When Discouragement Talks You Into a Bad Plan

The technician dimmed the lights and told me to look at the green dot. I have done this test enough times to know within the first few clicks whether the news will be good or bad. This time I knew before she said a word.

My visual field had shrunk again. A few degrees on paper, nothing dramatic to anyone reading the chart. But losing a degree at twenty percent and losing a degree at under ten percent are not the same loss. At twenty, a degree was a small piece of a field still wide enough to work with. At under ten, that same degree is a much bigger share of what I have left.

I did not cry in the chair. I waited until we got in the truck.

A Season Already Running on Empty

That appointment did not start the hard season. It landed in the middle of one already underway.

For months I had been behind on more than I wanted to admit, not because life fell apart around me, but because I hate disappointing people, including myself. I kept saying yes to a workload that had no more room, and every deadline I missed, self-imposed or not, added a small stone to a pile I was already carrying.

What surprised me was that none of the usual explanations for my “blahs” fit. I ate well. My weight remained steady. I exercised. I stayed in God’s word. I stayed connected and in communion with other believers. On paper, I was doing everything right, and I still could not shake what people like to call the doldrums, the blues, the funk. That is when I recognized it for what it actually was. Depression.

I know my body well enough to know the difference between tired and something else. My doctor agreed, and I started an antidepressant that same week.

I am not ashamed of that. I am thankful modern medicine can recognize when something in the body needs to reset, the same way I would be thankful for a cast on a broken bone. Sometimes the fight is chemical before it is spiritual, and both battles are real.

The medication helped my body. It did not touch the pattern underneath it, the habit of pushing through instead of asking, of deciding what I needed instead of asking God what He wanted to give me. I did not yet know how much that pattern would cost me. David did not know it either.

Saul Lied a Third Time, and David Stopped Asking

By the end of 1 Samuel 26, Saul has told David the same lie three times. “I have sinned, I will not harm you again.” David has been told this before. He spared Saul’s life twice, once in the cave and once in the camp with Abishai standing beside him arguing for a single spear thrust. Both times David waited on God instead of taking the matter into his own hands.

Then Saul walks away for the third time, and 1 Samuel 27:1 says, “And David said in his heart, I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul: there is nothing better for me than that I should speedily escape into the land of the Philistines.” (KJV)

Read again, and the sentence gives away its own problem. David does not inquire of the Lord this time. Earlier in Scripture, when David needs direction, the pattern is consistent. He asks and waits for an answer before he moves. But here, worn down by the same threat for the third time, he skips the asking. He decides in his own heart and calls it wisdom.

It does not go well. David ends up living among Israel’s enemies, lying to the king who shelters him, building a life on a plan God never gave him. None of it happens because David sinned in some obvious way. It happens because he tired of asking and started deciding instead.

What I Did With My Own Heart

The day I got that report, I hit a bottom I have not let myself hit since we buried each of my parents, since the postpartum season after each of my children was born, and since the first year I understood I was losing my sight. This was familiar ground, and I hated being back on it.

My husband was with me at that appointment. Usually a friend drives me, but he had rearranged his calls that day to be there instead. When the truck door closed, I broke down. He did not try to fix what he couldn’t. He just stayed close and gave me the freedom to cry. I do not think his willingness to interrupt his work day was a coincidence.

Every day after, I did the next right thing. I ate well. I slept. I kept moving one task at a time. But if I am honest, I did what I thought was best without asking God whether it was actually best. I said it in my heart instead of asking Him. I made the plan and called it faith because it looked responsible.

Asking Instead of Deciding

I do not have a tidy ending for this one, because I am not finished with it yet. What I do know is that David’s three-times-lied-to moment was not the problem. Discouragement is not a sin. Deciding in his own heart instead of asking the Lord is where the trouble started.

“Discouragement is not a sin. Deciding in his own heart instead of asking the Lord is where David’s trouble started.” — Heidi Gray McGill

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That is what I am trying to change now. Not the good food or the sleep or the pace, those things still matter. But before I decide what today needs, I am trying to ask Him first, even when I already think I know the answer.

If you are in a season like this one, worn down by the same hard thing for the third or fourth or tenth time, you do not have to have it figured out. You are just being invited to ask our Heavenly Father before you decide.

I always enjoy hearing from you. If this stirred something in your soul, leave a comment and let me know, or share it with someone who might need these words today.