“I start to feel like I can’t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don’t know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don’t know the answer, I know only that I can’t. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.” ~Elizabeth Wurtzel
Today is another one of those days. Depression has set in and I am not exactly sure why. I have lost my desire to interact with others, to read books, and really to do anything productive. I just want to be by myself and let my brain waste away not thinking about anything. I sometimes believe it is compensation for my over thinking. I often analyze things that have not happened and ultimately, I become low at heart just thinking about them. There are always expectations, and those expectations are if you are happy and fun, I will care about you and sit with you but when you are low and sad I will wait until you are ok. There is a fundamental flaw in this. The fact that we as a natured people are flawed and not
ok creates a dilemma. Is there really such a thing as “ok”. And if there really is, why are we broken people obsessed with it? I myself struggle often with the opposing problem. I mellow in the mud that surrounds. Lately, I don’t feel as though I have done that. But, I have realized this cloud coming over me and I have chosen to ignore it until now. I don’t realize its arrival until my actions vary greatly from normal. This is not foreign to me. I have struggled with this for a long time. I truly believe that because of my temperament and personality I am more prone to symptoms of depression. I don’t know how I am supposed to deal with it though. Am I supposed to go to a doctor and take medication for depression for the rest of my life? Will a pill magically take it away? Or am I supposed to do nothing and just wait it out each time? It is an exhausting experience and often overwhelming, and forgive the expression, depressing. I need a Savior. One who knows no bounds. Simply Jesus. I need someone who knows what it feels like to be covered by darkness with an extreme weight on his shoulders. I need Jesus. I need him more than ever. Not because I want to get rid of this depression but because he is the light of this world. The light that shines through the darkness (John 1). I find myself wanting others to sympathize with my pain, but I realize all to often I am asking too much of them. People who have never struggled with depression don’t really understand the pain and direness of the situation. They often believe it is just a decision about attitude and then its done. Johnathan Davis says it best:
“A lot of people don't realize that depression is an illness. I don't wish it on anyone, but if they would know how it feels, I swear they would think twice before they just shrug it.”
What they don’t understand is people who truly struggle with depression are those who have tried and tried again to make that decision but they are still consumed by darkness. Depression is a passive aggressive demon, lurking in the midst. It’s never something that jumps out but rather comes with time and progression. As Frances Perkins puts it,
“... with the slow menace of a glacier, depression came on. No one had any measure of its progress; no one had any plan for stopping it. Everyone tried to get out of its way.”
I offer no solution because obviously I have not come by one. However, I am often shaken by the words of Spurgeon who calls our attention to Christ. The question is not, if I focus on Christ then will it go away? The question is better stated, if I focus on Christ, will it even matter? Satan, has tricked us all into the most fundamental of all sins, selfishness. In the garden he tricked Eve by implying God as a withholder. Essentially within that very implication, something must be assumed. If God is a withholder, he must be withholding from someone or something. In this, Satan finds his most elaborate attacks on God’s people. We have been tricked into thinking the Christian life is about us. We have been fooled into concentrating on our own problems and issues. We have been deceived into thinking we are a deprived people and as long as we ask God in the name of his will we may receive it. However, I pose a question, in those prayers, do we really pray to a living God. Or could we replace God in that sentence, with “Oh magical storehouse of solutions”. So essentially the prayer would be, “Oh magical storehouse of solutions, please get me out of the impending gloom of depression”.
Your wondering, what is he really getting at?
The point: Are we so focused on self that in our prayer the emphasis is put on what WE gain, and who he is so undermined it could be replaced by the most ridiculous of statements. Have we actually come to this? Really, think about your own prayer life. We have become a product based people, a solution based entity. Not a producer based people or solver based entity. We often come to the Great Throne of God and receive the very blessings of which we ask only to turn around and walk right back into the bowels of hell with it. It is in those very blessings that we see the greatest manifestation of our God, and Satan has used that very thing to distract us from what we need most; A Savior.
Now how does this tie into the talk of depression?
Listen I have no idea what your vice may be. Mine is depression. However, no matter what it is you struggle with, there is a fundamental flaw in the way we have been taught to handle it. What we need is a SAVIOR, not a temporary solution. I am by no means saying we should ignore our problems, in fact quite the opposite. We should embrace them all the while uplifting them to Christ.
The question is not, if I focus on Christ then will it go away? The question is better stated, if I focus on Christ, will it even matter?
The problems we face in this life may never go away, but it is the very Person of Christ, that sets us free.
