The Most Important Post I'll Ever Write

We are the Fallen by Taylor McBride.  Creative Commons via Flickr and Photo Pin.  Unaltered.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/taylor-mcbride/4535235716/in/photostream/

Living with Depression

Sometimes you cry every morning and every night.  For like an hour each time.  And there's nothing wrong.  You aren't thinking wrong.  You aren't dwelling on pain. You are barely thinking at all.  It just has to work itself out.

Sometimes your emotions are raw and heightened and a look, a judgment, a stray remark, can feel like an elephant stepped on your heart.  Sometimes people walk on eggshells around you and you can’t figure out why they think you are so sensitive.

Sometimes you are absolutely fine for weeks at a time.  It's nothing you are doing right,  just like when you're in pain, it's nothing you're doing wrong; it's just what your body is giving out at the moment.

Sometimes you get stuck in thought patterns that replay themselves over and over and you can't get unstuck.

Sometimes the genuine pain you do have from unmet expectations, broken relationships, or past experiences is amplified and it feels like you're surrounded by this force field of negative energy, and though you fight it, it remains thick around you like a fog, and chokes the breath out of you.

Sometimes things which people have said haunt you and are like invisible headphones turned up on HIGH, and you try your best to focus on Jesus, you try to worship, you try to pray, you try anything to push away the judgments (true or not, earned or false) written on your forehead, but you can't find the way of escape. Sometimes what worked the last time, doesn't work this time.  Sometimes you get tired of fighting and just give up for the day.

Sometimes fellow brothers and sisters minimalize the disease by giving pat answers.  “Read the Psalms.”  “Quote scripture.”  “Just rejoice!”  “Don’t dwell on the past.”  “Forgive.”  If only it were that easy.  It’s kind of like telling an overweight person, “Just eat right and exercise.”  Yeah, because all skinny people do that.  Or it’s like announcing to anyone with any problem to just “Stop it!” 

Sometimes people believe the worst about those experiencing depression.  “They are just trying to get attention.”  “They are moody and self-centered.”  Depression CAN look like this.  And any one of us can fall into patterns of victimhood, even in our depression.  But true depression is not an attitude you choose.  It’s not a mood you put yourself into.  It is how your body affects your emotions, and those who deal with depression would never choose it.

So, in addition to what's already going on, Christians with depression often live under a weight of judgment from their spiritual brothers and sisters, who know not what they do.  People with depression have to get really good at forgiving.

If people with depression choose to use medication, and dare to tell others, they set themselves up for more judgment.  Christians have definite opinions about other Christians using antidepressants.  Let him who has never taken an aspirin throw the first stone.  

Sometimes? It feels like you've cried wolf too many times.  Intimate friends get worn out; compassion turns to weariness.  You know you give off heavy vibes at times that no one wants to shoulder or that people don’t know how to react to. You forgive again as another acquaintance looks away and pretends not to see.  Tomorrow's another day and joy might come in the morning.

Responding to Friends with Depression

Please don't run away from us.  It's a chemical imbalance and it is not catching.  We have depression; we are not depressed.  

We make great friends because we have great compassion and empathy.  

We appreciate small kindnesses because the same sensitivity that causes great pain, also notices the tiny nuances of life, and those who bring them.  

Depression is something we live with and overcome; it does not define us; it is NOT our identity. It's possible you've known us for years casually and never identified it in us. 

We are not asking you to carry our pain, or even to feel sorry for us.  We just want to feel accepted and know that we are safe around you when we are having a good day or when we're having a bad day.  

We want to know that you are not judging our faith or our walk by our countenance; because WE ARE NOT the illness.  

We are warriors fighting a different battle than you.  Respect the warrior in us, and be normal with us week in and week out. Acknowledge the pain, but don’t feel you have to fix us. 

Give us the benefit of the doubt that we are not wallowing.  For all of the visible emotions that spill out, we have likely conquered many more.  If we do happen to be wallowing, we usually know it, and pointing it out? Will likely not accomplish as much as a hug.

We do not need every conversation to be about us, or our emotions.  In fact, it’s a relief to get out of our own heads and discuss other things.

We will be the ones there for you when you hit rock bottom, when others stay away from fear or pity.  We will have your back, we will help you find your footing when it’s dark. 

We will become tour guides through the Valley of Baca.  We’ve already been there, and we have dug wells.

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Psalm 84:6 (KJV)

6 Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools.

*The Valley of Baca can also be translated "The Valley of Tears."  Many believe this verse admonishes us to comfort others with the comfort we have been comforted with, and to build wells of refreshing for others when we are going through valley experiences.

Photo:  By JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.  Unaltered.  Use of photo does not imply agreement with blog post.

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Disclaimer:  Despite the permanence of our digital footprints, this is my description of what it is like to battle depression on May 17, 2014.  I reserve the right to change my opinion as I change.  Despite the safety of the "Editorial We," my opinions are my own, and I do not claim to speak for others.  It is my sincere hope that depression will one day no longer be synonymous with shame.

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Accusation

3D Judges Gavel

http://www.stockmonkeys.com/

I have a lot of crazy stories from my NYC teaching days.  I rarely take them out and share them because I could “one up” my colleagues a lot if I did, but sometimes I tell them to my boss and we enjoy them for the war stories they are.

Plain everyday living in New York is hard.  New Yorkers get a bad rap for their apparent rudeness, but what most call rude is really just abrupt.  There is a need to save time in the city, because no matter the method of commute, most New Yorkers spend at least 2 hours round-tripping back and forth to work, on a good day..  One winter when my car was snowed under, I spent 5 hours a day traveling.  It was a nightmare.  With this reality, too much “nicety”, too much friendliness actually becomes rude to native New Yorkers or those who have assimilated. I remember being home in Sitka one summer.  My mom and I walked down Main Street, which is a 5 minute walk if you stretch it out.  Everyone was acting really weird.  They didn’t know me, and yet they were SMILING at me.  I remember being so frustrated.  “Didn’t they realize how rude that was?  Didn’t they know how long it took for me to stop and smile back at them?”

In addition to long commutes, the city had a way of making so many things we take for granted in Washington State hard.  Including teaching.  One year, I had a little girl who was struggling.  I did the usual things to support her, but failed to sense how intense her mom would take my every word, writing each syllable down verbatim, and bringing relatives to conferences as witnesses.  When Mom asked me to talk with her child’s after-school academic tutoring, I happily called them, until they began a full court marketing press maneuver, at which point, I ended communication with them.  Despite school policy which forbade it, Mom would sneak her daughter in a side door late, and then proceed to stand outside my door and watch me teach for up to an hour.

After 2 or 3 amiable conversations concerning her child, never having complained to me, the mom wrote a 5-page complaint against me and sent it to our principal, the district office, and the chancellor’s office.  5 pages!  The letter alleged among other things, that “Miss Truitt set out to deliberately destroy my daughter’s self-esteem.”  I was very grateful to be fortunate enough to have a student teacher that year who could vouch for my actions.  The complaint was never taken seriously.  And the letter was so crazy and unlike my character, that it didn’t shake me up too much.  I kept the letter for years, as a souvenir of NYC teaching, as a badge of honor, and as a reminder that teaching would never be quite so hard again.

A 5-page letter filled with lies wasn’t hard to shake off.  (It might be now, but back then, I lived in a studio the size of a nice bathroom, and considered dental floss a luxury.   I had bigger problems.). But what if the letter had contained truth?  What if it recorded every thoughtless word I spoke to a child?  What if it recorded the times that year I had lost my temper?  Or the times I had argued with a colleague (EVERYONE argues in NY.  It’s like required or something.). What then?  Would it have been so easy to dismiss?

No, it would have devastated me.  I would have felt the full weight of my guilt.  I think it’s every teacher’s worst nightmare that a parent might show up and yell at them for real transgressions.  Luckily, most adults realize we all live in glass houses. 

It’s easy for me to sit in judgment of this misguided mom for her criticalness and rock throwing, but honestly, don’t we do the same thing to one another?  We think that our brother or sister has a blind spot and if we just tell them, the big light bulb will come on over their head, they will magically change because they were just waiting for our wisdom, and they will forever after live lives of quiet gratitude to us for showing them the way.  We don’t see the years they’ve sought the Lord with tears for freedom for the exact thing we think we are revealing to them.  We don’t know how far they've already come, or much progress they’ve already made.  Or maybe,  we have no idea what a struggle it is for them just to have enough money for the month to eat every day. 

We confront in friendships, because we feel entitled to be heard.  We have heard the adage, “You teach people how to treat you, “and have taken it to heart and want to educate our friends about our hurts, our triggers, our exact Meyer-Briggs personality, and how they should respond to us.  They must be fluent in our love language (Never mind that love languages are a man-made construct) and need honest feedback when they've erred.

We believe we should be entitled to give input on every decision of our local church.  Why is the stage painted black?  No one consulted me.  How will that effect depressed people?  What?  No volleyball this year at the picnic?  But the best players moved away, our house church might finally be able to win.  Why was church cancelled because of a few snowflakes?  Andreson was clear . . .  There was church?  Someone could have been killed by all the crazies on the road who don’t know how to drive in snow.  And on and on.

If you’re at all like me, you’re now thinking of some of the most critical people you know.  If you’re like me, you didn’t look in the mirror. 

But lately? I’ve hurt people close to me by my judgments and criticism, way more than I would like to face.  I’ve handed people invisible scripts, and expected them to follow along.  When they can’t keep up, I let them know my disappointment in their performance.  Over and over.  There’s little worse than facing someone you love realizing the pain you've planted in them is so deep, it can be forgiven but not extracted.  That only God can undo the harm you’ve done.  And that it will take time.

I’m learning that God doesn’t watch Oprah.  He doesn’t read all the friendship quotes on Pinterest which offer really dumb and bitter advice for AFTER you’ve already blown the friendship.  He says, “Treat others how you want to be treated.” Not “teach people how to treat you.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been getting it backwards for a long time.