Depression, who needs it?

Depression. It's no joke. It suffocates. It exacerbates. It stilts and stigmatizes. It eats creativity and absorbs light. It doesn't suffer foolish advice or pop gospel fixes. It never sleeps and when you suffer you don't sleep much either.

It makes the sufferer look inconsistent, careless, apathetic, undisciplined, without focus. It makes reading all those psalms about God's care and provision for his own really hard to take. It causes one to stop starting and it does this over and over. It hinders faith and compounds self doubt. It makes a lie of what is true and good. It isn't any fun. It makes a person small. It can cause a person to be in constant need of affirmation. It takes lives and loves. Sometimes it does this suddenly but mostly it does it over a long period of time. It is very skilled at laying waste. It thrives on being medicated. It makes you chase after things, things that don't materialize and then it slaps you up the side of the head as if to say told you so. It can seem like an easy out but, I assure you, it is not mere excuse.

All of those things roll around together, the propagate, the become the unholy children of the Big D and feed mercilessly on their host.

Even so, IT IS NOT impossible to overcome but it must be overcome each new day. No wonder alcoholism (which I do not suffer from) and depression make such killer bedfellows.

I'm just grateful I no longer live in the part of the Christian world (and I do not mean a geographical location) that pretends real Christians don't suffer from depression or that perceives it as the inherent result of sin or that automatically try to cast demons out.

Depression doesn't have to win in the end, after all we are told we are more than conquerors through him who loved us [Romans 8:37]. But it's blanking hard. The promise is there and I've experienced it,

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! [1 Cor 5:17]

However, I've long since stopped believing this happened once, positionally in-Christ perhaps once but in actual practice it happens over and over, daily, especially as we receive Christ in his sacraments.

A part of my on again off again web presence has been due to this battle. I don't really know that is anything to apologize for but I do want to say thank you to readers old and new. I am sorry for great ideas I've had that I've not followed through on. That has probably cost me, friends, potential earnings and stuff. Yeah.

I have so much to give to others and to the Church. And to my family. And, if it doesn't sound sacrilegious and, even if it does, I have so much to give myself. I see that. I've seen that. People always say that but then the big D comes and I doubt, I stagnate. Me, is my worst enemy.  No one is harder on myself than me. No one pays for that most than those who are closest to me. As the years go by I understand my deceased father better, his suffering and trials. He died 11 years ago this March. His birthday was yesterday. Maybe that's why I'm opening up about this now? Someday I'll tell you about the posthumous and spiritual healing that took place. Well, I believe it did.

Now, I'd like to impress my readership and say my best friend is Jesus but he's my God, my Lord, I know he calls me friend [it says so in the gospels] but my best friend is my wife. I don't know where I'd be without her love and belief in me. She's God's gift of grace to me. She says I'm her gift from God and I work at believing that. I know I need to be more like Saint André Bessette who allowed God to love him and then gave that love away. He was small, so small he was like a St. Thérèse of Lisieux small. Being tiny was not his curse but his blessing, it is exactly why he impacted so many thousands of thousands of souls. I know that finding the way to really be lives as God's beloved adopted son with Brother Jesus is a part of my process for meeting the Big D head on.

Structure helps too. After saying farewell to ordained ministry at our conversion structure and identity and worth all took serious hits. People think the financial suffering has been hard and they are right but it's nothing compared to the soul wrenching discord of those other things. It is a constant battle. Perfection is a very long way off, you know?

In the meantime I'll keep being as honest as I can and I will really work at not stopping this this time. I do this for my wife, our kids, our Lord Jesus and in some respect for you.

Image1: Art by Owen Swain

Image2: Moses sees the sufferings of his people - Marc Chagall, c.1966  Source.


[Edited for clarity, Jan 24 2012. I wrote fast and from the heart so there were a number of glaring errors which people kindly looked past and managed to understand my meaning, fully.]