Some days you wake up and it is the worst; I mean you are groggy, the floor is cold, and you have no desire to be a functioning human being. We have all had those days, I had one this morning. Like most days I woke up at 7:15 am, groaned, got up and relocated—blanket and all—to the couch and went back to sleep instead of being productive. But the buck stops here. Now is not the time for naps, it is time for honesty. What I am about to say, I have never said, never spoken of in depth, until now. This month has been hard really freaking hard. The accuser grabs any foothold he can. Depression has hit me like a hurricane and bombarded leaving me desolated and causing me to struggle with all of the secondary reactions; feeling like no one understands or cares, getting angry about it, getting hurt, becoming isolated, and even sadder. I began to be harangued by thoughts of old tendencies, old ways to deal with depression like drinking, lust, drugs, self-harm. If you just give in you will feel better, you will feel at all. I would push all of that out of my head and try to move out of the hazy funk, but he knows what strings to pull and what wounds to scratch. The enemy doesn’t need to be grandiose to make you fall, he just needs to whisper. They don’t need you. They don’t care about you. You are annoying, and they just don’t have the heart to tell you. If you ask for their help, for their love, they will see how pathetic you are. You weigh them all down, you make them all tired. You are so alone and unloved. Sometimes it is enough to make me want to grab my head and scream. Some days you lose. Some days you believe the lies and bury the hurt in a secret place. But some days you talk about it. You take it to the people who love you. You take it to God.
The first sentence is the hardest thing to say but each following sentence takes less gumption and courage until the weight is gone. The weight is what kills you, what chains your soul not the depression itself. Carrying it all by myself is foolhardy and painful. But letting people, letting God know how hard and how heavy it is, makes it lighter. I find that the more I ask people to pray and the more I lay it out before the Lord, the better I feel. This morning as I had my quiet time I wrote in my prayer journal, and was so thankful for the love God lavishes on me when I seek His face—Oh my gosh, the joy I feel, the still peace in my heart. Sometimes the Lord lets it creep up on you without having asked for it in that moment. You feel wrapped up in His love like a wool blanket on a rainy Sunday. Your eyelids get heavy with all of the love in your heart. You begin to look back at all of the joy you have felt in recent days, months, years that was being clouded. You remember the butterfly flutters of looking at someone you love, the exhilarating thrill of seeing penguins on a beach, the serenity of looking at a sky ablaze as the sun goes down, the tranquility of driving through the mountains in autumn. Your heart breaks from the joy of it all only to be built up again in foundations of His truth. You have such joy inside of you, such love. You have childlike faith and a heart to match. You have beauty in you. You are loved more than sparrows and mountains and seas. You are mine, I want you—always.
“Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something.”
