May is National Mental Health Awareness Month. I have a lot of friends and family that deal with these invisible monsters. They lurk in the back of our minds and darken our hearts, squeeze our insides and tell us we are not normal. And we aren’t. No one is.
This isn’t going to be a post that says, “When you’re feeling low, just pray the depression away.” And I won’t tell you to say Jesus’ name three times during a panic attack and if you’re a real Christian it will stop feeling like you’re dying even though you’re just sitting in your office at your desk.
In this post I want to empower everyone fighting through their days to seek help. I want to encourage them to stay in bed today, but to get out of bed tomorrow. In this post I want to tell everyone that it’s okay to not be okay, especially to women.
Women are more commonly plagued by depression and anxiety disorders than men (not that they don’t deal with them at all, sit down) and I had to ask myself why. When asked if God favored a gender Ravi Zacharias said, “God I think often times in life, in human life, chooses the weakest through whom to make His strength manifest . . . Both are equal cerebrally, but women are more consistent in willing to let the thought be connected to the emotion.” So it is no surprise, that our earthly bodies fail our souls. It is no surprise that women are attacked at what makes us strong, our emotions.
My mother deals with depression and anxiety and I have come to terms with the fact that I have probably inherited these hormonal imbalances. Not only because I’ve inherited her chin and love of Bon Jovi, but because there are days and weeks and sometimes even months that I feel dead inside. There are times when I am so full of the Lord and still feel as if I am a fish in a frozen pond. That I have been robbed of my emotions or are too tired to carry them. That I have so much life flowing through me but I can’t move because something is wrong, the ice is too thick and really, I didn’t want to move anyway. I would like to just sit still for forever. I am disinterested in the very vision I have been called to. That’s what depression does. It doesn’t make you sad, it makes you apathetic.
But what depression doesn’t know is that Spring is coming. In the Spring, the ice thaws and with it, apathy dissipates. And I have to wonder what the fish feels. Does it feel the ice thinning slowly so it’s anticipation grows for the hour it feels the water rush against its fins or does it just wake up and know it is time to start swimming? Either way. When we find help, when we see our illnesses as things that are scared of our greatness, they cower. When we seek a friend, a doctor, the Lord, anything to fight what is not of us, we learn to swim again.
We learn that we shouldn’t be embarrassed if we have to take a pill everyday to stay “sane”. We learn that counseling isn’t just for children or those going through a life-altering event. We learn that friends sometimes don’t understand, but that they do know what ice cream we like best and that kind of helps too. We learn that it’s okay to not be okay, because this is not our home and we will not be stuck in this body forever.
So please, stay in bed today. But tomorrow, swim.
“A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement. The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody on it’s quest to travel hundreds of miles upstream against the current, with a single purpose, sex of course, but also… life.” -Elizabethtown
If you need help and don’t know where to go visit: mentalhealthamerica.net or ask your church if they have a counselor in mind.
