Fuddled

In the heart of Rome Italy majesty and grandeur surrounded me, so much history and such beautiful architecture on display. It was a wet and bitter cold day outside and I sat in that empty hotel cafe sad and alone. My thoughts were like the traffic outside, sloshing through my mind like the wheels through those cobbled streets. Was I suicidal? At what point do you go from thinking about dying to actually outing yourself? I know I was hurting inside, hating myself, feeling terrible about my life. My fat 150 kilo body sat slumped on a green leather chesterfield, one elbow on the table top and with the other hand I ran my nails up and down the seam of my jeans. My shoulders and face were drooped, stuffed in a heavy black leather jacket with a worn out baseball cap my eyes were dim and my forehead was creased. A thick scruffy beard cloaked my face. I was sloppy as I lifted the mug to my lips and added to the drizzle on my chest.

As always I was analysing my life when a thought came to me from left field, like a coach on my sideline yelling out. “Dave you are misappropriating your emotions, you feel this way because you are low”. That little coach was blowing his whistle for me to sit up and listen and I did. I couldn’t argue with him we was so right I was trapped in sadness. Going around and around powered on by my lousy reasoning . Misappropriating., it was an interesting way of putting it and it rang true for me. I was misspending my energy justifying my moods, supporting reasons that were not the point. I was victim to thoughts, my wife has left me, my pastor has betrayed and mistreated me, the hospital locked me up ,my friends have fled. My thinking just wasn’t right and definitely wasn’t helping me. I would feel this terrible sadness in me and blame it on so many things. The truth of it was that I was low because I was low. I was unwell. Somewhere along the way I had gotten stuck. I was depressed. Even though these things had really hurt me, they were not what was keeping me down. My little “Dave coach” knew this and was trying to get me off the bench and back in the game.

For months before the trip I had been working with an expensive private doctor after yearsx of getting nowhere in the public system. Dr A was convinced that I was dealing with a biological flaw, that my brain was not working properly. Sitting in that Cafe moment of clarity come. I knew he was right. I also know that this was the moment my life was saved. This is the moment that death lost its grip of me. The reasons that had me trapped were overthrown their thrones left empty. A helmet of salvation was placed on my mind a new way of seeing things had emerged from the ruins in Rome.

We’ve all heard stories of that CEO misappropriating funds to build his personal empire, cunningly using innocent employees to unwittingly carry out corruption. When the light of day shines on his swindling we all frown at his misconduct and the naivety of the employees he has misdirected. Like that crooked soul the CEO of this world wants to use us to embezzle his agenda. To bank his corruption in the minds of God’s beloved image bearers. Have you ever been taken hostage as a prisoner of war in a world of emotional mismanagement? I have. It’s easy to misdirect our emotions. To be swept up by the bad vibes and get spun out of control. Bad stuff happens and it made you feel bad and you handled it badly. It happens we’re human after all. Sometimes we get stuck in neutral, park or even start rolling down hill. We are low emotionally. We require sleep, we have hormones and I am sure at times we wrestle with forces unseen. Sometimes we are reacting to hurts hidden deep down and then there’s brain chemistry. To misappropriate is to act on reasons for your mood that aren’t true. It is to justify an emotion incorrectly and therefore give it permission to stay, a throne to sit on. To stop misappropriating is to pause faulty rationale and quarantine emotion. Allowing real insight rather than being held and pushed around and motivated by a lie.