How Do We Help Women Deal With Anxiety And Depression Without Drugging Them Into A Stupor?

Yeah, I've had comments deleted. Yeah, just it's insane, especially having to double -check that I'm in a

Christian group where this is being discussed, having to make sure. Like, wait, what group am

I in? Am I on like my crunchy mom's group of just the melting pot of all the moms?

Or is this like, oh, this is the Christian group that this is in, and they're deleting my comments, and they're warning me that I'm gonna be removed because I told someone they needed to seek the

Lord's forgiveness for their behavior.

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

I'm your host Tim Mullett, and I'm joined with my lovely wife Elizabeth Mullett as we answer the age -old question, how do we help women deal with anxiety and depression without drugging them into a stupor?

So, Honey Biscuit, have you ever dealt with anxiety and depression before? I have experienced them, unfortunately.

I think most people, you know, when you talk about anxiety and depression, if you talk about them as individuals who are not currently mastered by life -dominating anxiety and depression, they think that somehow you've never experienced these things.

So we did this Twitter poll that seemed to set the

Twitter world on fire. We had 7 .2 million views on this stupid, innocuous

Twitter post about ladies with messy houses, in other words.

So I put this message out where I showed some pictures of some messy houses, and I said that essentially

I go into houses like this every day for my job, and these women, they're probably all on antidepressants, and they use this label that they're depressed as a club to basically bash away all responsibility to clean their home.

We had millions of views on this stupid thing, and we had ladies who just were screaming and hollering at us saying that they are leaving

Christianity. How dare you! How dare we rebuke them?

How dare we tell them that... There's another man trying to speak to women's issues.

I mean, that's essentially how it went. I mean, so, you know, they're just screaming at us, how dare we tell them that they have to clean their home and all this stuff, and now

I'm, you know, become a... This is why I am practicing witchcraft or I've become a druid or something like that now.

Because of these, you know, ridiculous, you know, patriarchal men who dare to suggest that we should clean our home.

But, I mean, you have some experience like this with ladies online on Facebook groups in general to where you have ladies who are essentially screaming at you and calling you names and everything else because you're daring to suggest to them that they need to take personal responsibility and actually repent of sin in their life.

Yeah, yeah, it's happened. It's happened to me. I'm a victim. Yeah, just in Christian women groups, unfortunately, it happens all too often where a woman will come on asking for help, dealing with anxiety, depression, just can't get my life together.

How do you guys stay on top of all the things we have to do at home and taking care of the kids and your husband and all the things?

And basically, you know, they may even just outright confess in their posts that they are anxious, depressed, worried, overwhelmed, all these things.

What do I need to do? And immediately, the majority of the comments are, Have you had, you know, your...

Have you had your levels checked? It's always this, like, vague, like, have you had your levels checked? And all women know what that means.

Like, have you gone and had your thyroid checked? Did you check and see if you have a vitamin D deficiency? Whatever.

Have you had your hormones? Like, all that stuff done. Like, you need to run tests because that's...

You need to check there first. Like, don't repent of your worry and your anxiety and your inability to get off the couch and wash some dishes and cook some food.

Just don't repent of it and actually put off and put on and do the

God honoring thing. You probably need a pill. You need some supplement or some vitamin or there's something wrong with you physically.

Not to say that there aren't things that contribute to feeling poorly and that being a temptation to want to sit around and do nothing or to want to sit around and be sad and feel hopeless and despair at life and all the things that have to get done on top of you feeling crappy.

Of course, those are temptations, but it's not an excuse when God commands us to rejoice in all things.

He commands us to work unto Him, which means, like, be a hard worker, get up, do your job.

And He doesn't say anything about rejoicing in all things except when you're severely deficient in vitamin

D or have an overactive thyroid or something.

But when I try to tell women, I try to comment and say, like, you need to ask the

Lord to forgive you for not rejoicing. I try to do it in a loving way.

Have you tried asking God to forgive you? Have you tried reading God's Word on what He says you should be doing in this area?

And it's just... Have you lost your mind? That's so mean. That's so hateful.

Well, it's funny, because as I've read your comments on these things, I mean, you're obviously, when you say these things, you're a lot more nice and a lot more kind and you...

Not that I'm... I don't think that I'm rude when I say these things, but I definitely don't, you know, on the front end of things.

You're just a guy and you're blunt. And sometimes you talk to women as if you talk to guys, which guys can handle, and so women can't handle it.

They can't handle the truthfulness without, like, a bouquet of roses to dash. And even then they made fun of you as well. Well, that's what

I'm saying, though, because when I look at your comments, you put all the, you know, the bouquet of roses and like, hey,

I... Flowers and smiley faces, and I promise I love you when I'm telling you the truth. You put all that stuff on there, you know,

I love you, I care about you, and, you know, this is what helped me, and, you know, I'm not trying to be... Yeah.

I'm not trying to... I try to relate. I try to say, like, I've just had the same struggles, I know, because how dare, you know, don't dare to talk to anyone you don't know if you haven't been there.

I mean, you do all that. You put, like, paragraph after paragraph of concern and care and, you know, all that, but then you, like, you still, though, you end on the, you need to repent of this, and you...

And, like, that's the thing that's really triggering, and it's triggering either way, so, I mean, that's the thing that ladies really, they really can't handle, you know, whether or not it's coming, like, in a nice, like, pleasant package, or if it's coming, like, in my way, just more of a direct matter -of -fact...

Right. ...way, but, I mean, that's the thing that really most people can't handle, but, I mean, most people, they really do assume that if you're talking about this subject, and you're daring to suggest that there's an answer to these things, they instantaneously assume that it's just something that you've never dealt with, and it's something that you've never been through.

And, I mean, I know that in my life, I mean, I... I mean, I was trained in anxiety from a very early age.

I mean, I grew up being an anxious person. I grew up being, like, characterized by life -dominating anxiety in a lot of ways.

I mean, it's just, I mean, the air you breathe, you know, you need to get an A on the test. If you don't get an A on the test, you're, you know, you're not going to do well in school, and if you don't do well in school, you're not going to be able to get a good job, like, go to college or whatever and get a scholarship, and if you don't get a scholarship and go to college, then you're not going to be able to get a good job, and if you don't get a good job, you're not going to be able to get married, and, you know...

Nobody's going to want to marry you. Nobody's going to want to marry you, and you're not going to be able to, you know, provide for a family, and, you know, then you're going to be in debt, and, you know, all this stuff.

So, I mean, I knew that from an early age, and there was times, you know, in my life where I was severely depressed.

I mean, like, early years in college, I mean, I pursued sin with all that I could, and I saw that it didn't work, it didn't leave me fulfilled, it didn't, you know, offer what

I thought it would, and, I mean, I was so depressed at that point in my life that, you know, my mom was worried about me, like, legitimately concerned about me, and I went to the doctor at that point, and it was one of those things where I go to the doctor, and I'm just persuaded there must be something wrong with me because I just feel sick, like,

I feel terrible, I feel sick, and, you know, the doctor runs all the tests, and he's saying, hey, there's nothing wrong with you, and I just didn't believe him.

I'm like, this can't be right, like, because I feel so bad because I must be sick, you know, and the test ran up empty, and,

I mean, he just kind of looked at me and asked me, are you depressed, and I said yes, and he said, well, that's what it is, and he wanted to put me on antidepressant at that point, and I remember that just being a turning point in my life to where I thought, like,

I can't keep doing this, you know, I can't just feel this bad, and that really drove me to read the

Bible and to pray and to, like, seriously study the scripture, like, thinking, well, God has answers to these things.

There has to be answers, yeah. Yeah, there has to be answers, and I'm going to find out what they are because if there's nothing medically wrong with me, like,

I'm not going to turn to these drugs in order to fix life problems, like, this is just a life problem here, but,

I mean, you have experience like that, too, and, I mean, that was a turning point for me where, for me, like,

I haven't been characterized by a lifetime of anxiety and worry since then.

You know, when you have job situations come along, you're tempted to that, and we've had tough church situations come along where you've noticed that I've certainly been sad and disoriented and, you know, not knowing how to handle certain things, but,

I mean, these are things that you've dealt with, too. Mm -hmm. I was a little bit more stubborn to turn from them than you were,

I think. Kind of, you know, grew up the same way, characterized by anxiety and depression, discontentment with life circumstances.

Kind of grew up in a type of church where you're always afraid you're going to lose your salvation, and everything is kind of workspace, and so for a kid, you're just anxious all the time.

Your stomach is in knots constantly, and then, you know, maybe home life and things like that contributed in some ways, too, and that just carried over into the teen years and then the young adult years, and then

I'm claiming to be a Christian, but that's what I'm characterized by is just worry, fear, anxiety, depression, that kind of snowballing and leading into, like, guilt and shame and just kind of laziness and slothfulness and procrastination, and then it's just over and over and over again because I was never taking those thoughts captive or just repenting of my actions in that area until I didn't have anybody really in my life trying to keep me accountable in those ways until I met you, and you, by God's grace, helped me, but I was so stubborn to see it for what it was and to turn from it,

I think, to turn from my sinful habits of anxiety and depression and fear and definitely weak in those areas and just didn't think that there was any hope for real change for a long time early in our marriage.

Probably tempted you towards anxiety. I plead the fifth. Yeah. But yeah, definitely have personal experience with that and you have your own personal experience with it and then experience trying to help someone deal with that in a biblical way, and, you know,

I was never tempted towards, I never got to a place of such despair or desperation that I thought medication was the way.

Like, I do think that for anybody that turns to, for a

Christian at least, and we're not talking about unbelievers, obviously, there's no hope there. They don't have anything else to turn to, but for the

Christian, for women especially, but anybody who, I guess, turns to antidepressants, there's an aspect of getting to a, like you just, you're never doing the work of turning from the sin,

I guess. You're just letting yourself stay in despair and stay in a place of sinful worry, sinful lack of joy, choosing to not rejoice in your life, be content, be thankful, and it keeps going and going and going until you get to, you can get to a really dark place and a really desperate place where you think,

I just need to get out of this. I'm so, I just need to feel better. So you turn to doctors and you, like you did that one time thing and there's gotta be something wrong with me.

It can't be that I'm not repenting. It can't be that I've got some sin in my life that I haven't turned from, can't possibly be that.

So yes, doctor, give me the pill. Give me the pill that when I take it, I'm gonna feel better tomorrow.

This is gonna be, these feelings are gonna be gone, especially for women. That's appealing.

But as you're talking to the women online, I mean, you frequently have gotten women very offended at you.

I mean, in these Facebook groups and in these mommy -bog kind of groups and it seems like the ladies over and over and over again, they only think about these topics in terms of biological solutions, as you're mentioning, like they need to get their hormones checked, they need to change their diet, they need to exercise, they need to go out and ground or whatever.

But then what they, they all seem like very hostile to like the idea that they need to repent and that these are spiritual problems that they need to treat with spiritual solutions.

I mean, you've even had like people, like your post removed. Yeah, I've had comments deleted.

Yeah, just, it's insane, especially having to double check that I'm in a

Christian group where this is being discussed, having to make sure, like, wait, what group am

I in? Am I on like my crunchy mom's group of just the melting pot of all the moms or is this like, oh, this is the

Christian group that this is in and they're deleting my comments and they're warning me that I'm going to be removed because I told someone they needed to seek the

Lord's forgiveness for their behavior, for their laziness, for their lack of joy, for their, all the things that they put in their post.

How dare I tell them that they needed to repent of it, even trying to do it in a loving way, trying to like frame it in a way that's like, look,

I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to act like I've got it all together. When I tell you, when

I try to tell you what I believe to be the truth in God's word, that there's hope, you have to do the work.

We don't want to do the work. We want a quick fix of what a pill might give us, what we're promised in the medication instead of the work of repentance, actively turning from these things, putting off this sin and putting on obedience and the hard work of living a faithful life in these areas.

So a lot of what happens, so as I was making that post online, I had all, there was post after post after post saying this is why

I hate Christianity and this is why I hate Christians and this is why I'm turning to witchcraft and all this kind of stuff.

They're not Christians. This is why I left the church. You'd even have the funny ones.

I was considering going back to church and then I saw this and I don't want anything to do with you hypocrites. So they had that kind of reaction which is just, it's basically

I don't want accountability in my life whatsoever and I don't want to be told what to do. Jesus says that the men love the darkness rather than the light because their deeds are evil.

Why do you hate me? It's because I testify to you that your works are evil. That's obviously going to be part of the reaction is that people, they just don't want to hear that they're the problem and as you're saying, they're looking for these simple fixes to all that but then a lot of people also, they had this response that if you say that people should repent of their anxiety and if you say that they should repent of their depression and their worry and their sloth, like their idleness, like these ladies need to get it together, clean their home and everything else.

If you say that they need to repent of these things, then what they'll immediately say is that you're asking them to pray away the anxiety and a lot of it is that they just don't understand really how depression and anxiety actually work.

When you think about it, the way depression works is that God's made us in such a way that when we make an irresponsible choice, we're going to feel guilt and shame and condemnation that comes from that irresponsible choice and so you can imagine depression like a spiral, like a downward spiral into depression.

So you make irresponsible choice number one and you're going to feel guilt and shame and condemnation from that choice and then what happens is that when you try to deal with that guilt, shame and condemnation that you feel, that's going to typically lead you to irresponsible choice number two, right?

So you do irresponsible choice number two and then you're going to get all the guilt and shame and condemnation from that and then in response to that, because you feel all this shame, you feel all this guilt, then it's responsible choice number three and pretty soon you're like irresponsible choice number 20 down the rabbit hole of depression.

You wake up and you say, hey, there's dishes all over my sink, all over my counters, everything's a mess.

There's clothes laying around the house all over the place. I'm sitting around all day long doing nothing because I'm weighed down by this guilt and shame.

I'm doing the bare minimum at home. I'm just kind of laying around all day long. I'm snapping at my kids, snapping at my husband, everything else.

You get to the very end of that kind of spiral and then it's just like, hey, if you're praying anything at that point, it's just God, can you make my feelings go better, right?

Right. And then you've got the issue of sometimes people not praying at all, just trying to hide from the

Lord because they feel so guilt ridden over the disobedience and then they keep hiding and they keep hiding and then it gets worse and worse because not going to him about it, confessing it and turning from it, it just stays and then it builds upon that.

You keep making that choice every day to not turn from it. So I'm just going to, I see the pile of dishes,

I see the whatever, I'm just going to like ignore that. I'm going to go lay in my bed. They're depressed that they let it get this way.

They're unhappy in their life for whatever reason, whether God's got them in a season of trial or whatever it is and they're not choosing joy in that.

So they let everything go and then they ignore it and they go hide under the blankets instead of just repenting and turning to the

Lord and saying, please forgive me for giving into that. Please forgive me for giving into that lack of joy. Anxiety, whatever it is, laziness to not do the things that you've called me to do as a wife and mother and then just feeling hopelessness like I'll never change and they just, they don't get out of it.

A lot of it is what you're saying in terms of it's just that simple Adam and Eve in the garden.

Yeah. Like they sin and then they hide themselves from the Lord and instead of coming to him and accepting his forgiveness and starting to make responsible choices, what they're doing is they're just...

They let the shame and guilt take over thinking that they can actually really hide from him as if he doesn't see and know.

But then he does. I mean, obviously he's looking, he sees, he knows what you're doing and so what happens often is like you have people they're at the end of this spiral, at the very end and they're not coming to God with it.

They're not making responsible choices. They're like 20 bad choices in and then at that point they're just saying, hey

Lord, take the bad feelings away if they say anything, right? Right. I want to feel better. And you could probably speak to that too.

I mean, ladies in the midst of depression and despair, I mean, it all just turns into I feel bad and I want the bad feelings to go away and I'm desperate to latch on to anything.

You've let it go too far and now you're to this point where just make it stop.

Right. So yes, please, please give me the medication. If that will just make this all stop and I get it.

When you're in it, it feels hopeless. When you've gotten to that point,

I've been there. When you just have, you've made the choices over and over again and you've let yourself get to this place, this pit and it feels really, really hard to get out of it, but it's not.

It's just make the choice. Go to the Lord. He's faithful and just to forgive us.

If we confess our sins. And sometimes, yeah. Yeah. We just keep running. Yeah, you keep running and then, you know, and so then when you think about like what, what's happening there, you know, they, if they're praying for anything, it's

Lord, take it away. Within their, you know, all the moms together are latching on to all the materialistic kind of solutions.

It's like, hey, take this vitamin. You know, get your hormones checked. Go outside.

You know, a lot of people right now are going to diet and exercise, which I mean, obviously, you know. Of course, by all means, you know, examine your life and see if there's things that are stumbling blocks for you, whether it's for health because you've made you've made poor decisions on what you fuel your body with or so maybe you are lacking in things that really do help you feel better.

And so you're putting these stumbling blocks in your life. Maybe you're maybe you're overweight. And so that's contributing to feeling it feeling really difficult to get up and do your jobs because you have let yourself go.

You're not taking care of yourself. Been there, done that. So, yeah, you're putting stumbling blocks in your life.

So definitely like examine those things and say, okay, I need to obey no matter what.

But are there things in my life that that I'm allowing to be there? Am I not taking care of myself?

Am I not clothing myself in strength? You know, to do the task that God has called me to do. Am I looking to the world to tell me what my home should look like?

So I'm getting depressed because my house doesn't look like the picture perfect little Pinterest house. So why bother?

Why, why clean it? Why do dishes? Why do anything? My meals don't look like these meals. My, my decor doesn't look as good as these people.

My, my this, my that isn't good enough. So I'm not even going to bother. So you're just not being thankful.

So get these stumbling blocks out of your life for sure. And things, things will feel easier if you're removing some of these obstacles.

But that's still, even if you choose not to do that, you still don't have an excuse to sit there and sin in these ways, giving into these fears and anxiety and depression and discontentment and ungratefulness.

There's still no excuse. But then people seem to be genuinely hostile to treating these things as spiritual solutions.

Yeah. Like meaning, I mean, you could, you could, you could tell them all day long, hey, go take a vitamin, tell them all day long, go, you know, go get on that antidepressants because sometimes it's hard, you know, you can tell them all day long, get your hormones checked and go to the doctor and see if it's a thyroid thing and whatever else.

But what they really don't want to hear is that this is, like, this is a you problem, like that you need to be rejoicing in the

Lord and that you need to be taking your thoughts captive. Yeah. And it seems like ladies are particularly hostile to that in general.

I mean, that's, I mean, that's been your experience when you've talked to them online. Definitely. Definitely.

It's been my experience and even in watching you with, with your online interactions too.

I mean, like this Twitter post, for instance, it's just maddening to watch, to watch the reaction to it all.

And it's just, it's proof to like, and maybe, maybe there are plenty of husbands who are trying to hold their wives accountable and they're just kind of hitting a brick wall where you can't get through and the wife is just not going to hear it.

But a lot of times, men, maybe they tried in the beginning and it didn't go well and they gave up.

Maybe they're too passive and they've never tried at all. But men really need to take responsibility in that area too of holding their wives accountable and calling them to repentance.

She's your sister in Christ. You know, she's your wife, but she's your sister in Christ and we're commanded to, you see your brother sinning to point it out.

And that's the loving thing to do, to point it out and to call them to repentance and to care enough to do that.

That is not loving at all to just watch somebody live in sin in any way and just watch it.

Like, well, they won't listen to me, so I'm just not going to bother saying anything. And that doesn't, that doesn't do anything good for your marriage, doesn't do anything good for that friendship, that relationship with each other either, if you're not going to do your job as a

Christian brother of hers and call her to repentance and keep her accountable in your walk together in your marriage.

So husbands need to step up too and be faithful. And that, if your wife has been giving into these sins for a long time, it may seem impossible.

It may seem like, oh, this is gonna, she's just not having it. I'm trying to do it. She's not having it.

Like, you know, but you don't need to be like that either. You need to not give up as a husband and give into the despair of she's never going to change.

I'm not going to bother. This is crazy. It's just like not happening. Call her to repentance.

Be faithful and God will bless that. Even if she doesn't change, you're still going to reap the blessings of just obeying the

Lord in that area. Yeah, and I think that, you know, as you think about depression as a spiral that we're talking about, like just it's a series of these choices.

And so, I mean, you can imagine you're 20 irresponsible choices in, and these are obviously issues that both you and I, we have personal experience with in a wide variety of ways.

And I can imagine if you're just like at the very end of this spiral and you're down in the middle of, you know,

I'm experiencing all the guilt and shame and condemnation that comes from being 20 bad decisions in.

So, you know, what people often do is, as we said, they start out by saying,

Hey, Lord, take it away. He doesn't take it away. They try all these other solutions and, you know, that doesn't work.

A lot of them, they just accept this is who I am, right? This is who I am. Like, this is who I'm just going to be.

They take their drugs and they turn into a drug addict, a psychotropic drug addict forever. But then, you know, what's deceptive about it is it's like, well, all right,

I'm going to try to clean my dishes, right? So I'm going to go, I'm going to take one step and it's like, yeah,

I clean my dishes. I still feel terrible. You know, that didn't work.

That is the trap. That is definitely like women get so lost in that that it doesn't, that's another part of it.

Like women don't want to accept the calling that God has placed on their lives as a wife and a mother.

They want more. It's the old, you know, just feminism mindset of like this.

Is this really all there is? Is this it? And that can be, we could choose to get really depressed at like, is that all?

And it's like, such a foolish way of thinking. Like, what do you mean, is that all? This is a lot. This is a blessing and this is more than plenty.

This is enough. Taking care of kids and a home and a husband. And all of that entails.

And the next generation, right? Yeah. You're responsible for that. This is a big deal. And we've just been sold these lies that it is not enough, that you need more than that.

Like being stuck at home, you're stuck. That's what your life is.

You are just stuck. You poor thing, poor us, we're stuck here. We're less than, we're stuck.

This is our lot in life to do these lowly little tasks that nobody else wants to do.

And so we sink into this, just believe the lies, get depressed, train wreck, cycle over and over and over and over again.

And yeah, like you said, like, well, I prayed, you know, maybe I did pray and ask the Lord to forgive me for, you know, my lack of joy and my lack of.

But then I'm back at it. I'm back at it. Rejoicing, but I woke up this morning. I did the dishes last night or I did, okay,

I fixed some stuff. I did whatever I repented. Should I put off? I put on. And I woke up today and I still feel blah.

So apparently I need something more. I need something else. This isn't, yes, okay, I'm going to pray and read my

Bible, but I need something on top of all that. It's not enough. God's word is not sufficient for me.

I need that plus this pill. It's like the whole Jesus plus thing. Like the other religions who are like, oh yeah, sure, you know,

I worship these gods, but in Jesus is cool too. I'll add him to the thing. It really is like a

Jesus and, like Jesus plus my medication, Jesus plus whatever.

It's like, no, that's not, Jesus is enough and you need to really believe that. We just get so lost in the lies, discontentment, ungratefulness.

Yeah, I mean, you know, a lot of people, if they could realize that, you know, if it took you 10 years to get into, you know, this mess, it may take you, you know, 10 years to get out of it and a lot of people are looking for just some kind of quick instant, you know, take it all away, make the bad feelings all go away, but they don't want all the work that's going to come, you know, from making lifestyle changes from, as you're saying, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, of, you know, putting off the bad behavior, putting on the good behavior, addressing like the idols in their heart that are leading to this discontentment, you know, and all the envy and all the comparisons and everything else.

Yeah, I mean, obviously it's a lot of work and it's not going to happen overnight, but, you know, as we're looking at the post, you know, you had the, this is why

I hate Christianity. I'm going to become a, you know, a witch at this point.

You had all those, you know, you, I mean, you, I mean, they're basically the John the Baptist rebuking

Herod for having his, you know, brother's wife and, you know, he's then getting

John the Baptist head on a platter because he doesn't want to be confronted at that point. So, I mean, when you do have that, like, don't touch my sin, you know, don't tell me

I'm a sinner. Don't tell me I'm a sinner, whatever you do, or I'll scream at you and don't tell me

I need to change because I don't want to and whatever you do, I'm not the fault. I'm not to blame. So, you have all those kind of responses, but then, you know, you also have the responses where the ladies are kind of looking at you and they're saying, you know, there's two parts to this, like, you know, where's the man?

Why isn't the man doing the dishes? Right? So, why isn't, like, men make messes too, so why should

I have to clean this up? So, even if the husband's working all day long at his job, like, he needs to apparently come home and do all your jobs too.

Do all your jobs. So, you didn't do all day because you were upset. Right. So, yeah. So, like, part of it's that, and then part of it is, why is this my job?

And then the other part is, like, if this person is hurting and in pain, then shouldn't you help them by doing their job for you?

So, what would you say to that? Well, um, you tried that, um, early on in our marriage, and, you know, in this whole discussion, we're not, you know, we're not talking about seasons of life where, um, the wife legitimately cannot pull her weight in these areas.

And so, hopefully, she has a little bit of a loving, compassionate husband who is going to step up and, and carry the load, like, bear one another's burdens.

And so, if you're in a legitimate season of life where you cannot, like, you have had back surgery, you are, maybe you are having, yeah, maybe you are having a really legitimately horrible pregnancy.

There are women that are bedridden. I mean, we have friends at church that have gone through things like this.

Um, you're bedridden, you're in these situations where you literally can't do, um, that the, that your tasks to the fullest, the way that you're used to, maybe you can do, like, these bare, like, a bare minimum.

And so, yeah, he is gonna love, hopefully lovingly come in and help and, um, pick up the slack while you're in this trial.

That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a woman that's characterized by a discontent heart, an ungrateful heart, who's given in to despair and hopelessness to the point that she has given up, um, and just completely let go and says, like,

I, I can't. I can't. Where's my fainting couch? I can't do this. It's too hard.

It's too much. You do it for me, basically. I think in the, that's definitely something that, um, most, um, most people online, they're just expecting that if, if a man loves a woman, then he's just gonna step in and do her job for her.

And that's just kind of the assumption. The assumption is if she's in this deep, dark pit, you know, the only answer to that is gonna be that he's gonna come in and he's gonna do it.

He's just gonna take it over. He's gonna do her job for her. He's gonna, you know, take it on for himself.

I mean, he can work his, you know, 40, 50 -hour -a -week job and then come home and, you know, do it.

So part of it is, like, there's this expectation that if you love her, you're gonna take her job for her. Yeah.

Which is the, which is a problem. And then there's another part of it that is just this expectation that the, like, this job is just overwhelmingly hard in general.

And so we had people who were posting online, you know, about, like, 19th -century homemakers or whatever.

And, like, you know, 100 years ago, the homemaker job took, like, in order to do everything that there is to do today, to wash the clothes, to cook, to clean, to do the dishes, beat the rugs, you know, go out to the stream to gather water.

I mean, it was like a job that took 19 hours to do. And then when you think about, like, what's happening right now is,

I mean, you're in a situation where you have microwaves, you have dishwashers, you have, you know, you have washing, you have dryers, you have, you know, appliances, microwaves, everything else.

And so, you know, part of this discussion is, like, hey, man, if a man loves me, he's gonna step in and help, right? And then the other part of it is it's just so much to do and, like, it's way beyond, like, a single woman's ability to do.

Sure. So, you know, what would you say to women like that? I don't know.

Get over yourself. I mean, yeah, I mean, we're not saying either that, like,

I think sometimes people hear these kind of conversations and they think you're trying to say that a man just comes home and he goes and sits in his lazy boy and that's what we're advocating for or expecting and that's not it either.

I think that it's totally fine. Like, a husband knows that his wife is being faithful and, um, by all means, he can come home and he can jump in there and, like, hey, babe, do you need any help with anything?

She's over there cooking and, you know, he sees that she's been working. He sees that the kids are still alive.

She obviously did something. She obviously did something today. Um, so, of course, it's not to say that he can't, like, do anything, like, to help her.

It's not that. It's just taking over her role completely, going to work 8, 9, 10, 11 hours a day and your wife does nothing because she's so overwhelmed.

They say that they're, you know, they've been working all day long watching these kids while the clothes pile up and the dishes pile up and everything else.

Yeah. So, I mean, like, most women are going to fight you on that. They're going to say, hey, you know, you don't know what it's like to watch kids all day long and everything else, but...

Sure. Yeah. There are seasons. There are seasons that are going to be... We're not, when we say, we're not saying it's, like, easy, um, in that sense.

Like, it's all just, a bed of roses and little golden streets and everything's happy. Unicorns.

Of course, it's work. We were put here to work. So, of course, the husbands are out laboring for us to bring home money.

We're laboring at home. It's not, like, easy in that sense. Um, but it's not rocket science to take care of your kids and everything does not have to be perfect.

If you're being faithful, hopefully, you have a husband who's not expecting perfection and you need to not expect perfection out of yourself either because we can get hung up on that too.

And I know I've, I've struggled with a temptation towards perfectionism, um, throughout my whole life in all kinds of areas.

And so, of course, in homemaking, that has, um, come into play where, you know, if I can't get it just right,

I just give up. And so, it's like, kind of don't do anything. If I can't, if I know it's not gonna be perfect, it's not gonna be right,

I just don't bother because that's depressing. Um, there I am with depression again. So, um, yeah,

I just, you just have to be faithful and you just have to do the work. Yeah, it's gonna be hard.

We can't, we can't just expect this quick fix in life for everything to be easy.

Um, it's work. God's called us to work. He's put us here to work. We have, we've been given dominion over, over the earth and women have a role in that.

This is our role. Accept your role and move on and have joy in it. I think that's the thing.

Rejoice in the Lord here. Yeah, I think that's the thing that's really offensive is like the idea that there might be roles, you know?

Yeah. So then if there are... Yeah. Roles. Like if there's roles, like, so, most, most ladies in this kind of situation, they, they don't feel any guilt whatsoever, you know, saying to the man, um, yeah, you should go do your job and work, you know, eight, ten hours a day for me.

And then come share in mine. Yeah, come share. Meaning, basically do all of them for me.

Well, and that's, I mean, so that's what typically happens. So like when you're looking at these kind of things, I mean, I know of plenty of situations like this that I won't mention specifically by name where people just let their house go and they, like, they just let it go and they let it go and then, you know, what people don't realize is that, you know, you can come into that kind of situation and you try to take it over, you try, like, you think the compassionate thing is to try to help people and the problem is, hey, you clean their house for them, it's just going to go back to messy in a couple weeks.

Right. Like, because they don't have this thing in them that they need. Like, meaning, like, they just let it go and they let it go and they let it go and they don't have whatever they need to have to take responsibility for their life and take responsibility for this mess and to say, hey, it's my job to clean it up and I'm going to do it.

And so, I mean, you could step in and, like, you think, oh, well, yeah, the compassionate thing is to help them, but the problem is when you help them, like, you're just enabling them.

Definitely. And so, I think you have, like, a lot of ladies in this situation who, like, they equate, like, if you love me, you'll do my job for me, essentially.

Yeah. And I know that, you know, you tried to do that early on when

I was pregnant with one of the boys and I had fairly easy pregnancies, but just didn't respond well to even my easy pregnancies.

There was a lot of, like, oh, this is so hard. I can't handle it. And so, I did give in to just those overwhelmed feelings and this is also hard being pregnant and still having to take care of the house and take care of two other toddlers and, um, letting, you know, letting the dishes pile up some and, you know, you had a couple of things that were kind of, like,

I, you know, you didn't ask much of me, but you, like, the dishes being done and, like, the laundry being folded and put away were, like, important to you.

That made you feel like the house is clean. Like, there could be toys all over the floor, but you felt good if the dishes were cleaned and put away and the laundry was clean and put away.

So, like, even if I only did the two things that were the most important to you, um, that's, like, nothing, but I just couldn't even handle that giving into my feelings and my, uh,

I'm so tired and so whatever. And so you tried to help and think, like, okay, she's pregnant, she's got, you know, two other toddlers to take care of, you know, this is,

I'll help her out and I'll do it. And you did it for a few days in a row and then I did, I remember thinking, like,

I would see the dishes there and think, like, oh, I'm just too tired for this. I know he'll get it when he comes home.

He's been, he'll do it because he's been doing it the past few days. He'll do it. And then you finally, like, were like, this is not helping her.

She's not realizing, you know, that she needs to get in here and do this and be faithful by me doing it for her.

So you just stopped and the dishes fell over like a week before I got it in gear and got it together.

But yeah, it's not helpful. Well, I think, yeah, the lie is that you're going to help a person that way, but then the problem is that, like, all the guilt and shame and despair that they're feeling is, like, they're feeling that because God's made them to work, essentially.

And like, and that's something that's not really factored in. So, you know, Ecclesiastes talks, like, the preacher in Ecclesiastes says that,

I've seen that there's nothing better than a man rejoicing in the toil with which God has given him to toil under the sun.

And, you know, like, a big part of this is that God's made us to work. And when we don't work, then we feel this despair and we feel this hopelessness.

And I mean, that's essentially what the Nazis did to the Jews. I mean, you know, the Nazis, like, would make the

Jews build a wall and then after the Jews built the wall, the Nazis would make them tear it down, you know, immediately in a way to demoralize them.

And the reason why it was demoralizing is because, you know, everyone knows, even the pagans know, that work gives you this sense of accomplishment, right?

Like, that you've done something, that you've done something productive. But then if you make someone work and then you say, hey, you were working for nothing, right?

There was no purpose. Like, that totally demoralizes them. But then the idea, though, is, I think, what a lot of people don't understand in this depression discussion in general is that they think, hey, the way you love someone is to help them.

But the problem is, if you take over their job, like what we're talking about, like, if you take over their job, then what you've done is, you're trapping them in this despair, in this guilt, in this hopelessness.

And, like, you think you're helping, but really, it's like, you're harming them because, because what you're telling them is, like, you don't really have a reason to be here, right?

Sure. Like, you know, you, like, whatever your reason to be here is, I can do it for you.

Yeah. And so I guess, you know, we don't even know why you're here, right? Yeah, and I think sometimes women, when they are given over to depression and anxiety, they take that out on their families, too.

And then when the husbands try to step in and help and do all their work for them, they resent them for it.

Even if they don't connect that and realize that they are resenting them for it, there's, like, it's, it's kind of like you're making it, you're putting it on display that I'm not doing this because you're stepping, you're doing it because I'm not doing it.

And I'm not doing it because I'm depressed and anxious and it's all too much and woe is me, I can't handle life, and so you're taking it over.

So now they're bitter and angry and resentful at you for taking it over because it's just shoving it in their face that they're not doing what they're supposed to do.

Even if that's not what you're trying to tell them, you're not, you may not be trying to communicate that to them that you think you're just being loving and helpful by doing it for them while they're in this season of despair that's been going on for five years or something.

But you're just, you're not, you're not doing anything remotely resembling help by continuing, letting them continue to be in this cycle of sinful anxiety and depression and soulfulness, all the different things.

That was one of the things that was interesting about the post in general is that on the one hand you have all the ladies who are screaming at us for daring to suggest that they're not doing their jobs.

But I think part of what was so scandalous about this, it was scandalous in different ways because one, you're criticizing women, two, you're criticizing people who are viewed as psychological victims in that way.

But I think the real shame was actually showing the pictures of what their homes look like. I think that that's part of what you're talking about there is where when the man is doing the job for the woman, he's exposing that she's incompetent in a certain way.

I think when I showed the pictures of it, I think on the one hand you have the ladies who are saying this isn't my job, but then intuitively they know it is their job.

They know deep down this is my job and this reflects so poorly on me. Yeah.

And then you're making a spectacle out of it. What you're doing is you're exposing my shame.

And so you have ladies who I'm not even showing pictures of their house, I'm showing pictures... Right, these are just Google image searches.

Googling messy houses and pulling some images. You didn't actually take pictures of real women's houses.

But then they're internalizing that and saying you're exposing my shame to the world.

Right. And that's what's part of it. It's like inescapably they know that a messy house reflects poorly on them as a woman, right?

It reflects really bad on them as a woman. And despite the fact that you have all these ladies come along and they want to say, hey, it's okay to not be perfect and it's okay to not be enough and all this kind of stuff.

What ends up happening though is as you're thinking about these things, they look at it and they know that, hey, this is reflecting on me and this isn't reflecting very well on me.

And all this shame and everything else is coming from that. But I mean, you've experienced this in your own life that you're not going to fight these things and get past these things until you actually take responsibility on your own end.

Sure, yeah. Actively taking those thoughts captive and putting off the sin of anxiety, worry, slothfulness, whatever it may be that's contributing to the depression and the despair, the hopeless feelings, the desperate feelings for wanting your life to be different.

Until I started just taking those thoughts captive and asking the

Lord to forgive me and leaning on the promises that He does forgive,

He's faithful to forgive us and His mercies are new every day.

And fighting that, things didn't change until I stopped being stubborn in those areas of life and really started actively turning from it.

And it wasn't to say that it all just magically went away overnight or that the temptation never comes back to give in to those things, that those thoughts never come back.

That's, yes, they do. They do come back sometimes. There are temptations sometimes. I get tempted if I slip into habits of not taking care of myself and so that makes me feel tired and weak and whatever.

There's temptations there. And that's why I talked about that earlier, like removing these stumbling blocks from your life.

Make it a little bit easier on yourself to be able to fight these things. Don't just sit there with all these temptations and never get rid of them.

You've got to get rid of those things too, but you've got, no matter what, even if you don't change those things, even if you don't change your diet, even if you don't make yourself stronger, even if you don't address some physical thing that might be there that's making it difficult, you still don't have an excuse to not rejoice in the

Lord. You still don't have an excuse to not be faithful to the task that He's given you as a mother and a wife. There is no excuse.

There is nothing in the Bible that says that do these things except. There's nothing like that.

I think a lot of people, yeah, a lot of people aren't making basic distinctions along those lines too.

Meaning, there are a variety of physical things, obviously, that can contribute to just I don't have any energy,

I'm weak, I'm tired, I feel sluggish. I mean, obviously, if a lady is sleep -deprived, getting up every few hours to nurse a baby, she's going to feel crazy.

She's putting junk in her body and she's morbidly obese and not moving all day and those are going to be temptations for you.

I've been there and done that and maybe not morbidly, but I've been in those areas where you just don't, you let yourself go, you don't care and then you're whining and crying because you have no energy for anything and you don't, you feel like you can't get anything done because you're not making wise choices to make that stuff easier.

But even, like I said, even then you don't, you can't just say, well, Lord, you know, I just couldn't because, you know.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. So, I mean, there might be any number of biological things like, hey, yeah, maybe your thyroid's messed up and that's resulting in your lack of energy.

Maybe, you know, maybe you do need to go on a diet, you know, get in shape, get better sleep, you know, clothe yourself with strength.

Maybe some of those supplements will help a little bit in terms of just giving you a little more energy, restoring your hormones, whatever else.

But like at the end of the day, though, I mean, there is no biological solution to joy.

There is no biological solution to thanksgiving. There is no biological solution to trusting in the

Lord, right? So, I mean, the Bible says trust in the Lord and do not lean on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge

Him and He'll direct your path. I mean, there's no medical solution, there's no drug that's going to help you to trust

God and cast your cares upon Him because He cares about you. There's no, you know, drug that you're going to take that's going to make you really, like, thankful, like, thankful for the life that God's given you, thankful for the family that He's given you.

There's no pill that you're going to take that's going to do that, like, that give you love, like, sacrificial love for your family, like, joy, peace, long -suffering, gentleness, meekness, kindness, faithfulness, self -control.

There's no self -control pill. There's no joy pill. There's no long -suffering pill. There's none of that, like, and there's no, like, get on the carnivore diet and you're going to have all the fruit of the

Spirit. I mean, it may give you more energy, you know, it may help you sleep better. It may... It may remove some temptations, but you still got to do the work.

Yeah, yeah. Spiritually. Yeah, so part of, you know, as we're talking about these things, like, part of it is, you know, you, there's ladies who, like, instantaneously, they say, hey, like, you have this messy house, you need to clean it up, quit using depression as a crutch for that.

They're going to scream, say, hey, I don't want accountability, I don't want responsibility. Like, you don't know what it's like, you know, you don't know what it's like at the bottom of this pit and everything else.

And then, you know, you need to do my job for me. That's part of what we talked about. Like, you need to do my job for me.

And then, like, you know, my job is so hard, you don't understand how hard it is, you know, with modern conveniences, with vacuum cleaners and dishwashers and washing machines and dryers and running water with hot and cold plumbing and everything.

Poor us. So hard. With the microwaves and the grocery stores that you can go to and, like, it's just so impossible.

So part of it's that. Grocery delivery. You don't even have to leave your house. So, I mean, a lot of those things are true, but then, you know, a lot of what you've realized in your life is just the importance of, like, part of why you speak to these ladies in such a direct way is because you've had people, like, speak to you in that kind of way, too.

Yeah. And it was my husband. You know, just, ladies, listen to your husband when he's trying to rebuke you.

Be thankful if you have anybody in your life. Heaven forbid it's a man who shouldn't be speaking to your woman issues, but, yeah, lay down your pride and listen.

But I definitely think that God has designed, like, marriage in such a way that, you know, men often are stronger in those areas and God's gifted them in such a way to help ladies deal with some of these things that maybe they don't actually want to deal with.

But then, I mean, obviously, like, you know, in marriage after marriage after marriage, it's not something, like, I mean, if you see, like, hey, you say these things to ladies, ladies are going to scream at you.

Yeah. And if I say these things to ladies, they're going to scream at me. Yeah, it doesn't matter. The ones that don't want to hear don't want to hear.

It doesn't matter who's telling them. Right. But then, I mean, there is something to be said about just, like, you know, what do you do if you're the husband in that kind of scenario?

Right? Just be faithful. Keep on trying, right? Don't give up. Keep on trying.

Yeah, I mean, and there's no, you know, and that's often what I'm trying to say to husbands, too, in these kind of scenarios is just to say, hey, man, like, don't give up.

And, you know, a lot of what's happening on the lady's end is they want the quick fix.

They just want their feelings to go away magically overnight without having to change how they're thinking, how they're acting, what they're doing.

You know, and then on the other end, though, the guys, they just want to say to their wife, like, hey, honey, you know, snap out of it.

You know, let's move on, right? Sure. Yeah. But then, I mean, Our feelings lie to us constantly, and men are much better at seeing that most of the time and being able to be rational and logical about it and recognize when that's happening.

And so count yourself blessed if you have a husband who is there in your life pointing these things out.

What a blessing that God hasn't left you to yourself, hasn't left you in that sin, that if he's put someone in your life that's pointing these things out, and if your husband has given up, if you're, like, listening to this episode and you are a woman who is struggling with these things and you can recognize it by God's grace, your eyes are opened to that behavior, and maybe you can think back and say, like, my husband used to try to tell me this stuff and he doesn't anymore.

Then go to him and ask forgiveness and tell him, please, you know, start doing that again and help me, you know?

Definitely. Well, I mean, I think as we're talking about this subject, I mean, what we want people to come away with is the idea that,

I mean, there is hope. You don't have to be dominated by these things. And, you know, the Bible says that there's no temptation that's overtaken you, but what is common to man.

And these are, I mean, these are common life problems. So common. Yeah, I mean, like, anxiety, depression, like, there's nothing more common than that.

Like, worry is a life problem. I mean, we're sinful human beings living in a sinful world where we, you know, we're not

God. We live in a messed up world. There's plenty to be anxious about if you let yourself. That's never going to go away, this side of heaven.

Right. I mean, like, you, I mean, you don't know how many days that you're given. I mean, we live under this illusion of control.

Like, we think that we're in control of the world, but we're not. I mean, like, we can barely even figure out what's going to happen in the next few moments of our day.

And so, like, worry is just the natural state of affairs for man. Like, you know, if you even think about the way that God's designed the world,

He's designed the world in such a way that you have to sleep eight hours a day. Right. And be utterly dependent upon Him.

Like, at His, you know, at the mercy of every, of other people around you, because He wants to teach you how to trust in Him.

And so, like, when you're talking about, like, issues like worry, issues like anxiety, when you're talking about issues like, you know, sorrow, despair, sadness, because, you know, these are just, these are basic human problems.

That all of us experience. And the Bible has answers to these things. You know, the Bible says no temptation is overtaking you.

You know, as we said, it was common to man. God's faithful. He's not going to allow you to be tempted beyond your ability.

But with that temptation, He'll provide a way of escape that you may bear it. I mean, if you just look at the

Bible, you trust the Lord with all your heart. You don't lean on your own understanding. Like, just trust that God is

God, you know. And a lot of, like, these things, like, they're as messy as it can feel when you're in this downward spiral of depression or downward spiral of anxiety.

As messy as that can feel, I mean, like, there's just simple answers. You know, trust and obey.

There's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey.

I mean, there's just, like, the issue is that Christian life isn't really meant to be complicated.

Right. We make it that way. Yeah, we make it complicated. I mean, we make it hard, even though conceptually it's really easy.

And if your homemaker is easy, I mean, just, yes, you're doing a job where there's no accountability in it whatsoever, you know.

Like, meaning, like, the only way you're going to do this job and do it well is if you have the fear of the

Lord. You know that God sees what you're doing and He's watching what you're doing and He cares about you and His plans are the best.

I mean, getting up in the morning and, you know, having a good attitude and cleaning your home and feeding your kids and teaching your kids, homeschooling your kids to the glory of God.

You know that, like, you're only going to do that, you're going to do that with a good attitude if you know that, you know,

God rewards those who diligently seek Him and it is better to serve Him than it is to bow down to your flesh and give in to despair and give in to hopelessness and give in to sadness.

And so... Absolutely. So if there's anything we can leave, ladies, ladies with and, you know, men with, too, if you're struggling with these kind of things as well, it's just to say that God's given us answers in His Word and He's given us everything in the

Scriptures that we need for life and godliness and His ways are good. But we thank you for listening and we hope to catch you on the next time.

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