Welcome to Nancy Wilson's Feminine Podcast, presented by Canon Press.

Welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Today the topic is the doldrums. Do you know what those are? It's a great word and it sounds just like what it means.

It's a state of inactivity or stagnation, a dull, listless mood.

It's also a windless calm condition on the ocean. So if you're saline, you're in trouble.

I was once on a ship, not a sailboat, a ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and we hit the doldrums.

And it was beautiful, but it was weird. I thought this is what those old sea stories are talking about.

In the doldrums where there's no wind and no ripple, you can just get stuck.

So I'm going to talk about that when a mood like that hits us and how I guess you could say we have to get a paddle out and start rowing to shore.

I imagine we've all experienced the doldrums sometime or other. You just feel uninspired or bored.

Nothing sounds interesting, you're not motivated. And if you don't snap out of it, you will soon descend into,

hmm, could be complaining or just discontent or self-pity or grumbling or a cranky attitude because the doldrums it turns out are a perfect breeding ground for that kind of sin and others no doubt.

But we are just creatures and we're prone to temptations and the doldrums is just another temptation.

It is not a sin to be bored, but it can become a temptation toward other sins, could be a temptation to be lazy, to be introspective, to just waste time.

So what do we do with the doldrums? How do we resist the temptation? And of course we know that God always has a way out for us in every temptation.

So whatever the cause, real or imagined, if you're dealing with this kind of thing from time to time, or your kids are, just first of all realize that a mood is a temptation.

And once you realize that you are in it, there's still plenty of time. Well, there's still time to handle it before you do give way to the temptation and get into sin.

Remember the mood itself makes you more vulnerable to the temptation. And so once you give way to it and make a hope for it, it's much harder to shake.

But you still can, of course, it's just harder. So the goal is to stay out of trouble. The goal is to stay out of the mud pit in the first place and not get sucked in.

Boredom or restlessness can affect all of us, even our kids. And when our kids were little, I remember from time to time they would get bored. It was probably in summer vacation.

And just once in a while, they would tell me they were bored. I would always give them a couple of suggestions. You know, how about reading or how about writing your bike?

You know, if they rejected those ideas, I would tell them I might have plenty of jobs they could do. And I'd give them time to find something to do. And if they still hadn't, I would find jobs for them.

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