Laura was depressed and overwhelmed by the accumulation of stuff from the kids that was cluttering our room for the last week. She had become angry at God and told me this morning that she wanted nothing to do with the church or the people in church. She has had years to feel isolated (because she had isolated herself and our kids) and doesn’t realize that one side effect of that isolation is that people don’t know how to relate to her or them (another is that the kids have less opportunity to normalize their behavior). I knew what she needed to hear but didn’t want it to sound accusatory.
Eventually I was able to talk with her after a little of the clutter had been cleaned and was able to tell her that isolating herself would make her feel worse instead of better. She realized that I was on the right track and later told me that she knew I was absolutely right about that. I think her anger faded as the Spirit worked on her. By the end of the day we had cleaned the room and she was again feeling that things weren’t all stacked against her.
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