A month ago, I challenged my friends in the blogosphere to put up a testimony in honor of Easter. Here is one of mine. Granted,
this was a few years ago now, but the moment represented a turning point in a
long struggle with anxiety and doubt. Or
perhaps turning point isn't the right word.
Maybe a moment of foundation in what felt like slow free fall. It might seem a little presumptuous to write
about mental illness just after Pastor Rick Warren's son ended a long struggle in suicide, but it should be a comfort to know that God never really abandons us, which is what he showed me.
"I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish;
no one will snatch them out of my hand."
~John
10:28
Our society once had a notion that the brain was independent. All we needed to do to acheive health an happiness was insert the proper
information. Modern
science, both social and medical, is proving this wrong on a daily basis, but
the idea still persists in a lot thought cultures. Just think about the right things, and you can't help but be happy and
healthy and strong.
In the face of this assumption, I define depression as the
incapacity to process all of the information.
It's a screen that keeps the evidence of the positive out of the part of
the mind where information becomes part of daily living and believing. A person suffering from depression can grasp
at positive certainties like the love of God, but they never seem as concrete
as the ache that sits on the shoulders of the soul and bends the whole body
over. The soul hesitates to touch life
because life hurts, with the result that the sufferer is driven farther and
farther under the screen of negativity. A negative mindset will perpetuate
itself. The brain gets used to the
negative chemical balance and doesn't want positive thoughts. They cause cognitive dissonance, and that
takes energy.
Some sufferers cope with addictive substances or reckless behavior. Some
commit suicide. Some people
develop a fantasy world, and that was what I did. My husband was deployed for half of the year I'm
an introvert by nature. The people I
relate to naturally/ easily are very few.
I didn't the strength to go out and make myself interact with people and
make friends, so I wove a set of protective fantasies and lived in them five or
six days a week. The fantasies I wove
were not healthy ones. I dreamed of slavery,
endless toil, exploitation, and defeat. I
knew that I was a mess, and still I clung to those stories, those worlds
because they were titillating. They gave
me (the author) control. I would sit in them for hours. I fought it when I was conscious enough, but
I never fought it whole heartedly, and I never got close to winning. I began to want them more than my relationship
with my husband, more than my relationships with my church, and more than my
relationship with God.
I remember quite distinctly crying out to God one afternoon, and he told me, "You
have to cut off that hand. If you want
that, it's going to take you away from me." I looked at my mind and saw it for the squalid
mess that it was, and I said to the Lord, "Right now, I would rather have
this than You." I recoiled from the idea immediately, but it was the truth. I wouldn't let him take it, and I knew where
it would go.
A few
months later, I was listening to Martin
Luther: In His Own Words. It's an
audiobook (available at www.christianaudio.com) of some of Luther's sermons and
writings. I don't remember what set me
off, but suddenly I was in that same place that Luther was before he stumbled on
Romans 1:17: convicted, hopeless, and
hysterical. I literally stumbled around
my living room, pulling on my hair and wringing my hands. It was dark (literally, the only light in the
room was from the computer screen. Did
you know that depressed people will avoid sunlight and color? More of the mindset trying to protect
itself.), the house was empty, and I had rejected God to his face. I paced the room for I don't know how long,
and eventually I ended up crawling into a corner and curling up in a ball.
As I huddled under my arms, facing the thought of the rest
of my life and eternity without God, another reality descended on me. That's the only way to put it. I was still in my living room, but at the
same time, I was sitting in the hand of God. I could see the whorls in his palm.
I could feel the flesh. The air above me was dark, and everything was
lit from below. I crawled to the edge of
the hand and looked over, and I saw the flickering fires of hell. And God said to me, "If you want over,
you're going to have to jump because I am not going to let you fall." I pushed against the flesh of his hand, and
it was solid. It was the most solid
thing in the universe. I crawled back
from the edge of his hand and curled up in the center of the palm and
cried.
That wasn't the end of my struggle with depression. Even now, five years later, I still have
hopeless hours and afternoons. But I was never allowed to fall that low
again. Whenever I came to a point of wondering if God really loves me, I could
go back to that moment and say, yes, He really does. After
the Boo was born, I began to get treatment, and the resilience of my mind
improved. I remember poignantly the
moment I looked up and realized all over again that the sky was blue. And in
the intervening time, there have been numerous moments when I felt the hand of
God. Sometimes he was pushing me away
from a negative behavior. Sometimes he
was reminding me where my thoughts would lead.
I have had further visions of creatures from hell and guardian
angels. I have had checks put on my
thoughts through no impulse of my own. I
have had sudden moments of perspective when my focus suddenly expanded, and I
could see all the good that I had been ignoring in order to focus on one or two
troublesome details. Yes, God has been
very good to me.
"Finally,
brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever
is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or
praiseworthy, think about such things."
~Philippians 4:7-9
I suppose at this point, it's natural to ask why God let
that happen to me. Like the psalmist, I
could have cried, "Lord, where are you?
What did I do to deserve this?"
Because it did seem like this was something visited on me. I've always had an anxious, introverted
personality. I couldn't help being alone
(or so I thought). But three pertinent
facts convince me that I have no reason to blame God.
Fact #1. We are
responsible for the content of our thoughts.
This pertains not only to things like hatred or lust but also to more
"harmless" occupations like anxiety or negativity. That's not to say that I brought depression on myself, but I did develop a mental atmosphere where depression could grow. The Apostle Paul specifically rebukes
anxiety, even under the most threatening circumstances. I perpetuated my fears and my isolation. I believed and repeated lies inside my head,
whether the lie was that no one would want my company, that I had to be strong
on my own, or that there is a certain romance in dark and destructive
things. And as modern psychology catches
up with the Bible, we have discovered that thoughts have physical and emotional
consequences. What I did to my brain was
the psychological equivalent of playing with a basket of used tissues. Of course my brain was continuously
sick.
Fact #2. We aren't as
strong as we think we are, and that again is our fault, not His. The fact is that no human being can achieve
complete health, and strength in the
face of every circumstance. This may
seem like a "duh" revelation, but it was a revelation to me. We all have an ideal of perfection, but we
seem to forget on a regular basis that because of the fall, humanity is
constitutionally incapable of and disinclined to maintain perfection. Total reliance on God is more than an
attitude of awe or the practice of living in a godly manner. It's the constant awareness that he keeps us together in the best and
worst of times. It's seeing yourself as a leaf of inspirited grass
on the cosmic level and rejoicing in the fact that by God's grace you are still
growing. A constant acknowledgement of
that fact keeps the mind in constant perspective.
Fact #3. Pride is not
always indicated by an attitude of superiority.
Sometimes its clearest symptom is a helpless desperation. Lots of people have died rather than
surrender that last shred of pathetic
human dignity and submitting. Simply
put, I could have asked for help a lot sooner, but I thought it wasn't allowed. That's pride, in an inverted sort of
way. I didn't want to admit how
ridiculous I was or how wrong I was. And
when I asked for help, I didn't want to take the advice I had been given, at
least not on an extended basis. I wanted
to believe that it wouldn't work. I had
the arrogance (because that's what it is) to believe at times that my case was beyond
even the hand of God.
On the other hand, just like the man born blind, this didn't
come on me because anyone sinned in particular.
I didn't deserve it anymore than I deserve a case of the flu. My circumstances were difficult.
Military life wreaks havoc on the hearts and minds of service member and
spouse alike. Half of the Navy wives I
knew were on some sort of psychotropic drugs.
I am not socially programmed to jump into unfamiliar situations, and I
am inclined to hysteria and obsession. I
didn't make myself that way. It's the
way I've always been. The factors for
depression were all there, and I firmly believe that some of it was and is
spiritual warfare. Why did all that come
on me? So that the glory of God could be
revealed. So that I could say from
experience that I am weak and he is strong; that I really am a wretch and he
really did save me. So that when I am
lifted up on eagles' wings, I know whose power makes me soar. So that I will be constantly aware of the
hand of God in me, around me, above me, and particularly beneath me, and I will
stop underestimating his capacity to hold and protect my life.
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