The Battle of the Mind

Alright. I’ve finally pushed myself to start detailing some of the adventures my friends and I had while they were here. I guess I’ve been slightly reluctant about doing this over the past couple of days because I’ve been feeling slightly depressed. I never feel like writing when I’m feeling down. So why am I feeling depressed, you ask? I just had weeks of fun with my friends! I just celebrated Christmas not once, but twice, with two amazing sets of people! I had the pleasure of meeting a number of young adults who came home for college for Christmas! The past number of weeks have been a huge blast! But now they’re over. My friends are gone. Everyone my age has returned to their schools overseas. Holidays are over and it’s time to get back to work. I had to say goodbye to my visiting friends and watch them return to Calgary without me. I guess all the fun and excitement over the past few weeks have left me with a bit of a non-alcoholic hangover. It’s not the kind you can just sleep off, either. I tried that. Multiple times this week I have gone to bed at 9pm, (which, if you’re below the age of 50, is quite early in my opinion) and slept until 8am. Doing that made me want to stay in bed even more! It seemed that when I slept for that long, my body finally got the hang of sleeping and perfected it. Suddenly I found myself wanting to sleep just a few hours more cause it felt oh so very good to be in bed. But I know it’s a bad idea to sleep and sleep, especially when you’re feeling down about life. So I dragged myself out of bed and spent the next couple of days trying to figure out how to experience joy rather than sadness.

I talked to friends back home, and friends here, and everyone gave their own advice. But I think the best advice was always the simplest: ‘pray about it.’ So that’s what I have begun to do. I try to pray while I am walking around the city, and since my bike is broken again, this is a fairly common occurrence. One day I was praying for God to provide me with loving people to surround me during this after-holiday-blues season. Shortly after praying this, people in the streets began waving to me and saying hello. Now this is not an uncommon experience here, but it seemed that most of them wanted to say more than just ‘hello, what’s your name?” Many of these people walked right up to me and cheerfully engaged in conversation. One group of Egyptian students came up to me and introduced me to each person in their group, filling me in on their nicknames and what they like to do for fun. After that they invited me to go out for lunch with them. I realized at that point that there is no shortage of people who really want to get to know me, even right here in Egypt. I continued walking home and shook a lot of hands and said a lot of hellos to many smiling faces. That was a good day.

But then I went to bed. And the next day I woke up feeling just as crappy as the day before. At that point I decided to make a change in my daily routine. I decided to wake up an hour early (half an hour early to start out with, cause I despise mornings) so that I can have my daily devotions at the beginning of the day, rather than at the end of the day when I usually have them. This practice will allow me to focus my day on God and allow him to rejuvenate me for the day. I’m surprised how something so simple will, at the very least, change your perspective on the day, not to mention continue to bless you throughout it. In these days of loneliness I am learning lots about depending on God, rather than depending on others. People come and people go, but God is always there. I hate how cliché that sounds, but hey, I’ve found it to be the truth.

Now, I apologize for using up a blog on this serious hootenanny, but hey, I’m in charge so I can do what I want. Tomorrow I’ll start you off with our trip to the pyramids.