Feeling Down?

I can remember years ago having a real battle with anxiety attacks due to a stressful situation in which I found myself. I learned that I was slightly depressed causing me to have these anxiety attacks. There was one night that the attacks were so severe my wife called the ambulance because I thought I was having a heart-attack. The second night she called them the ambulance driver asked if I had been under alot of stress. I told him yes! He said I think you are having anxiety attacks...I had never heard of them.
I was depressed because of all the adversity I had been dealing with in the church I was pastoring. Decisions I made to relocate to another part of the country appeared to be bad ones. I felt like a failure because I thought I had let my family down. There were issues surfacing in our marriage. I wanted to commit sins that would nullify me from ministry. Without going into alot of detail I felt like my life was crumbling around me and I was an absolute loser. I WAS DOWN! I DIDN'T JUST FEEL DOWN I WAS DOWN!
That time period was some of the worst in my pastoral career. Yet in those awful situations I now draw from that time as a leader. Adversity has been one of my greatest teachers. I have been forced to learn about me and change things that weren't appealing as a leader.
Even since coming to Alabama I have had moments of feeling down, but nothing like I felt in those days. Yet, when someone left the church or caused me problems I would go back to that feeling like a failure...through the past eight years of pastoring some of the greatest people on the planet I have grown through that. What am I saying? God never promised a rose garden. He just promised to be there in the good, the bad and the real bad times. Find out what's getting you down...and deal with it. As you do...in time you will actually grow from it. Hey..its late...I'm tired and heading to bed!