Not again, I plead, as an incoming wave takes my breath away. Depression becomes, yet again, so acute, almost all-encompassing. I’m not as frightened by this as I used to be, and I know that if I keep going, putting one foot in front of the other, a moment will come when I will feel alive again.
Maybe it is coming off an illness—and being sick several times over in the last few months—that knocked me completely off my feet. The kids got sick too, and our oldest literally slept for three days straight on the couch and still managed to sleep through the night. I didn’t get as much sleep during the time of illness—because, you know, MOM—so perhaps my body is still trying to catch up from that. Either way, I wake up and feel perpetually tired, as if I didn’t sleep a wink.
My brain is in that blank space of survival. I cannot have an intelligible conversation and putting words to anything is a feat which leaves my mind exhausted. I’m in a familiar place where I don’t seem to feel anything, a place of weary body, mind, and soul. Everything on my to-do list feels painfully impossible because energy and brain space is non-existent.
It’s not really new. I’m not looking for sympathy. I have learned how to get through these times. I’m not lying on the couch, staring out the window, doing nothing. The dishes still get done. I put food on the dinner table. We go to the library. I do a load of laundry. Work emails get answered, the budget is finished. It isn’t as if the wave ceases my physical existence.
Yet it feels almost like being on the outside looking in, a thick wall of glass separating me from others so that I can see everything they do and enjoy but I cannot speak to them, I cannot hear them, and I cannot access the life that they live. In a way, I’m on the outside looking in at my own life—I can see it, but I can’t experience it. Or I guess I experience it, but I don’t feel a thing. I’m numb.
The darkness grows because as I look around, I realize that a lot of other people cannot relate and cannot understand. I feel increasingly alienated from society, as people pass me by with their dreams and their goals and their energy and joy—and I begin to wonder what I did to deserve this type of existence. With each day, week, month, and year that passes, I wonder what is so wrong with me that I cannot snap out of it.
And as the wave lingers, depression becomes a haunting feeling of lack of compatibility with life, and although it breaks my heart to say that I understand what could propel a local woman to jump off the side of a bridge a few days ago, I do. On a good day, I think that could never, would never be me—the only problem is that I have groped my way through too many dark days to say I can’t understand it even a little bit.
For me, this is my “thorn in the flesh.” And like Paul, I have “pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.”1 Yet, it is through this regularly occurring experience of depression that my faith has been strengthened more than anything else. It is where I have discovered that His grace is, in fact, sufficient—even though I never wanted to know that truth in this way. It is where I have experienced His comfort, His presence—and I know I wouldn’t have been able to experience those if I never needed Him.
And so I find myself of late praying for God to wake up my soul to His presence, to His nearness. I wish it were as simple as “think positive thoughts” or “just snap out of it,” but that really isn’t the case. I breathe. I do the next thing. I wake up for another day and go through the motions. All while I pray that God would give me the grace I need to walk in this moment, to not give up, and to know that He hears me.
Like a breath of fresh air, a moment comes. It’s almost as if a light switches on. Finally. Something jolts me to the present, to the realization of God’s nearness. It catches me off guard and brings tears to my eyes—I’m alive, and I’m breathing and feeling and living. The beauty is so shocking, it awakens my senses and reminds me of God’s faithfulness and goodness. Today it was a song that I haven’t heard probably in years that gripped my soul with both hands and reminded me that God hears me and He has never left me and He never will.
I don’t know what you are facing today, but I know how easy it is to begin to grow weary. We pray for the miracle, for the healing, for everything to be set right this side of heaven, yet we wonder, if that doesn’t happen, how long can I keep going? The thought of bearing such a weight for weeks, months, years . . . a lifetime . . . seems suffocating, impossible. Even for the cheeriest of hearts, weariness begins to set in and we might wonder where joy has gone. We begin to feel numb, and we easily forget. Oh, how easily we forget.
Today, I encourage you to ask God to give you a tangible reminder of who He is and of His presence, a reminder that He is the God who sees and the God who hears. And even if you don’t feel like looking, keep looking. Even if you think you have no more energy to keep going, to keep seeking, to keeping knocking, don’t give up. We don’t need to know how we will keep going tomorrow or a year from now—just keep drinking deep His grace for THIS moment, and ask for it as much as you need. His provision never runs dry.
In an unsuspecting moment, I pray that your spirit would be enlivened by the breath of God, that your soul would be awakened to His beauty and goodness, that your heart would be filled with courage to keep going another day. He is good, friends, and He is worth it all.
Footnotes
- 1 Corinthians 12:7-9 ↩︎
Cati Grape 