Contentment

When I first met you Forrest, I thought that you seemed to be very content with life. That’s what a friend of mine said to me the other night while we were sitting up on Mosebacke over looking Stockholm city. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t often think of myself as being content. I have my ups and downs like many other people. There are things I desire in life and things I simply can’t have. But when my friend made the statement I couldn’t help but think back fourteen years ago to a very difficult time in my life and at the same time a very defining time in my life. You see, fourteen years ago I went though a “Major Clinical Depression”. It sounds terrible when you use the word “Major” and “Clinical” in front of the word depression, but that is what they called it back then.

When I found out that I was in a depression I started... taking anti-depressant medication and after about 6 to 8 weeks I started feeling back to normal. That is how an anti-depressant medication is supposed to help you. It gets you back to work and enjoying life. They say that the best way to deal with a depression is to get medical help, but also to begin meeting with someone who you can talk with that might be able to help you see things in your life that might be affecting you or influencing you in your depression.

Now for me, I got right on the medication, but not until about three years later did I meet a counselor that really helped me think things through. His name was Dr. Henry Brandt. Henry has helped many people just like me that struggled with depression and many other issues. What amazed me about Henry was his ability to see some of the things that were affecting me that I never thought about. Henry, after talking with me for about 20 minutes, told me I was a very angry man. At first I didn’t believe him but the more I thought about it the more I realized he was right. I was not only angry but I was also a person that held grudges and was very slow to forgive others.

Henry pointed me in the direction of the Bible. I believed that the Bible was the word of God, and that it has the answers to the needs of man. But I realized that I knew a lot about the Book, but I was not putting what I knew into practice. The Bible has a lot to say about anger, forgiveness and how to let go of grudges. Over the next couple of years Henry had me reading the Bible in a way that I had never done before. He had me putting what it says into action in my life. The Lord said in Isaiah 48:18 “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river…” Jesus also said in John 15:14, “you are my friends if you do what I command.” Notice the difference here from just reading them and doing them.

To make a long story short I want to say that within a year or so I felt better and better. It has been 11 years since that day I met Henry and he nailed me to the wall with my problem of anger. It has also been 11 years since I last took antidepressant medication. I learned many things then. I learned about myself and others when I began studying and putting into practice what the Bible said about the problems I had in my life. I really think that this is why my friend spoke to me about contentment in my life. Perhaps one of the major things I learned during those years and still put into practice today is this. “The circumstances of life, the events of life, and the people around me in life do not make me the way I am but reveal the way I am.” (Quoted from Dr. Sam L. Peeples Jr.)