My friends and I were recently talking about "Moms' Night Out" and I mentioned that I thought it was great that the main mom, Allyson, was able to find happiness as a stay-at-home mom of three young children (which, at the beginning of the film, overwhelmed her). In just two semesters working with clients, I have seen moms who are living their dreams as stay-at-home moms but who just aren't happy.

There are moms who are overwhelmed with rearing children. Moms who fear they're losing control. Moms who end up across from me in the counseling room because they just don't know what to do anymore and they've become depressed.

My friend said that of course it ended with Allyson finding contentment--it wouldn't have been very Christian if she ended up depressed.

Not very Christian?

So I started thinking about depression--and mental health in general--and the way the church overall seems to view it.

Oh, you have depression? You don't have enough faith. You just need to pray more. Stop being so anxious. You're blessed; you have no reason to be sad. Here, read these Bible verses. ...

But have you looked at how the Bible views depression?

Or maybe even just Psalms?

Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint; heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony. My soul is in deep anguish. How long, Lord, how long? Turn, Lord, and deliver me; save me because of your unfailing love. Among the dead no one proclaims your name. Who praises you from the grave? I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes. -Psalms 6:2-7

Now, I'm not saying that I could go down through the DSM-5 criteria for any diagnosis of depression and say, "Yep, that's his principal diagnosis." But let's think about this: David's "bones are in agony" and his "soul is in deep anguish." He says, "I am worn out from my groaning" and his eyes are weak with sorrow--which makes sense when you consider that he's been spending his nights flooding his bed and his couch with tears. (So maybe he's having a hard time sleeping and can't decide whether the bed or couch is more comfortable?) It sounds like he's having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. ...

... which sounds a lot like some things I hear from people who have depression.

But even if David doesn't meet depression criteria by current mental health standards, I think there are some people who have depression who could identify with David's thoughts.

So if David, mighty David, great king and a man after God's own heart, could experience depression, why is it so taboo among Christians today? David's words are Scripture. And if "all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16), are you really going to tell me that David didn't have enough faith and just needed to pray more?

Now, I'm not saying that all Christians should/will experience depression at some point in their lives. But I think it's a lot more common than we would like to admit, both today and in the Bible.

Elijah, a prophet, prayed for God to kill him (1 Kings 19:4), even though God had just used him in victory over prophets of Baal. Paul, apostle and writer of a lot of the New Testament, says that "we despaired of life itself" (2 Corinthians 1:8).

However, none of these people stayed in despair. Shortly after asking God to take his life, Elijah traveled to the mountain of God and heard the voice of God. Paul came to a new understanding:

Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us. ... -2 Corinthians 1:9-10

And David, in spite of his anguish, still wrote praises to God and knew that God listened to him. And by Psalm 9, David's enemies are being defeated. I don't think depression itself shows a lack of faith. God doesn't promise to remove all hardships from our lives after salvation--John 16:33 says that we will have trouble in this world. But it also says that Christ has overcome the world; we have hope. Likewise, these men also kept their eyes fixed on God in spite of their hardships. Their faith did not immediately fix everything and remove every problem they came across, but it carried them through the difficult times.

Your faith will not immediately fix everything and remove every problem you come across, but it can carry you through the difficult times.

i wanted the shock and awe one

+ moms'* afternoon out. My closest friends and I--we've decided that we could write our own Army Wives book based totally on fact and it would still be a hot seller--went to see "Moms' Night Out" at the on-post theater. Our tickets were $1 each and the national anthem played before the screening, complete with patriotic images and footage. I'm not sure which version we watched, but I know some of us wanted to see the "Shock and Awe" version.

"Moms' Night Out" was both funny and sometimes too realistic to actually be relaxing for me, but I appreciated the fact that it's a faith-based film.

+ independence day. We celebrated Independence Day with a last-minute cookout and ended the day watching fireworks from a friend's balcony. The conversation and time together was a better end to the day than the actual displays.

+ yet = still and other PA Dutchisms. My friend told me that my oldest goddaughter recently said, "It is really hot yet." I'm super proud. Also, she brought to my attention that I have a habit of asking my dogs, "Must you go out/potty?" I didn't realize it but it's pretty much the only sentence I use when I ask my dogs if they have to go outside and I'm pretty sure it's a Dutchism.

+ meal-sharing. A month or two (or more, who knows) ago, two friends and I decided to get together to cook for the week, because two of us typically end up cooking one big pot of soup and eating it for the week. And that gets boring. But it's also a pain to come up with meal plans when I'm only cooking for myself and I'm trying to save money. Hence, getting together to cook and then swap food. The first time we got together, we ended up making three pots of soup. This time, we made two soups, macaroni and cheese, and sloppy joes, three of which came from the Daniel Plan cookbook (one of our friends is starting the Daniel Plan).

+ blogging + life. Part of me was surprised to see that I haven't blogged since January and the other part of me doesn't even remember what I've been up to, aside from volunteering, classes, practicum, internships, home life group, church, and attempting to keep up some semblance of a social life. For a while, I was also getting up at 5 a.m. to go running during PT hours, but that's when the temps were in the 30s. Now that the day gets hotter faster, I don't have time to shower in between running and getting to my internship site (but I'm working on that). R&R also came and went somewhere along the line, though I intentionally didn't write about that for OPSEC reasons (but I plan to). And I went back to PA for a few days to visit family and we went to Walt Disney World.

*because we're all at various stages of momhood.

less.

I refrained from posting this earlier because I realized that I wasn't living according to what I was writing.

At the beginning of 2013, I chose "extend" as my word for the year.

to spread or stretch forth; to make available; to cause to reach; to increase the scope, meaning, or application of

And then, I promptly forgot about it.

Nonetheless, looking back over 2013, I would definitely say that I extended myself and my life in several ways.

There was, and continues to be, the Baking Brigade. (Except, next month marks the one-year anniversary and I feel like it's the same now as it was then, but more on that later.) The end-of-the-year decision to develop more community within our home life group. (Like asking others to facilitate discussions or lead a devotional.) The start of volunteering at a counseling center on post. The season of opening our home, our lives, to two children. The start of a deployment. The deeper growth of my walk with Christ. (It was amazing, but personal, so I don't want to share it here yet/ever.) The process of helping friends move. The +3,415 miles I drove across the country in two weeks.

So, given that I didn't intentionally focus on my chosen word during 2013, I decided to go with less of a word and more of a theme for 2014. I debated about whether to even bother with it this year, especially because I couldn't even think of a word, but God worked this year's theme into my heart pretty quickly.

Recently, a friend posted a video about Pastor Lee Jong-Rak and his baby dropbox. I watched it and sobbed through most of it, deeply saddened by the need for such a ministry and inspired by the love and faith of Pastor Lee and his wife and staff. I felt driven to do something but stuck where I am. I also thought of Meggan Murkli and her ministry in a Romanian orphanage.

And I was like, "God, why am I not doing something amazing for You?"

I thought of the violence in the Central African Republic. Why is our media not reporting more about this? And then my thoughts turned to me. Me. In my house with lots of furnishings and clean water and interior plumbing and more clothes than I need and three dogs that are fed more regularly than many people across the world and climate control and so much else. And that's when I realized what I need to do this year: learn to live with less.

My goal is to learn to be content with less and to become a better steward of the funds and resources God provides.

2013: a year in books

Last year, I wrote about the books I read in 2012 and the books I planned to read in 2013. Only two on the to-read list were ever actually read (Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and The Soldier's Wife). But, I did read 15 other books!

• Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
• Surviving and Thriving in Stepfamily Relationships: What Works and What Doesn't
• Ephesians
• Galatians
• Jonah
• Even From a Broken Web
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
• Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy
• What You Need to Know about Spiritual Warfare in 12 Lessons: The What You Need to Know Study Guide Series
• The Birth Order Book: Why You Are the Way You Are
• Organic Outreach for Families: Turning Your Home Into a Lighthouse
• Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother
• How to Be an American Housewife
• I Hate You -- Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality
• Your Beautiful Purpose: Discovering and Enjoying What God Can Do Through You
• An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
• The Soldier's Wife

In 2014, my goal is to read 18 books--about one and a half books each month. So far, there are 10 on my bookshelf waiting to be read.

• Hitler's Last Secretary
• Undaunted: The Real Story of America's Servicewomen in Today's Military
• King Leopold's Ghost
• Standing By: The Making of an American Military Family in a Time of War
• Wait No More: One Family's Amazing Adoption Journey
• Revolution in World Missions
• Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family
• Counseling Couples in Conflict
• The Peacemaker: A Biblical Guide to Solving Personal Conflict
• Community: Taking Your Small Group off Life Support

the d-word: deployment thoughts [25% done]

month 3 // Today was rough; I think it would have been easier if Alan were home. I was feeling sad and grateful to be blessed by a husband who orders pizza delivery from another continent and a friend who blessed me with a little pampering package.

month 4 // I don't want to say that certain people are "made" for the military lifestyle, as I don't believe that we were created to be separated from our spouses, but I do believe that some people adapt more easily and are more self-sufficient, traits that turn deployments into periods for growth and challenge instead of misery.

//

+ savage. Temperature in the 20s. Waist-deep water. Lots of mud. I ran the Savage Race and loved it. I skipped some of the challenges because I was afraid of hypothermia--Texas' Savage Race was the coldest on record!--but I still enjoyed the obstacles and have officially completed my second race.

+ volunteering. I started volunteering at the Family Life Chaplain Training Center on post. I'm there two days a week and I love it.

+ umhb. Three more semesters until graduation! Thanks to God and a supportive husband, I have maintained a 4.0 (which was a challenge, especially since I had a stomach flu during finals week). Also, I think solution-focused brief therapy is "my" approach. I really like it. One of my professors also loaned some emotion-focused therapy material to me and I've been studying it over break.

+ almost there. I ran 9.06 miles. I could have made it to 10 but I quit because my phone (and therefore, Endomondo) died around 7 miles and I wanted to know exactly how far I ran. Also, after surviving the Savage Race, I did two evening runs in 23F and 27F weather, respectively. It was raining the second time.

+ flyboys. After a friend recommended Flyboys to me, I purchased it and have been reading it off and on for several months. I finally finished it. In my opinion, the book was well-researched; I enjoyed learning about the history of Japan and Japanese-American relations as well as an area of history I had not studied before.

+ bucket list. Some friends and I went to Outback for dinner--it was my first visit, so I can cross off another item on my deployment bucket list! Also, I took a friend out to lunch at Rosa's after PWOC--yes, I was there the Tuesday after I posted about it and have been going semi-regularly ever since. I attended a class on mentorship based on At the Feet of Ordinary Women and asked the ladies to pray about whether any of them would be interested in mentoring me. Recently, one of them approached me and she's going to start mentoring me in the new year! And, I'm currently writing from Pennsylvania. Plus, my wonderful husband scheduled a massage for me last month and it was amazing.

+ snapchat. I downloaded Snapchat. My sister and I have been using it to send each other pictures of our dogs. While we're both in the same room.