I don’t remember what I was talking to my Aunt Betty about, but below in red are her words of wisdom during our spiritual direction session.

Turn to the Lord and say, “Lord, please help me to be able to focus on how you’re working in my life, and stop getting stuck in what is wrong. Help me to be quicker to smell the sulphur when it’s working on me, and not be so gullible. See how much I need You?” It’s like the very thing you asked God for, namely to show you the areas that need healing, you let it throw you into depression, rather than see that God is working here. You could go into gratitude over how He’s working in your family’s lives. I hate to see you miss the joy. Satan so easily steals joy from you by getting you to blah blah blah. When you go into the negative, it actually sucks energy out of you. Ask yourself, “What is the good God intends to bring out of this?” You’re asking Him to help you clean up your judgments and resentments. He’s doing that. That’s where all this stuff is coming from. So, He’s answering your prayers. If that’d be me, I’d be praising, glorifying, and thanking Him saying, “Lord, I realize this is a tremendous answer to prayer that you’re giving me. I could have never, of myself, been able to get in touch with these areas in need of healing.” I’d really work up a storm, focusing on what’s positive here. That would help you get through it. Maybe you need to write that question down, and take that as your daily practice. The question is, “What good does God intend to bring out of this?” Keep asking yourself that question time and time again. Because that question helps you orientate in the right focus away from where Satan seems to have the most victory with you. Satan is showing you what’s wrong in this. And you tend to go, “Oh yeah.” You really dig in with that. It’s almost like you feel at home with what’s wrong, and you don’t feel at home with what good God is trying to bring out of it. 

When you ask God to bring the good out of it, it orients you away from depressive thoughts that Satan enjoys getting you into. Satan will say, “See, there you are being unfaithful to God again.” He really gets you into depression taking you down that road. Whereas, you can keep asking yourself time and time again, “What good does God intend to bring out of whatever is happening that isn’t going right?” Put your focus on, “Okay, where’s God in this? Where is the good? That’s where God is.”It will get you going in the right direction and frustrate Satan’s plan to keep you depressed, so he can work on you.