We recently became aware of a gentleman's need to know how to make a positive change in his life,  to find a reason to believe in life itself.  A reader, who commented that he would be glad when life was over in order to solve the issues in his marriage, was feeling hopeless. He sounded as if he believed there was nothing he could do to bring change into his life that would make it worth living.  I have been there. I totally understand the desparation of feeling like a victim of your own life.  Prolonged dispair and dealing with the stress of it all begins to make bio-chemical changes in our actual body/mind functions. It can become dangerous to our physical health. It is possible to deplete vital chemicals and biological elements,which our minds need to function rationally. Just as a lack of vitamin C used to cause "Ricketts" in days gone by, before people understood the value of that vitamin, an onslaught of unexpected events, or a series of traumas, or years of unhappiness use up vital nutrients that keep us functioning with joy in our lives. Not being aware will cause an exhausted individual to have difficulty thinking their way through their struggle.
I am not a doctor, psychologist, or any other person who has a degree to explain these things. But you cannot live through a similar circumstance yourself without becoming educated on some level. Childhood traumas may set you up for not being able to deal with adult traumas. Add to that, the fact that we find ourselves drawn to others who also have lived in some kind of trauma, you will find two individuals who don't know how to live, and cannot help one another. This makes a shaky foundation for meeting lifes ordeals with strength.  Often an outside person is not just recommended, but is also critical to help walk us through the bad times. But that person must be healthy, and strong enough not to become what is called Co-dependant to you.  In addition, this person must not be someone who will jeopardize your marriage or relationship with your children, and most especially with God.  In other words they must not be someone who just slips into the empty slot which occurs when a relationship in your life goes sour. They must be someone who can come along side and help us refocus.  And they will direct us to medical help sometimes.
As I am writing this an image comes to mind of my poor flowers which have lost all thier blooms from the stress of having too much rain lately.  It is also too hot for a lot of them.  Struggling to survive, they quit sending nutrients to the blooms.  They fall away much more quickly than they might have, and they don't put on new buds until the stress is past.  All living things are like this. Some of my plants I have moved around trying to sheild them from the elements. But the silly thing is, I sometimes don't do the same kindness for myself.  There's an old saying that we should have sense enough to come in out of the rain. Sometimes the simplest choices are the hardest to make under stressful circumstances. It stands to reason that we lose our bloom when we are deep into life events that make us feel like we are drowning. Solution, get out of the rain.  God promises that he has a future for us.  Unlike the plant, we can make choices that move us into a better environment.  And that is vital for our health.  Our hope is in knowing God is on board with choices that move us out of the circumstances that are destroying us!
God's promise is a future with hope:
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

And also abundant life:
 John 10:10
The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

He also says He will not give us more than we can endure:
1 Corinthians 10:13
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

And he asks us to choose life:
 Deuteronomy 30:19
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.
We totally must choose to hang on these promises and realize that anything that seems otherwise is a lie of Satan.  He is doing everything he can to deceive you.  So it is up to you to choose...God's promises or Satan's lies.  Rebuke Satan. Jesus did. That's step one to open your eyes to God's truths. Ask, believe and receive the wholeness of God.

It's always good to realize that you are not alone in the desparation that life can bring you to. Historically, some great men of God have been where you are. Job is the most notorious Bible character, but consider this verse from the New Testament:
2 Corinthians 1:8
For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life:

Choosing a Path to Renewal

I was raised in a home where being thrifty was a virtue.  My mother truly believed that God blessed that attitude more than any other.  I often admired her for her ability to make every cent go the distance.  She helped us save money, and was faithful to a fault about giving her tithes. But when she was young she also had a lovely passion for change about her. When she thought it benefited her greater plan, she resewed buttons, and washed and saved curtains, and patched clothes. But every season that rolled around she completely refreshed the house. She pulled out or purchased curtains and bed linens, fresh towels and cloths for the bath and the kitchen, and new rugs at each door.  I remember her ritual as some of the happiest times in my mother's life. It was such a passion for her to make her home as lovely as possible, not just for us, but also so her neighbors would enjoy.  Her flower gardens and her Christmas decorations were her greatest pride. And the collections in both grew with the years.
As time went on, money didn't go as far, in spite of her good money sense, and circumstances stole her joy, Mom changed. In the end, she was holding on to things she otherwise would have trashed in her earlier years. She began to be afraid to spend money on new things, and she locked herself into a world of the past. Down through the years, my finances have not allowed that  could change up my whole house in spring and in fall. And I have felt somehow cheated that her passion couldn't also have been mine. But I have had to look closely at my reasons for wanting to be like her. 
One, is that I truly love home decor.   Yet for me, I have to be careful that it doesn't become an obsession for visual appeasement, rather than a passion for newness, and having a clean renewed home. In addition, I have to revisit occasionally my attitudes toward "thrift."  Sometimes, I back completely away from the natural state of life's renewing, and find myself frozen in time, thinking, "I don't have money for that." I will fall prey to my own conception of God loving the thrifty, to the point of abandoning his love of provision and newness in all things.  I have caught myself before, wondering how you can be both. But the clue is that early in Mom's marriage, she wasn't thrifty as an excuse to hang on to things, she was thrifty as a means of being in a constant state of change, of newness.  That is what was Godly about it.  Not that she saved something to be used again, as I presumed over the years, but that she used the money she saved to dress things up and make our world a brighter, happier place. I believe God blessed her in this for a lot of years, until she began to care more for the things than the dressing of the house.  There is a fine line that when we cross it, we digress into selfishness, and lack of faith. It is a battle that I often wage with myself. And I confess that I have to make a spiritual adjustment on a regular basis.
The Lord has given me a word, which I now use to describe my design work.  I want it to brand my work, and my mind. The word is "PRINK." It means dress for show, preen. On the surface, it would seem to be a word of boastfulness. "Dress to show off?"  But it is anything but.  Prink signifies for me the very process of God to desire newness and redressing, and beauty in our world.  We dress our children to be presentable at school. We dress for work to set a tone at work, to make our clients comfortable with whatever we do, so they might trust our sincerety. We dress our windows to regulate the light and heat coming into our homes.  We dress our food so that it is appealing to eat. Need I go on?  Our lives are in a continual state of dressing and redressing almost everything we do. And for me, I have to find a place where it is not so much about the finished product, or the design as the doing of it. I need it to be a passion and joy, a reason for living, but not an obsession to the details. I need to let the Spirit of God which designs to live through me, and be able to trust him to provide for my life's work.  I need to be willing to let go of the old and welcome the new.  I need to grow in this area of my life, and move forward with the restraint of thrift where necessary, so that I can bring change that is continually refreshing and Godly into my family's world.

Lord, see my need, and hear my confession. Strengthen my will to let go and find new. And help me not see thrift as a do nothing state, but a careful use of what you provide so that I might fulfill your passion to make all things new in MY life. AMEN

When I take pictures, my favorites are the macros.  Being behind a lens that magnifies the details of tiny things that I often can't see with my eyes, simply amazes me.  But more than that, it gives me more reasons to believe in God.  My understanding of God grows with the glimpses I get of beauty and design in every thing that exists. It is difficult to get a picture of a flower which will sometimes seem static, without finding there are tiny bugs living among the leaves. Like the song about the frog in the pond, there is always something tinier. As with the universe there is always something bigger.  That says to me that God is so much grander than I can put my mind around. But the very assurance that it is true, is why I beleive there is a God.
The patterns, the images, the colors, the systems, the designs, the likenesses and differences, the fact that things stay together in an environment that is pulling apart...the more I know the more I believe that there is something that holds it all, molds it all, remakes it all, renews it all, and gives it power and beauty. The cycles of life and death, and the workings of things as inanimate as minerals to bolster life, are parts of a design to me. And because God is a designer, I love to see his majesty working through little ole' me.
When I was a child, I loved that he gifted me with the ability to see his great works. But when I had a friend in school who was blind, I loved how he gifted her to experience his great works. She simply amazed me how she was even more a part of her elements than I could ever be.  She lived in constant communion with things I missed.  She used sound and air in a way that I only saw through her eyes.  Without sight, she understood things with a unique means of observation.
Every thing on earth is linked in some way to every other thing. It is so difficult for me to believe that there is nothing that links them.  Just a pure old accident of an explosion? It leaves a lot for me to question about what was there before the bang! So much organization, repetition, with great contrasts of myriads of color and varieties in uniqueness....it has to be by design and to be such there must be a designer.

Thank you God for the diversities and similarities in the great design of the universe and all that is in it. We will never lack a reason to know more about your marvelous creation. Thank you for the Word which helps us try to wrap our mind around the immensity of it all. Thank you that in the hugeness of it all, you considered human kind worthy of your special love and consideration. In Jesus name, AMEN