think it again as you breathe out. (If you have trouble with images intruding, see the words written in your imagination.) Do that three or more times. Then open your eyes and without thinking about past or future, focus on what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel. Do that till you have to do something else, or want to do something else.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below.

10 Steps Away from Depression

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 8 Comments

(I call this series “10 Steps Away from Depression” because no step is a fix in itself. There is no quick fix for depression, but we can take steps, whenever we have the strength, and enough of those steps put together add up to a good journey – joyful even.)

Years ago, decades maybe, I saw this Al Franken movie about a guy who used affirmations to help him recover from all the trauma and developmental snags that came from growing up in an alcoholic family.

He’d been on Saturday Night Live, a child-like, nerdy character reciting, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me,” as he addressed his image in a mirror.

The sketches were so ridiculous I assumed the movie he starred in would be the same.

But the film actually worked on two levels – as comedy, but also as an authentic account of someone trying to salvage their sanity and work a recovery program that would break them out of crippling generational patterns. I even found it inspiring.

I’ve given all those sappy affirmations on coffee mugs and driftwood a little more respect ever since. As someone who’s had a lifelong struggle with depression, I now consider affirming myself to be a survival tactic.

I even do the talking-into-the-mirror thing. Apparently the chemicals in our brains can’t dintinguish cool from uncool behavior, because I always feel a little better after I do it. I say things like:

“You don’t have to be model thin; you look nice.”

“Congratulations, you finished the article ahead of deadline.”

“You helped four people today. Good job.”

When I’m too cynical to take it seriously, I repeat, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!”

On days I feel pretty useless, I can at least say, “God loves you and won’t give up on you.”

Affirming good things about ourselves can become the lifeline that draws us out of our stuck places. We gain the energy to do fun things that help us feel happier, and challenging things that help us succeed and build confidence.

One of life’s most wicked truths is that you can’t love anyone else better than you love yourself. If we dislike and neglect ourselves, our motives will always be tainted with subconscious need, and we’ll live on the edge of burn-out.

So, one path away from of that yucky emotional weight inside us called depression is to start saying nice things to ourselves. And to stop ourselves, just as we would a little kid, when we find ourselves insulting ourselves.

Homework: write down 5 compliments to yourself, then (check that you’re alone!) say one of them to yourself out loud as you look at yourself in a mirror. Then smile. You don’t have to feel better right away for this to be helpful. Just keep doing it once a day. We’re working on becoming more aware of the messages we give ourselves.

Anything helpful to add? Comment below.

Freedom to Focus

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 1 Comment

(The seventh post in a series on working at home.)

Working at home is less like work. Here I am at my standing  desk with an iced green tea, electronic music keeping me alert, laundry in the dryer, fresh air coming in my window, and freedom to wear my dorkiest T shirt.

Working at home gives you more control over your environment. This means more than just getting the laundry done while I’m learning some lines. On a deeper level, it helps me not to live so much in reaction to other people. I’m easily distracted by the conversations, the needs, the moods, the problems, of other people.

When I’m working at home, I feel like that girl in “The Incredibles” with her invisible force field surrounding her – I can keep out what would otherwise attack me. I plan better, write faster, think more clearly. I have less anxiety.Image result for incredibles force field

Of course there are pitfalls. There’s no one there to dissuade you from eating the whole cake, or binge watching Netflix all afternoon. We need to know ourselves  and choose what environment works best. Some people are carried along by the energy of others working alongside them, and need the structure of a workplace. Some people need a mix of both; working at home one or two days a week.

Being home-based keeps me focused – not only on what I’m doing but why I’m doing it. Built into the day are not only breaks to eat or go for a walk or tend to something around the house. I build in breaks to get mentally and spiritually recharged.

In the morning I read the Bible and pray. Then I make a list of what to get done that day. I take time to think about whether I’ve made the list too long. (How often we set ourselves up to fail!)

I ask myself it I’m being driven or compulsive in my choice of tasks. Do I really need to get all that done today, or do I just want to cross stuff off a list so I can feel competent? Am I thinking about what’s most important, or just being driven by the expectations of other people? You have the freedom to soul search when you set your own schedule.

Then I try to group tasks in categories – for example, in one day I might take a two hour chunk to do detail business – checking and sending messages, scheduling meetings, updating contacts. Then after a break I may take unbroken time for writing or long term planning and not respond to any messages at all.

It often helps to take a break between tasks that need different types of energy. I’ll exercise before diving into lots of detail work because I don’t like  it and I need to be energized to make myself  dive in. Before writing I may read a post or a chapter about the writing process, something inspiring. I’ll look at a Better Homes and Gardens to get me in the mood to clean my house, and watch a video about urban ministry if I need to get motivated to recruit for our church’s tutoring program.

Our quality of life is so much richer when we know why we’re doing what we’re doing, and we have the freedom to do it at our own pace, with breaks that let us refuel and refocus. Working at home often makes it easier to do our best and take care of ourselves at the same time.

 

Why You Should Really Take a Day Off

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 4 Comments

(Fifth in the series, “Working At Home Survival Guide”)

Imagine your favorite piece of music. Whether it’s  Mozart or Beyonce, it wouldn’t work without rests. Imagine that tune, slightly speeded up, with no breaks, pauses, silences of transition. It becomes an irritating and unsustainable exercise.Related image

That’s how some of us are trying to live. We’re trying to cram every day of every week, feeling worth more because we do more, earn more, see more people, go more places. But speed it all up too much and it’s blur without meaning.

It’s especially easy to skip taking days off when you work for yourself. It’s all up to us, and anxiety over making a living can make a day off seem impossible.

In Julia Cameron’s self-help book for creatives, she insists on the necessity of the weekly ‘artist date’ where we take at least two hours off to do nothing but care for our creativity, not doing what someone else wants, but what our deepest self is drawn to.

This book was one of the more important I’ve ever read (and worked through.) I wouldn’t have found it if I had not realized that my sanity depended on getting away from my three little kids for a chunk of time every week. The first time I did, I sat exhausted on a bookstore bench, and prayed that God would lead me to something that would restore my sanity. “The Artist’s Way” fairly jumped off the shelf.

What Cameron learned through hard experience, was that if she didn’t stop working to refuel, the well dried up. You don’t have to be a writer or a painter for the creative well to dry up. You can be the IT guy who starts to resist change because it takes such huge effort. You can be the chef who starts to find every dish a bore. You can be the pastor who flinches with irritation when the phone rings. You can be the mom at home with little kids who can’t make herself sit on the floor and play one more game.

It takes a day off a week and longer seasonal breaks, to be renewed.

For a long time, I took Sundays off, going to church, going to lunch with my husband and boys, then all of us doing what we liked. The day took on a luscious quality of timelessness and work was far from my thoughts.

Then one of my jobs started to require that I run a program on Sunday nights. This went on for a school year, and threw a shadow on my day off, making it hard to relax even in the hours before it that were still free. I couldn’t see a way to find another day off in the rhythm of family life. At the end of it, I was depleted.  My schedule was far less hectic than many others’, but still I am aware of how that absence of a whole chunk of time off wearied me. I felt like I had to squeeze the last drop of energy from my heart to start a task, it was harder to focus on what I was doing and I was blocked as a writer.

Lesson learned. Not only is it wise to work less than 50 hours a week (see the last post) but there is real magic in keeping one day clear of work.

Now I don’t have time to work on my day off.

 

Our Work is as Good or Bad as our Food

~ Colleen Scheid ~ 3 Comments

(Fourth in a Series on Working from Home)

I don’t want to write this post. I want to start and end the day with chocolate, eat deep dish pizza for lunch and drink coffee all afternoon. I’m working at home, so it’s all right there for the taking, with no witnesses.

I would do this if I could get away with it. But we really can’t. All day long, we choose either the fuel of life, health and high functioning, or the Fuel of Death. When we eat and drink the Fuel of Death, we lose energy, motivation, stamina and clarity. We need little naps. We think negative, circular thoughts. We can’t sleep at night, furthering the downward spiral.Image result for fattening food

I’m not a physician or a dietitian, but here’s what I know for sure:

Too much coffee jitters and hypes us, affecting sleep hours after we drink it. I’ve had to switch to half decaf, and only two or three cups before noon.

  • Too much food at once makes most of us super dopey. Big lunches especially slow us down. It helps to eat a few hundred calories late morning, then again mid-afternoon.Image result for eating badly, eating well
  • Sugars and refined flour – the principal ingredients in all yummy food – give us nothing, tax our organs and load us up with unwanted weight. The harsh reality is that we were made to eat mostly plants that have not been messed with. You know: apples, carrots, salads, grainy brown bread with seeds in it, nuts. Anyone who has tried a few days of this stuff without the sugar and white flour knows how good it feels. Everything is easier because our bodies have what they need.Related image
  • Some protein with each meal or snack keeps our energy more even – an egg, some nuts, a few cubes of cheese, a little lean meat or fish. It also keeps us from getting hungry again too soon and grabbing handfuls of cheese puffs.
  • Alcohol does not enhance work performance, or any performance. It doesn’t matter that lots of great artists were big drinkers. Most of them didn’t end well and we could have had decades of better work from them if they’d stayed sober.
  • Drugs, illegal or misused, do not enhance work performance, no matter how brilliant we may feel for a time.

The statement of the obvious must be repeated until we really believe it; Good food leads to good work. Bad food leads to bad work. I know there are some people who code for twelve hours at a time on Monster drinks and donut holes, but it’s going to catch up with them.

Changing eating habits is really hard. I’ve worked on one at a time, and I’m still far from ideal. Drinking a lot of water is a good habit to start with. Only buying good food really helps. Measuring quantities helps. Planning the day’s food ahead helps.

However we do it, we will be sabotaging ourselves when we try to work without the fuel our bodies were made for.