Ever feel a bit sad or blue? Want to thrive and flourish? Depression is a growing epidemic in our world. A recent Gallup study reveals that over 36% of women in the USA have been diagnosed, and depression rate is at an all-time high (from when Gallup began tracking in 2015). According to Mayo Clinic, “Women are nearly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression.” The World Health Organization estimates that 6% of women around the world suffer with depression. It becomes an everyday struggle to choose joy.
Joy: The Antidote for Depression
While doing research for my book Growing a Joyful Heart (co-authored with Karen Whiting), I discovered some powerful outcomes of a life joy. Joy seems to benefit us mind, body, soul, and spirit:
Mind: Joy helps with improving problem solving, increases productivity, improves decision-making, boosts creativity, builds resilience—and the combo of these traits also improves our salary!
Body: Joy improves sleep, boosts immunity, bolsters heart health, lowers blood pressure and lowers stress thus lowers cortisol (so helps us lose weight), lowers pain, helps our body heal—thus can lengthen our life.
Soul: Joy produces a state of calm, enhances, and enriches relationships.
Spirit: Perhaps, most importantly, joy keeps our heart desiring God, spending time with God and in God’s Word!
The Path Out of Depression and Into Joy
You are not alone if you are feeling melancholy. King David, the Psalmist, penned a poem about his depression in Psalm 42 and 43. Here is a glimpse in verse 5:
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
The word downcast in the original Hebrew in which David penned this poem means discouraged, depressed, and disillusioned. The word disturbed in Hebrew means an inner murmuring, like those negative thoughts that keep us awake at night.
But God is so gracious, one of His answers to this kind of negativity is in the same verse and also in verse 45:8.
Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior, and my God. (verse 5b)
By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.
So, the process of regaining your hope is to praise God. By day, the Psalmist focused on God’s love and praying with a focus on God’s love, and at night, the emphasis was on dwelling on comforting worship songs.
When I am battling discouragement and depression, some of the wisest choices I make is to pull open my Bible and print out verses on who God is Loving, powerful, kind, and compassionate. I can make memes for social media, pen the verses into a journal, or print and post them around my home. Then at night, I simply say, “Alexa, play Christian music!” And I go to sleep to songs of praise—and guess what? I wake up much more positive, hopeful, and joy-filled the next morning.
How to Flourish and Thrive!
How can we maintain this positivity? Can we move toward a healthier lifestyle? There is good news! God, our Creator, shares a vivid solution in Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice!” The word “rejoice” is a verb, so it is a choice to rejoice! This decision to choose joy is possible when we trace it back to the source, the Creator God who can create a path forward and create options and opportunities. This little verse is also a command to choose joy ALWAYS.
That does not mean we are happy about difficult circumstances rather we can be joy-filled because we are not alone in those tough times, God is with us. The word “again” tells us HOW to hold on to our joy. Hold tight just a little bit longer, just one more minute, just one more hour, and just one more day. Lastly, I think the key to lasting joy is in the word, “say” which can mean tell in a way that you have laid the topic to rest, you have settled in your heart that you WILL be a person of JOY!
We have evidence that David’s method works in Psalm 43:3-4:
“Send me your light and your faithful care,
let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
to God, my joy and my delight.
I will praise you with the lyre,
O God, my God.”
Again, a few key words explain the “how to” stoke up your joy:
The Psalmist askes God to “send” or command, dispatch, the “light”, the kind of light that has the power to pierce and shatter the darkness like daybreak which expels and clears away the darkness. The words “faithful care” can also be translated as “Truth”, so when we capture those negative thoughts and trade them for God’s Truth, it cultivates hope and joy.
Finally, the word “lead” means to guide by going forward, backward, sideways—over, under—however necessary to get us around, over, and through the darkness. The outcome reflects a healthier and thriving life of joy, as we begin to desire to praise, worship and delight in the Lord and moreover, this joy and delight splashes out to benefit all aspects of our life.
So, if joy is so key to this flourishing, thriving, prosperous, and successful life, how can we continue to cultivate joy?
Let me simply share one idea in each of the four core areas mentioned above:
Mind:
“The joy of the Lord is my strength” (Neh. 8:10)
Taking joy in the Creator God creates a sanctuary for your heart and soul. The word “strength” means a fortress and a safe place to run for shelter.
For example, almost 10 years ago, we downsized and gave away most of our possessions, and sold our large home to move nearer my then 88-year-old in laws. One was frail of body, the other frail of mind. To create an oasis for our life, God led us to move on to a liveaboad boat, so no matter how difficult caregiving became, we could go home to a “vacation on the water”. However, the pandemic soon shut down life, also closed our marina, and our elderly parents needed 24/7 care, so we moved into a 300 square foot RV on their property. Can I just say, we had to choose to become “happy campers!”
I had just completed writing Discovering Joy in Philippians: A Creative Bible Study Experience. To thoroughly understand joy, I studied all the verses on joy in the Old and New Testament. In the New Testament, the word joy is the Greek word charis and it appears more than 70 times. When something is important to God, He repeats Himself. And charis joy can mean:
- To rejoice
- To be glad
- To rejoice exceedingly
- To be well or to thrive
- To be cheerful or happy
- To be gracious
- To extend favor
But my favorite meaning is “calm delight”. This is my favorite because it gives you something to DO when stress rises. For example, as we are living tiny and caregiving Bill’s folks who were then in their 90’s with health and cognitive abilities in decline, when my mother-in-law might explode into a tirade, I would simply push pause and pray this:
“Lord, show me what will bring calm to my mother-in-law. Show me what might be a delightful distraction to her. And Lord, show me what will calm my heart and emotions, and what could be a delight to my life right now.”
Often the answer from God’s Holy Spirit to my mind and soul might be as simple as lemon cookies for my Mother-in-Law and a brisk walk listening to praise music for me.
Body:
“Then young women will dance and be glad, young men and old as well.
I will turn their mourning into gladness; I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” (Jer. 31:12-13)
Any movement will bring joy, but in the Bible, dancing seems to be a natural response when one cultivates joy. So, what are the benefits of cutting the rug and tapping those toes?
Dancing release endorphins, lowers pain, boost energy, releases stress, strengthens your brain power, improves confidence, enriches balance and co-ordination.
So put on some favorite tunes and dance!
Soul:
The Lord is my strength and my shield;
my heart trusts in him, and he helps me.
My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him. (Psalm 28:7 NIV)
Joy boosts our overall positivity. My friend, Debbie, is a retired fire captain who now also works with first responders. Most first responders can suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). (In addition, much of today’s population may have PTSD as we are dealing with an unpredictable future and a turbulent state of violence and divisiveness.) When PTSD happens, it is like life goes from feeling like vivid technicolor to a wash of grey gloom. One of the exercises used to retrain the souls of people caught in the tidal wave of distress is to write down 30 things that the person knows has given him or her joy in the past, then schedule one of these “joy moments” each day for 30 days.
These joyful experiences do not need to be extravagant or expensive, they can be as simple as a walk near water, a favorite latte, or doing something creative. Here is an interesting side note: The way God created our brain is that our problems reside on one side of our brain and our creativity resides on the other side. In a blog I wrote for Dr Saundra Dalton Smith on creativity, I quote Dr. Joel Pearson, a brain scientist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, who explains, “concentrating on coloring an image may facilitate the replacement of negative thoughts and images with pleasant ones.” So, when you create, even something as simple as coloring a page of scripture art, it blocks out problems (at least for the time we are creating!)
Spirit:
“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thes. 5:16-18 NIV)
In many places in the Bible, joy is paired with an attitude of gratitude. As we train ourselves to walk on the sunny side of the street and look for the silver lining in those dark storm clouds, we grow a heart of thankfulness toward our Savior.
During the pandemic, I created a resource that helps you apply many of these exercises. “Infectious Joy” is a 30-day creative devotional that includes 30 joy verses, a creative way to process them and two worksheets: Radiant Joy, a worksheet to collect daily gratitude expressions and a Joy Blossom, a place to compose 30 joy moments, then color a joy blossom coloring sheet to hang up as a reminder of ways to “choose joy”. I have discovered that as I seek to weave joy throughout my entire life, my appreciation of God and my gratitude toward the Lord draw my heart and my desire toward Him. The greatest fruit of a healthy relationship with God, is that wisdom from heaven helps me live wiser, healthier, and happier.
What would bring you joy today? Select one idea in this blog and cultivate joy, a joy that leads to a healthier life: mind, body, soul, and spirit
Author Bio:
Pam Farrel is an international speaker, the author or co-author of 60 books including several on joy, plus 7 Simple Skills for Every Woman; and bestselling Men Are Like Waffles, Women Are Like Spaghetti. She is celebrating 44 happy years with her husband, Bill, and together they Co-Direct Love-Wise ministries. They make their home on a liveaboard boat docked in Southern California. When the Farrels are not working, they enjoy time with their three grown sons, 3 Daughter in Laws, and 7 grandchildren.