Dead to Life

    I don't know.
    I was going to use this blog for two things--creative ideas/thoughts/stories, and times when I was struggling...and it's about time for the latter.
    I'm tired, I'm so tired, but I'm tired of being dead, of automatically responding to deep depression with emotional sedatives. Underneath those I'm fighting myself to feel, to think deeply, to do more than live on the surface, but my conscious mind shudders at how much that would hurt, at how hard that would be--and just letting depression live doesn't deal with the depression, only with the deadness. Especially since I'm self-reflective enough to know when I'm dead, and I can't shut my mind to that knowledge, or the knowledge that we weren't made to be dead, to live life only responding--small responses in thought and heart, in word and deed--to the things that happen to come our way; my mind goes to the "lukewarm" church in Revelation that was so bothersome to the Christ.
    But even more bothersome than that is the deadness I show to God; I do not know how to let Him lead, for how does one "lead" a dead person anywhere? Of course, by that example, I know that God can bring the dead back to life--and can help the once-dead person deal with life given--but what does God do with someone who regularly administers fatal doses of lethargy and apathy? Given my Revelation example, he spits them out.
   Ha. I just went to look them up, and before getting to them I read this (Rev. 2):
I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God.  Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you. Yet you have still a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments, and they will walk with me in white, for they are worthy.

I guess God gives clear directions. Strengthen what remains? Through prayer, meditation on the works and wonders of God (such as this, His justice and His standard for His own, his inability to tolerate any sin or hypocrisy), through regular devotions...through not soiling my garments with sin, through the blood of Jesus to wash me white.
God help me, I trust you. In Christ, please, amen.