Dumping Depression

Here is an excerpt from what I hope will soon be a book about living a fulfilled life under the shadow of depresson -- or maybe despite it. Or maybe TO spite it. Or spit at it. Something like that anyway...


I am usually silly. Quite silly, I mean. I guffaw and twitter and joke. I'm sarcastic and cynical and over the top.

But I discovered something serious today. Three simple words that finally explain why my perception of God was permanently altered at a very young age.

Absent when needed.

I was reading a book this morning called Finding Hope Again. I struggle with depression (I refuse to give it a capital letter even though it's a disease.) I am definitely not at ease. I have been dis -eased for a very long time -- by people, circumstances, situations beyond my control. And by people who were previously an integral part of my life being absent when I really needed them to be present, reliable, and loving.

In this book, Neil Anderson explains why some people don't believe God is there for them. It's because the people they counted on weren't there when they were really needed. We all probably already know this. You think God is like your earthly father, right? Everyone does. Especially every little girl. In my case, my father adored me, showered me with affection, encouragement, love, and laughter. Then, when I was 13, he had an affair with my mother's best friend and subsequently left. At first, I thought things could remain relatively the same for me. He was still my dad. A bit flawed in the morality department, but still the same guy who loved me, right? Then as time went on and visits became sporadic at best, I realized he was deserting me as well as Mom. It stung. I cried. But the pain didn't go away. Deep rejection like that sometimes doesn't. At least not without a lot of counseling.

I carried that rejection along with me wherever I went from that moment on. It was heavy. I lugged it into relationship after relationship, none lasting more than two months. Then I fell in love. I thought I had found someone I could trust. Someone who would never leave. The thrill of love had melted away my fear and I could breathe again, feel the breeze blow gently across my face, open my heart wide and live, love, laugh. Nine months later, the cheater left me. And on it went.

Absent when needed.

If only I was able to feel God was there to comfort me. If only I had realized that depression was keeping me from feeling He was there. If only I had been able to believe He loved me and was holding me in His arms even if I didn't feel it...

Instead, I believed He was absent.

I stuffed the emotions, the pain, the despair deep down. I never let on. I married, had four children, lived a life many only dream of. But the feeling that God was not going to be there for me when I really needed Him never went away.

I don't know where one goes from here. How do you get back the years you've lost to depression while trying to live in the present? I don't suppose you can. I was duped and damaged like many a young girl. But I developed a disease that kept me from recovering from it. God was absent -- or it felt like He was anyway. But what now?

Here is what I've decided to believe for, hope for, and wait for.

Summer.

I believe God -- who is there even though most of the time my brain won't allow me to feel it's true -- can take my winter and turn it into summer.

Listen to what John Donne said about it:

He brought light out of darkness, not out of lesser light;
He can bring your summer out of winter, though you
have no spring; though in the ways of fortune, or
understanding, or conscience, you have been benighted
until now, wintered and frozen, clouded and eclipsed,
damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till
now, now God comes to you, not as in the dawning of the
day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sun at noon.

I will wait for my sunshine. Even if it takes forever.