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PROGRAM D-8260 – Letdown Days
It’s three days after Christmas. Have you recuperated yet? I’ve been sharing about the real possibility that you may be experiencing some letdown days after Christmas. The tree and the decorations have lost some of their luster. You may have even taken the tree down by now, just to get it over with.
Letdown days—they come and go in our lives. They often rear their ugly heads after something good, after a lovely experience, after a spiritual victory, after an emotional high.
If you’re not experiencing letdown days right now, chances are you will before too long. What’s the best way to deal with letdown days? Do you just endure them—hoping they will end soon? Lots of people try to make something exciting happen to take away that letdown feeling. But neither of those extremes works very well.
I have suggested that once you acknowledge you’re in a letdown period—and that it’s normal—you counteract those feelings with mega-doses of praise to God. Praise him in every way you can—through music, by counting your blessings, and by making a list of all you have to be thankful for. Make yourself give praise to God.
Then, turn to the one offensive weapon we have against the enemy which is, of course, God’s Word. Spend extra time reading and meditating on it.
I would also encourage you to journal through your letdown days. Write your feelings down, maybe as a prayer to God. Simply pour them out to him in written words. I find that when I do that, my perception begins to change, and my attitude starts to turn around. There’s something about putting in writing what you’re experiencing and then praying about it which helps to pull you out of letdown days.
As I have practiced these principles myself at times when I’m feeling low, I realize that it wasn’t that I didn’t know what to do, I simply hadn’t applied what I knew. When I finally did, it was sheer discipline on my part, with no feelings, no great desire at all to do it. But experience is teaching me that to neglect these principles is to prolong the misery of letdown days.
So be encouraged today: Letdown days can become times of learning to practice what you know to be true, and seeing how God helps you put those days behind you.