Scripture teaches us we can turn to an eternal God and pray to Him and He hears us.  Can you believe that!  However, I have noticed in my life there are times where instead of turning to Him in prayer I try to fix things myself.  I am not sure why.  Perhaps it is pride in that I think I can do it, or perhaps it is that I don’t believe it makes a difference but I have found that instead of turning to Him in prayer I try to take care of everything on my own.  I create this world in my head where I am the hero of the story and I have to try to take care of everything and everyone.  It is exhausting.

When this happens I start to feel like I am being pulled in every direction because it is impossible to take care of everyone and everything, and I slowly start to realize that I am not the hero of the story.  When this happens I get really discouraged.   You would think I that I would turn to prayer at this point, but I don’t.  Instead, in my discouragement of finding out that I am not the hero, I just try to distract myself.  I pick up a new hobby, buy something new, start a project around the house, and try to keep myself busy enough to forget that I can’t do things on my own.

After awhile of keeping myself busy I start to feel sorry for myself and begin to blame other people because I can’t take care of everything on my own.  If my parents had done this, my friends, my teachers…then I probably could have done it on my own.  Its at this point I start to feel a little depressed.  I start sleeping in, lose interest in my new gadget, never finish the project, isolate myself from other people, and mostly become cynical about the rest of the world.  You know when you are in this place because you start talking about how Facebook is full of artificial relationships, our world is controlled by shadow governments, and nothing really matters.   This is called depression.

Scripture teaches us we don’t have to go through this cycle.  Instead of trying to do everything on our own we can turn to Him and He hears us.  Sometimes my kids will be in the backseat while we are driving in the car and they will say, “Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy” and I will say, “I hear you.”  When they are in their room at night crying because they are scared I go to them and they say, “How did you know, and I tell them that I can hear you.”  When they are playing in the other room I can tell by the inflection in their voice when they are upset.  Scripture tells us that we are His children and that He hears you.  Scripture tells us He hears you even when your words are too deep in pain to be understood.  He hears you.