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I am weary with my groaning; all night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with tears. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of all my enemies. – Psalm 6:6

That was me. Word for word. I could not have said it better myself, and I was very surprised to stumble upon it this week during quiet time.

Restless through each night. Sleepwalking through each day. Feeling old, tired and defeated by the enemy. Numb. Hopeless. Stuck. That was me.

So what changed?

I got mad. I got even. And then I gave up.

The answer to my plight, as it turns out, was just a few chapters away in Psalm 4:4. It says, “Be angry and don’t sin,” and then, “Put your trust in the Lord.” In my words, that means get mad, get even and then give up.

One point of this passage is that we can’t sit in our shit (pardon my language). We must be moved. One commentary I read on this passage suggested that we need a “vehement commotion of the mind and heart.” We have to shake loose from the slumber. We have to wake up and get mad. We have to want it, badly. We have to feel something, whether it’s anger, grief, fear…we have to get fired up. We have to oppose the carelessness, numbing out and carnal security that comes from filling holes in our lives with idols and self-medication.

So, step one…get mad!

And then step two, positively respond to that emotion. Mediate on it. Calmly and objectively examine it. Get even, as in level-headed. Don’t be carried away by the emotion. Yeah, I have a lot of experience getting step one wrong. And I am equally qualified with not appropriately responding to emotions. But it’s how you get from there to here, or from here to there.

Luckily, there’s a step three to help with steps one and two. Give up. You do this by placing your trust in the Lord. Yeah, I know that sounds so cliche and cheeseballs. So Sunday School. But when you truly hand things over to God, truly surrender them, I’ve learned that good things happen. Crazy good things. Transformational things. You just have to give up!

Going back to the first passage in Psalm 6…that terribly dark picture of my former existence…take a look at how that Psalm ends. It says the Lord has heard me, my prayer, my supplication. He will receive it. He will turn my enemies back from me. That’s the promise.

This is the path I’m on, and let me tell you, it works. Feel what you’re feeling (get mad). Wake yourself up, and actually engage with the emotions that are bubbling up inside you. Appropriately respond to those emotions (get even). Examine where they are coming from, what they mean. Meditate on them. And then, hand them right on over to God (give up) and ask for Him to deliver. He will. He always does.