I had the pleasure of having a couple friends come over today and as we were talking they inspired me for today’s letter M.

M is for Making time to Meet with friends. To me this is crucial. I hate to keep bringing it up but I’m not the only woman that struggles with depression. Stupid hormones! Anyway, it would be very easy for me to isolate myself and crawl deeper into my hole where I can sit and think about anything and everything that I should be doing. But every time I make time to meet a friend or two, I am totally blessed. All of a sudden, I can relate with someone else and I’m no longer alone. I can have fun and laugh and even cry. I can feel appreciated and smart and inspired. And it works both ways, they can benefit from meeting with me just as much as I benefit from meeting with them. I can’t understand why I don’t do this more often. I think it has to do with that awful lie I tell myself that I’m not worth the bother.

That brings up a subject we talked about, renewing our Mind. How important do you think that is? The Bible tells us that we can be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Isn’t that exciting? So what that says to me is – all the lies I believe about myself, like the one above, that affect my behavior, can be changed or edited to reveal the truth and I will be amazing! 😉 Let’s try it on the above statement: “I tell myself that I’m not worth the bother.” This is what I mean about editing: “I tell myself that I’m worth the bother.” Of course, I’m over-simplifying this. When I was in counseling, she would put it this way: If you change your thoughts about something, you change your behavior. And when you change your behavior, you change your feelings. Pretty cool!

I can think of two more M words: Movies and Music. The first, my husband and I love to go to the movies together. We have different tastes in movies, but there are some we like in common, and some we see because we don’t mind seeing. Then there are times I will go with one of my daughters, or he will just go by himself. I love a good story, but I also love good special effects. I’m not a fan of horror or bloody violence, but I don’t mind closing my eyes through some parts of action or adventure films. I don’t worry about fantasy films being unbiblical; I love to see how realistic they can make things from someone’s imagination.

Music, I mentioned a little on the letter I. It’s so nice to plug in my I-pad and have just the songs I like playing without all the interruptions. I tend to work best and  get a lot more accomplished if I have music playing in the background. Except if it so inspires me to go dance around the house. 🙂 And I must mention it works better to plug in the I-pad, than the I-phone, because I would get frustrated when I would receive a call while I was enjoying the music. Life is so much better with music!