The Reckoning

I was looking for something else when I found it: the journal I didn’t remember keeping in my Google Docs. The journal that described, with unflinching honesty, how I felt while depressed. I have kept a journal off and on for years–ever since I was a preteen–and so the fact that I kept a journal while depressed didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me is that I forgot how bad it really was, how much I felt despair and how much I wanted to stop existing. I forgot how dark the darkness really was. Reading each entry was like reopening a wound–painful and delicate and raw. But I couldn’t help myself. I kept on picking at that wound, and before I knew it I was crying. I came so close to choosing death for myself. I came so close to leaving everything I love. I came so close to giving up, to giving in to the deadly thoughts that left me worn and weary. I came SO. CLOSE.

But I did not give up. I did not give in. I am still here. Praise God, I am still here. And I want to sing it from the rooftops, “I am STILL HERE. God is STILL GOOD.”

I think the forgetting is a gift. So much of the past two and a half years was spent in the fog of depression, and I think if I were haunted by its memories every day I would come undone. So instead of wishing I remembered more, I am glad that I don’t. I am glad I have the luxury of forgetting even a little of the pain I went through. I know that is not a luxury all have, and I am not going to waste it. I know too that tomorrow I could wake up and the happiness I feel could be gone.

I am not foolish enough to think myself immune from future calamity, and I am wise enough to be thankful for the present calm.

It has been hard these past few days to live with the awful truth that I wanted to end my life. It has been hard to confront the fact that I missed out on weeks and weeks with my family because I was in treatment. It has been hard reckoning with the toll my illness took on my marriage, on my family, on my friends. I could get lost in a haze of guilt if I tried. But instead I offer up thanks for my marriage, for my family, for my friends. I give my life to God, open-handed but fearful and trembling. I speak the prayer I know to be true, the one that has saved me all along: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

This is the song I sing.

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When All Is Not Merry and Bright

Last December was the lowest of the low points for me. Instead of decorating the Christmas tree, I wanted to hide in my bed. Instead of baking goodies with my kids I wanted to cry into my pillow. Instead of looking at Christmas lights, I wanted to revel in the darkness of my bedroom. Instead of finding joy in Christmas songs and hymns, all I felt was despair. Depression had a tight grip on me and didn’t seem to be letting go. I didn’t know what to do or how to be there for my family. I made very few efforts to do anything Christmas-related. It was all I could do to keep waking up each day and putting one foot in front of the other. All was not merry and bright.

I ended up spending 12 days of December in a psychiatric hospital getting treatment for my depression. I cried at night, praying for my girls who I knew were missing me, praying for my husband who just wanted his wife at home. The guilt and shame I felt for being gone yet again was heavy. I threw myself the world’s largest pity party. There were so many things I felt like I should have been doing, and yet there I was in the hospital, feeling worthless and useless. How could Christmas be anything but bad?

Christmas, however, doesn’t depend on me. Christmas is about celebrating God made flesh, God with us–Emmanuel. Christmas is about how the light came to shine in the darkest of places–in the darkness of our own hearts–so that we could be called children of light, children of God. The beauty and wonder of Christmas is that the Son of God came to earth and experienced all the highs and lows of life. He was hungry and thirsty. He was tired. In Matthew 26:38 Jesus tells His disciples that He was sorrowful to the point of death. He knows pain intimately, and there is nothing we face that He cannot know and understand. Even at my lowest of lows, I was not alone.

Last year I made it home just in time for Christmas with my family, and I was met with nothing but love. At the end of the day, my girls don’t need a Hallmark-worthy house; they need their mama. And Jesus. I have realized that God has not called me to create a Pinterest-perfect holiday for my family. God has not called me to be like the filtered images I see in my scrolls through Facebook and Instagram. God has called me to be His. God has called me to be faithful, both to Him and to the ones He entrusts me with. With Him, there is more than enough love to go around. With Him, there is no end to the merry and bright days we can have.

Never Alone Even When I Am Alone

I stared at the computer screen, blinking back tears as my eyes took in the images of my daughter proudly showing off the tooth she had lost that day. I wanted to reach my arms through the screen, hug my girl tight, and tell her how excited I was. But I couldn’t. Instead, I sat in the small computer lab housed in the wing of the mental hospital where I was an inpatient for the first time and felt waves of hopelessness and despair wash over me.

Depression had led me to this place — dark thoughts having run away with all reason and logic — and I knew I needed to be here to be safe. But that did not change the fact that I knew what I was missing at home. At night when I was alone in my bed in the psych ward, I would think about my girls and worry that I was ruining them for life by being gone and being ill. I worried that I would never be able to be the mom I thought I should be. How could I, when I was barely hanging on to life itself?

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Fight the Good Fight

After I returned from my first inpatient stay at a psychiatric hospital back in September 2018, Stephen gave me a small, squishy boxing glove as a reminder for me to continue fighting for life. That little glove has sat in my office at work ever since, and I admit that after a while it sort of blended into my surroundings and stopped being something I focused on daily. But late last week I found myself staring at it anew and gripped it with desperate hands, needing to feel its texture but also needing to remember that I am in a battle for my mind.

Even though my depression has been much better and more manageable these past few months, I would be lying if I said I haven’t been affected by the pandemic and all that has come with it. I have found my motivation depleted, my energy sapped, my mood despondent. I have felt strangled by loneliness at times, and I have craved a normal Sunday at church, where we are free to hug each other and worship unhindered by social distancing and masks and sterilization. Anxiety about what the school year will look like for Charlotte has consumed me, and I find myself voicing prayers in the middle of the night as I think of all the worst-case scenarios. It is enough to send my thoughts racing, to make me feel like I am losing my grip on reality.

Instead, I stop. I breathe. I squeeze my boxing glove and remember the warning of Paul in Ephesians 6:12: “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” I am in a battle for my mind and soul, and my enemy (and yours, too) isn’t the corona virus but sin and Satan. Satan taunts us with lies and fear, and if I am not careful I find myself falling into his trap. So I must be diligent: “Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:13-18). I combat lies with the truths of Scripture. I fight despair with the hope of the gospel. I take my negative thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. I fight, and then I wake up the next day and fight again. The battle is not lost. I have victory in Jesus.

Three weeks ago I started reading Psalm 119. Conviction washes over me daily as I read its words of love and adoration, as I meditate on its admonition to cherish God and His Word above all else. I am reminded that He is good and does good (verse 68). I am reminded that His Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (verse 105). I am reminded that in my affliction, His promise gives me life (verse 50). I am reminded that the earth is full of His steadfast love (verse 64). When I do not know where else to turn, I turn to Him. He alone is steady and unchanging and dependable when all else fails.

Are you weary and laden with fear? Bring your burden to Jesus. And keep fighting. You do not fight alone.