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.

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Deliverance

Last year on this very date I wrote:

“If ever I felt like a bruised reed—like one struggling to stand against the wind, wilted and wounded —it is now. I have wondered if God cares and questioned whether He hears my prayers since He is not answering them like I want. Not only that, but there are many people besides me praying for God to lift the depression that has haunted me since the summer. If He won’t answer my prayers, why won’t He at least answer the cries of others on my behalf? He would receive glory from that, so why doesn’t He do it? I cannot understand, and my lack of understanding has led to doubts I have never felt before.”

I cringed inwardly when I read these words again, for to me now they sound whiny and entitled, but I also gave thanks when I read them. I am not the same person who wrote those words a year ago; I have changed, and the biggest change of all is that I am not in the same depressed state I was in for a solid 18 months. That’s right, friend, the cloud is lifting. Every day I feel like I catch more glimpses of the sun. Every day I feel like I am both being restored and also being made new. Every day I wake up feeling as though I have been given a new life, and it is a glorious gift.

When I think of what has contributed to this healing–even now my breath catches a little in my throat to write that word “healing,” for at one time it seemed impossible–I cannot pinpoint exactly what started it or why it has continued. I only know that for once everything seems to be working in tandem: the meds, the therapy, the exercise, the prayers, the Word of God. I do not know why it took so long for things to change, but because I believe and trust in a sovereign God I know that things have happened at exactly the time He wanted. And I know that I could wake up tomorrow and find that everything has gone gray again.

Perhaps that is why I have been quiet in this space; I have wanted to tell you of all that has happened the past few months, but I also have been holding onto a good bit of fear that I will wake up one day and find that the healing has disappeared and the dream is over. But I cannot speak my depression into or out of existence, and being silent has only caused my deliverance to go untold. So I will speak of what I do know, and what I know is this: in December I went to a psychiatric hospital for the third time because I had planned to take my life, and now it has been over a month since I have had any suicidal thoughts. In December I was hopeless, and now I have hope. In December life was pointless, and now life has meaning again. In December God seemed far away, and now I know He has been nothing but oh-so near.

I have spent hundreds of words writing about my depression,  and it gives me great joy now to spend those words writing about my deliverance. For I have been delivered from the darkness of my own mind, and even if I wake up tomorrow with depression hanging over me yet again, it doesn’t make my current freedom any less true or real. So I will praise God for His steadfast love and faithfulness and know that no matter what tomorrow holds, He will be with me when I face it.

Come and hear, all you who fear God;
let me tell you what he has done for me.
I cried out to him with my mouth;
his praise was on my tongue.
If I had cherished sin in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened
and has heard my prayer.
Praise be to God,
who has not rejected my prayer
or withheld his love from me!

Psalm 66:16-20

Photo by Victor Freitas on Pexels.com

When It’s Hard to Pray

Today, like so many other days over the past year, I opened my Bible to Psalm 40. In the margins, written in pencil, is the date 9/13/18, and I pray I always remember what that date means. It’s the day I got my Bible from the security staff at Lakeside. I had to specifically request it because they don’t give you anything but essentials from your belongings unless you ask and only if it passes the safety test (I guess they figured I wasn’t going to try and whack myself or anyone over the head with my Bible). When I was admitted to Lakeside on September 11, 2018, I was unprepared to have to relinquish all of the stuff I packed, and it wasn’t until 2 days later that I realized I could ask to have my Bible. Being without my Bible or any way to read it on my phone (since Lakeside took that away also) felt jarring. I have gone more than 2 days without reading the Bible before, but I felt the loss very acutely being in an unfamiliar, scary setting with unfamiliar people. When I finally did get my beloved Bible, I opened to Psalm 40 first because Stephen had sent that Psalm to me in an email, and I loved everything it said and related so much to its words. I was in a pit and saw no way out, but I hoped and prayed that the Lord would deliver me and set my feet on a rock. I wanted to know that His steadfast love and faithfulness would preserve me and that He does not withhold mercy from me. 

On September 13 I had a hard time believing these things to be true (and sometimes still do, if I’m being honest), but I read the words over and over again nevertheless, underlining them with my stub of a pencil (the only writing implement Lakeside allowed, although I don’t know why because you can totally do some damage with a sharp pencil). I prayed weak but desperate prayers, begging God to help me and be near me and rescue me. I couldn’t believe I was actually in a place like Lakeside. I couldn’t believe that I had come so close to ending my life. And I couldn’t believe–yet–that there was end to the despair that was eating me up from the inside out. But I clung to the words of Psalm 40 and have continued to read them almost every day since September 13.

There have been days when the pain was too deep, when the darkness clouded all rational thought, when I could barely form the words of a prayer. On days like that, I turned to words already written, words expressing better than I could how deep the pit of depression was but also how strong the grip of God is. Praying God’s Word back to Him has been the lifeline I have needed when I feel my grip weakening, when I can’t imagine how to hold on a minute longer. It is in those moments of desperation that He showed me that He always does the work of holding on to me and keeping me under the shadow of His wings while the storm rages. 

One day during my depression found me in the office of my pastor, who has been a  source of counsel and comfort to me. He listened to me tell of my continued despair and doubts in God’s goodness, and he met me with compassion and love. He encouraged me to keep clinging to the Scriptures and to be honest with God about my doubt. He assured me I was not alone. And then he opened his Bible and encouraged me to read Psalm 88 aloud as a prayer to God. I only read two or three verses before I started crying. The words in that Psalm–some of the most depressing words in the whole Bible–mirrored my own feelings so closely that I could not ignore them. I was overcome with the kindness of God, the kindness that led Him to move the writers of the Bible to include such gut-wrenching words. That very same kindness of God led me to my church, to my pastor, to my friends, to my therapist, to my husband–to all of the people who have helped see me through this long darkness. Reading those words back to God as a prayer felt not just like a desperate plea but a holy moment, one on which I can look back and recall the nearness of God at a time when I questioned His very existence. 

On days like today, when hope seems far and troubles so very near, how glad I am to have the Word of God to give voice to the prayers I can’t pray on my own. I can pray Psalm 40 and believe that one day God will put a new song in my mouth, that others will see and put their trust in the Lord. And when that day comes, I will not restrain my lips but will tell of His deliverance. 

How Friendship Found Me

Several years ago, a stomach virus struck our house, and one evening all of us were sick in such a way that caused both Stephen and me to pass out at separate times, with my fall resulting in a hole in our guest bathroom wall. Charlotte was 8 months old at the time and sick herself, and it was around midnight. As I laid on the floor, I didn’t know what to do and felt helpless in a way I had not felt before. I started thinking about whom I could call, and the list was short. I didn’t have many friends that I was close enough to that I felt I could call them in the middle of the night, so I called my parents. My mom said they would come right away, but since they live an hour away, I needed to call someone close by to help with Charlotte since I wasn’t sure if I was injured or would faint again (fortunately I wasn’t and I didn’t). I decided to call my college roommate who lives in town, and she graciously agreed to come over. She came quickly and tended to Charlotte and helped get her vomit-covered sheets into the wash. I was grateful for her presence and care, but after she left I felt a sadness that my list of people I could call in a crisis was so small. Why didn’t I have more friends?

The short answer is, I wasn’t actively trying to make any. I was hungry for female friendships but was also reluctant to make the first move and reach out to the women at my church, and so even though we had been attending for a year, I hadn’t developed many relationships that went beyond small talk before and after church. I kept hoping someone would invite me out for dinner or coffee, but it never occurred to me that I could be doing the inviting as well. People are busy, and we often assume people already have their “friend group” all set. I certainly assumed no one was really interested in new friendships since it seemed that many of the women close to my age had already been at the church for a few years and knew one another well. So I kept to myself, and though I never would have admitted this out loud, I honestly hoped that new best friends would materialize of their own accord.

As you might have guessed, I didn’t magically wake up one morning with friends. But what I did wake up with one morning is ulcerative colitis. Being sick with that disease, at first not even knowing that it WAS a disease, leveled me in a way that nothing before had. At my disease’s worst, I found myself too weak to do much but shuffle between the bed and the bathroom, so things like home-cooked dinners and clean floors and bedtime stories gave way to naps at all hours of the day.

It was then, when I had lost most ability to function on any kind of useful level, that those magical, make-believe friends I wished for the previous year began to appear. Two women from church showed up in my hospital room, bringing cheer and encouragement. Another one called and offered to “clean something, anything” for me. Another one brought my family dinner and organized others to do the same. Another one let me sob into the phone while she prayed for me. One friend’s husband came to our house after Charlotte was in bed so Stephen could visit with me for a few hours. Almost overnight, I looked around and saw something beautiful: the church in action. Friends in action.

I had prayed that God would bring me friends, had prayed that He would show me how to be a better friend myself. I had even gone so far as to confess my loneliness to a group of  women at a prayer group only a month prior to getting sick. Though He answered those prayers in a rather peculiar way by also giving me an autoimmune disease, it was impossible for me to miss the way that crisis in my life became a landmark by which I recognized the faithfulness of God. Honestly, I didn’t enjoy being the recipient of so much help and would have much preferred to be the one extending such help to others. But that is not the role God gave to me at that time, nor is it the role I have found myself in for much of the past year. God has shown me many times over the years how my weakness allows His strength to shine through. He has shown me how my friends, in loving and caring for me, were daily reminders of His promise to love and care for me. What my weakness and need has helped me see is that being vulnerable in community is better than facing life alone.

We all have pain we wish to hide, but when we choose to hide our pain rather than bring it into the light of community, what are we missing? We could very well be missing out on the exact friendships we wish we had.

I hope I never have to call for reinforcements in the middle of the night again, but how thankful I am that if I should, God has grown my list in a way I never expected!

Photo by Noorulabdeen Ahmad on Unsplash