Dave's "Truth Stories" Blog.

I guess I'll be reserving this blog site for what's really going on in my life since WAY too many people have been following my other blog (not to be named). If word ever got out about this blog site, I'd probably have to shut down this site.

I've been dealing with some pretty bad depression lately. I'm not sure how much collateral depression I've been taking on but I've been pretty down for about 2 months now. It really got out of hand this past week. I'm back to feeling surrounded by sorrow and tragedy. Now it's at the point where people at work are starting to take notice. This sent up a red flag because I'm pretty good at hiding personal issues from work.

Luckily I worked through a few theories with my wife and I'm a little better today. I have a lot of empathy for people, especially people going through tough times. Between reading about job lay-offs, friend's relatives dying, co-worker being diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic bone cancer, it's been really taking it's toll on me. I want to be supportive for people, but I guess I've been internalizing the emotions lately. I constantly look at things from the other person's perspective. So in feeling bad for someone, I in turn feel really bad myself.

My own issues are bad enough then I heap on other people's troubles. Mark Lamberth, I didn't even know the guy and yet I see one of his relatives that work at my building and my heart just gets heavy for him. Thinking about what emotions he might be going through. Weird huh?

Having all of this internalized pain also makes me question my relationship with God. Shouldn't I be stronger knowing God is using these lows for the betterment of us all? Shouldn't my relationship with God give me strength rather than being down in the dumps? By allowing myself to get so depressed, I fear that I'm doubting my faith. Plus struggling with my hand pain issues (has now spreaded to both hands without even touching a guitar) and back pain issues, that God has something else in mind for me. In the back of my mind, I feel like God wants me to put him first more, then MAYBE he'll restore my hands. I don't know. I need to spend some quality alone time with my creator and see what He says.

So, this is the 3 day that I've called off from work, just to get my s**t together. I've blogged about stuff like this before and the process has been very therapeutic. Let's see what time and prayer does.