Betty: Image the word depression and put it in a picture. What’s it look like? 

AM: It’s like I’m being crushed with…

Betty: Image the Lord coming over and taking that weight from you. Will that you give the oppression to Him. Can you see it coming off? Let the Lord do it. You stop trying and let the Lord do it. Keep seeing the Lord’s light come into you, and relax into His arms. We are in a mystery as to why the whole thing had to happen. But you’re not God. Let Him straighten the whole thing out. That’s His problem not yours. Notice what your inner child is doing with it. Think back to what you just told me. 

AM: I grew a lot, but it would have been better not to have met X 

Betty: Stop and listen to what you said. You said, “I grew a lot, but…”I’m looking at patterns of how you get yourself in painful places. You found the good in meeting X. “I grew a lot.” But You didn’t stop to enjoy the good. You went immediately into the negative. Turn and ask the Lord, in his mercy, to help you so  that when you do find the good that comes out of your pain to be gracious enough to stop and allow yourself to enjoy the good. 

Do you see how mean you are to yourself? I don’t like that mean part of you, because I don’t like what it does to you. I love you and I want you to know good. I don’t think anyone is as mean to you as you.Think of it. Is that true? You’re a joy stealer. Can you say, “Lord, I want to give that up. I don’t know when I first started stealing joy from myself and torturing myself making life even worse than it is to begin with.” We talk about these kids who are Pollyannas who can find the good in anything. I want you to say, “I’m sorry Lord that I’m so mean to myself. It must be hard for you to watch this. I really need help to get out this and find more joy in life. Because it’s there, but I keep trying to get rid of it.”

As you mature, that’s the kind of question that will come out of circumstances like this. The first thing to say is, “Lord, don’t let me miss the good that’s to come out of this.”  On my spiritual journey, the Lord taught me certain questions I was not to ask, because they lead to the wrong place. And then, there are certain questions that will lead us to the right place. One important lesson I learned is never to ask why. That impressed me when God taught me that, because I realized there’s a part of asking why that’s very demanding and presumptuous as though God has to answer to us. Who are we that He has to answer to us? Do we realize who we are talking to? We have no right to ask HIm.