Random Dissonance - One Thursday in October

It was Thursday... That's about all I remember about the date.  I do remember that it was foggy outside and that I was expecting to dread my commitment to teach a high school English class that day.

The fog on the floor of California's Great San Joaquin Valley was damp, cold, and dense.  Its the worst kind of weather we get here in the nation's salad bowl.  I have vivid childhood memories of fog so thick that my dad would have my older brother put his head out of the passenger side window to look straight down at the white line on the side of the road to protect us from crashing our car in the white blindness.  I also remember my own response to southern California meteorologists, who during my first year away at seminary warned, "The fog is dense today.  Leave for work early and drive slowly."  Then when I got out there to drive there was little more than a vague haze with a generous 75 ft. of visibility.  I said out loud in my car (as if to the drivers around me), "Pick up the pace people.  As long as you can see your hood ornament you have no reason to slow down."  It seems the world outside of my own Mayberry, USA has it's own very frail idea of what dangerous fog is.  No, to me fog is not a danger.  To me fog is an annoyance that tenaciously keeps a strangle hold on the locals who, with equal tenacity, press toward normal productivity as if sheer will can overcome the very forces of nature.

But fog does kill.  When I was a child I remember a friend was in a car wreck caused by fog on the way to school.  His mom died in that wreck...

On this Thursday in October I did not hear of anyone dying.  But I came back to life.

It was a strange event.  It didn't so much happen as much as I realized that it had happened.  For months upon months I had prayed that God would life the weight of the dissonance I was feeling.  I had sought every corner of my life confessing unknown sin.  I had presented by sadness to God and asked for beauty in place of ashes (Isaiah 61:3).  I had tried to live in the joy I knew I should have, but instead of a walk in faith it was a charade parade.  I had prayed that the darkness would lift and that oppression would be defeated.  I had spoken out against evil spirits that I thought may have been around me and prayed that God would cause any of them present to be dispelled.  All for nought.  The pain of my loss friendships kept me covered in heaviness and grief.

But not this day!  Sometime during 2nd period I realized that I felt "normal."  I felt laughter at one point and it was such a foreign feeling that I took notice that it had happened without effort.  I passed out the exam to the students, gave them their instructions to work in silence and then sat at the teacher's desk to recount my day.  I looked back at my morning and realized that I woke up with out any sense of despair.   I realized that at no point in the morning thus far, had I felt anything negative or heavy.  I was not depressed.

There I sat and I prayed a prayer of gratitude and I asked God, "why today?"  I listened for an answer that never came and I recognized deep in my soul that I would not receive any answer.  God had healed me.  He had done so in His perfect timing and the best thing I could do would be to accept it thankfully.  So I did.  I accepted it thankfully and trusted that the long darkness was finally over.

"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.  His love endures forever." (Psalm 136)

And so it was.  I have often remembered my sadness and felt pangs of sorrow for the losses, not yet restored.  But the sadness no longer has a life of its own and it no longer rules my experiences with its oppressive heaviness.  Depression has not returned and I remember that "he whom the Lord sets free is free indeed." (John 8:36)

This is the conclusion of the story of my random dissonance.  Random because it was born in in events that were not unfamiliar to me.  Dissonant because I had been locked in a living countermelody that was seemingly played in a musical key that was offensive to the song that the rest of the world was singing.  This was my story.  A story of God's miraculous healing.  And I know that others had stories that are similar, yet different.  I know that in some people's story, God uses medication to break the clouds and free the captive.  This was my story.  Don't fear yours.  God is in the story and He will redeem you and your storm for good.

Random Dissonance - Color

"Depression is something that makes you lose your sight."   Michael Schenker

Spring is one of my favorite times of year.  Since one of the things that helps me feel centered and balanced is gardening, it makes sense that I should enjoy the blooming season.  This Spring, for the first time ever, I have successfully produced a crocus bloom in my garden.  (I really live in the wrong region for crocus to flourish.)  But the elements worked together in perfect harmony with the dna of the crocus bulb to produce a flurry of early Spring purple near the front walk of our home. 

As I sit typing today, Spring is nearly in full swing.  My Mayberry, USA is an agricultural town surrounded by fruit and nut trees.  And for a couple of weeks each year we are swathed with the pink and white blooms of almond, peach, nectarine, and cherry trees.  I have often wondered if from above, it might appear that our town is floating in a pond of blossoms. 

With a deep sense of admiration for blooming trees, I have planted 2 in my front yard, and planned the timing of their bloom to last into the early mid Summer.  Even our larger shade tree, which does not bloom, begins it's leaf season in a blaze of bright red infant foliage.  Spring color is in one sense the reward for a yard carefully planned, consistently cared for, and attentively nurtured.  Looking out the window into our yard, my vision is today bathed in blue, purple, pink, white, red, yellow, and coral.  Happy Spring to me.

Last Spring, deeply entrenched in the barrage of my emotional tempest, this visage of color had no affect on me.  Every bloom felt grey or brown.  Just as nearly every experience of my very blessed life had seemingly been reduced to it fundamental operation, Spring had been reduced to the change of temperature, which would mean little more than changing the household thermostat and needing to mow the lawn with more regularity in order to prevent my suburban castle from being "that house" on the block.

Realizing then that my life had become a colorless landscape of brownish greys and greyish browns, I considered a serious breech of my previous commitment to hide my malaise at all cost.  I began to think that the convergence of causes for my depression had surrendered to physiology.  There is a saying in psychology that I have not forgotten since my college days.  "Neurons that fire together, wire together."  A purposely obvious play on the axiom about family prayer, the saying points out that in the human brain, stimulus that is repeated over time creates a well-worn pathway in the brain, which will replace the previous "normal" pathway for brain functions.  In other words, if you do (or feel) something repeatedly for a long enough period of time, it becomes your new normal.  This is how we form habits.  (It is the key to breaking habits too!)  But it has a more insidious meaning for those who experience depression.  If you stay depressed long enough, those emotional pathways in the brain will become your new normal.  Your brain will travel those neuron highways regularly and you will suffer what is called "clinical depression."  I was taught that a person who has a normal depression that lasts for 6 months is in the risk zone for becoming medically depressed and needs the help of pharmaceutical therapy.  It had been nearly 15 months for me and I was ready to call the Dr.  It seemed that a life on prozac, lithium, or celebrex couldn't be any worse than the colorless post-storm life that I had settled into. And truthfully, it would have been better (should it have come to that).

This for me was a deeply humbling moment.  I had lost.  I had reached the end of me and had found myself wanting.  In a world where I had always had a way out and a vision of the vibrantly colorful "good" that hovers just below the surface of every dark and colorless challenge or struggle, I had become color blind.  My stiff upper lip, my determination to muscle my way through it alone, my rehearsed prayers, my desperate prayers, my self-diagnosis:  all the best of my efforts came to nothing.  They came to nothing, and I admitted defeat.

This experience is not new to me (reaching the end of myself...).  I had a similar experience when I met my wife.  My beautifully crafted plan for finding God's ideal woman for me seemed perfectly logical and attainable given the right amount of effort, accompanied by doses of prayer and wise counsel on my part.  At 25 I was at the end my efforts again and gave up.  THEN, THEN, God brought the beautiful wife of my youth into my life.  Though I had been a close friend of her  brother for nearly a year, been in her home on many occasions, met every other member of her family, it was not until I had admitted defeat that God opened the door of His will to me.

And so it was with the storm that turned my technicolor life into sepia.  No matter how well I prayed, no matter what effort I put into the healing process, no matter how strong my self-will, I would not receive God's healing until I had come to the end of myself.  And so it was one Thursday in October.  When I had reached the end of myself, God was there!  And like Dorothy landing in Oz, color!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.

Do not be wise in your own eyes;
fear the LORD and shun evil.
This will bring health to your body
and nourishment to your bones. (Proverbs 3:5-9)

(Take some time and read all of Proverbs 3 - There's a lot of incredible wisdom and spiritual insight recorded there.)

Random Dissonance 4: Cruel Skies - the heart of the depression

Who knew that at London's latitude the sunlight would shine well past 9PM in the Summertime?  I went back to my hotel room to unwind.  It was a sweet little room in a reasonably priced boutique hotel just off of Hyde Park and close to Kensington Palace.  But regardless of the agreeable accommodations, I could not be comforted.  So at just before 9 o'clock, under a brlightly lit sky, I set out on a walk.  I headed to the park at a aggressive pace. Entering the park two blocks away and determined to maintain my gait, I walked on the first found path heading for what appeared to be the center of the park.  I don't know if I was looking for some kind of distraction to relieve my mind, if I was trying to produce enough endorphins to combat the tension that seized my every muscle, or if I just wanted to escape into the land of fairy tales and 'happily ever after.'  I must admit that London is a wonder-filled place in which to dream of disappearing. 

I walked and walked until I ran into the Serpentine (it's a lake), which forced me to exit the park onto the public sidewalk on the opposite side of the park.  I glanced at my watch at a quarter before 10.  Dusk was finally swallowing the daylight into shadow, and never letting up on my determined pace, I decided I might be safer in that metropolitan area to walk along the busy roadways that surrounded the park than I would be walking through a lightless public woodland that once served as private royal hunting grounds.  And I was soon to discover that Hyde Park is ENORMOUS.  Walking the circumference of the park I made it back to my hotel sometime near 11:00 and went to my moderately appointed room, through narrow halls and around obtuse turns that clumsily joined 3 former row houses, built for the fashionably wealthy English aristocrats of a bygone century.  I laid down without a shower and went rapidly to sleep.   I had not found peace for my tortured mind and broken heart, but had physically worn my nearly rehabilitated body plumb out.  (I had caught a vicious stomach virus in Africa and spent devastating hours the previous day nauseous and achy on an airplane.)

While the long-lit skies of London shone with lustrous indigo on a cloudless evening, the skies of my spirit, which had been churning with scattered showers for some time, turned cruel.  The once scattered showers found the glue to bond them together into the perfect storm.  That glue was sorrow.  A pattern of lost friendships that taunted my mind and choked my heart, blackened the light in my soul with deep mourning.  Alone, the loss of any  friendship is painful and regrettable, and should cause anyone to reflect deeply.  Friendship loss is part of life: survivable, healable, and painful in a way that reminds me of a deep tissue injection - potentially helpful but never enjoyable.  Pastors however, are supposed to take this loss with grace, resonance, and sage-like repose.  When someone we love, no matter how deeply, decides to leave a church we love no less deeply, we are expected to show adequate sadness, strewn with heart-felt compassion, restrained with gothic hero like faith.

The newest broken friendship spun indigo skies into a tempest that, if in the sea, could suck a hearty vessel into its vortex without a ripple in the stormy waves.  Soaked to the bone from a few years of somewhat self-imposed pressure to be successful in planting a church, the fatigue resultant from a malaligned self-perception, fear - cold and disabling - which had been born in a perception of friendships losing momentum and depth, and from a waning spiritual life, spawned a gale-force wind.  A blast that thrust together a weakness of mind, soul, and body, creating the perfect conditions for a devastating emotional typhoon.

I am primarily a relational person.  Others may be known as athletic, musical, political, mechanical, technological, artistic, charismatic, industrious, smart, crafty, jocular (that’s one of my favorite words...), or an array of other descriptions which come from a skill set based on personal values.  However, I have always been a relationship person.  Though I have dallied with attempts to distinguish myself through other ventures, I have always considered my core personality type to be relational.  I even took a bit of pride in being a “good” friend.  That self-definition created in me a kind of magnetic compass point which usually gives me clarity in the midst of rain showers and storms.

Some people have the ability to separate church and friendship. While I have friends with whom I share church and friends with whom I do not, experience has taught me that friendship is rarely (and by rarely I mean only once) ever maintained after someone departs from a congregation in which I pastor.  Oh, I have tried - sent out correspondence, called to have coffee, and the like.  But it turns out that it makes people uncomfortable to talk to the pastor of a church they once attended.  So, someone leaving the congregation that I pastor is a lightning strike at the core of my self - every time.  I love both friend and church.  And, I link both.  

I have heard that someone is leaving the church that I pastor on the heels of a proclamation of commitment.  In a recent case, over months and months I had been reassured through many situations that my friends were deeply committed to our church and to me and that they weren’t going to forsake either.  (Notice how even friends who are not pastors link the church to their firendship with the pastor,)  Then a call out of the blue. [lightning peel]   In another case just 9 days before the call, a determined statement “we are not leaving because God put us here.”  Or more typically, “I’m just so glad that I’m at this church, I don’t know what I would do without you all...” Phone call.  [lightning peel] During the dreadfully dark storm of depression, any and all compliments took on the fearful characteristic of a threat.  It seemed that any kind words were a preamble to a departure and loss of friendship.  And No matter how good my pastor face, I’m sure my cool, protected response pushed people away and added turmoil to the tempest.

Inside the cruel sky screamed at me in thunder rolls, “you don’t really have friends,”  “you’re a bad friend,”  “your only a pastor to them - and you better produce,”  “you’re not a good friend and you’re not a good pastor,”  “whatever you do is destined to fail because you are aren’t good at either thing.”  The deafening sound of thunderous self-critique struck new blows like a 1 - 2 punch to the gut followed with an upper-cut.  Round after round, month after month the fight drug on.  The losing fight drug on, punctuated with hopeful days of clear-skied fighting back, until God’s miraculous intervention brought skies of cobalt again to rule the days.

News of lost friendship in the form of church transition struck me hard in the heart of Britain.  And while daylight holds off the dark of night long in Her Majesty’s realm, darkness swept in swiftly for me that un-foggy day in London towne - just past 1 year after the deadly blog post.

Random Dissonance 3 - Scattered Showers

Depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent.  It is plain and simple reduction of feeling...  People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's d#*n hard to smile.

Judith Guest

To have passed through the storm of deep and lasting depression and come out on the other side brings a great deal of circumspect to one's life.  Today I stood in the middle of a grassy field, bathed in uninterrupted sunlight, basking in the warmth of restoration, and allowing the sun drenched heat to sink into my bones - far beyond my skin, down to the deepest parts of me.  I am well.  I am well and I refuse to take it for granted.  I am well and I will not waste this wellness on pointless busy-ness.  I am well and well-pleased to thank God for my wellness.  I thank God that He spoke into my storm and said once and for all, "peace."  And the storm became still.  The storm became still and the clouds - once maverick and malicious - began to drift away, out of my sight and beyond my horizon.

Before my storm I stood in the bath of wellness and did not know (with any particular awareness) that what I had was a gift.  So I took that gift and I used it.  I used it up and I abused it.  I treated it much as early American land owners treated their slaves.  I owned it without regard for it's significance or grandeur.  I took advantage of my wellness and never felt any regard for the damage I did to it.  I felt myself generous when I invested wee hours in prayer, reflection, meditation, or any other such method of care.  Like a slave owner considered himself exceedingly generous to give a large family of African slaves a single chicken with which to celebrate Christmas, I thought my investments - meager and emaciated - to be something magnanimous and noteworthy.  I took pride in my paltry investment.  I was a fool.

While I was ignoring the gift that nurtured me, fed me, made me rich - there were clouds gathering on the horizon.  Instead of seeing those clouds for the impending storm that they were, I ignored the clouds and scattered showers as if they were so insignificant that I could not be affected by them.  My wellness in tact, I did not know the threat that these rain-sprays represented.  I did not know that they could join together like the allied forces of an enemy attacker. But, like terrorists they would indeed sneak into my midst under the radar and infiltrate my heart, mind, spirit, and my physical body.  And these clouds would deliver a devastating blow...  These scattered showers, with well-coordinated cunning were soon to crash into my life like a fuel laden airliner into a steel scraper.  And they would nearly melt my frame from the inside.

"That one looks like Thomas the Tank Engine," said elder child with all the sugar that one can only possess at the age of 2.  In the tender days of childhood, cotton like clouds take on the form of our favorite things.  My life filled with childhood whimsy, this time as the parent and not the child, I have often found myself looking for favorite forms in the white billows of precipitation that bound across the big skies of Central California farmland.  And with uninfected innocence I watched clouds laced with nuclear rain drift into my emotional and spiritual environment.  Instead of recognizing them for the threat they presented, I childishly stared at the sky with unconcerned naivete.

I cannot now look back and clearly identify which cloud bore which name as they drifted into my life.  I cannot say that I first felt the rain of overwork, or overconfidence, or sadness.  And I am not sure that I can even yet identify each cloudy rain burst by its true name.  But some, I can see clearly.  Some I recognize as the ingredients of a terrorist storm.

Falling gently, like a drizzle in my soul, these are the things that floated into my life and, unattended, joined forces to imprison me in depression.  What seemed like determination and dedication turned into overwork without warning.  A little less sun.  What appeared to be visionary resolution morphed into blinded overconfidence.  A little less sun.  There began a small shift in spiritual disciplines, from a fluid daily conversation with Almighty, finding moments in scripture, prayer, reflections, and meditation.  My spiritual life became a stilted regimented responsibility, motivated by 'keeping up appearances' instead of empowered by closeness with Everlasting.  The rain drops graze my skin.  People once deeply connected to our congregation and to me leave.  Showers become storms.  Friendships silently wane, weaken, and teeter on the edge of ruination.  I make mistakes, owning all of the fault.  An infectious dissatisfaction invades the congregation I am devoted to.  Wailing winds blow torrential streams in horizontal rainfall while the bleak, black clouds surround.  And at first it doesn't seem that I am being smothered.  Instead I am embraced.  And I embrace the clouds.

This storm eventually becomes poisonous when the whisper of the gale tells me I'm no good, nothing will work, there's no hope.  And I believe it.  Then every effort and every attempt is infected with depression: infected and doomed.

I am well, sun-bathed, and hearty.  I can now share the story of my storm.  Some of you have sent me messages expressing parts of your own story of depression.  Some of you, like me, are in roles of Christian leadership and have felt 'required' to suffer your storm in silent solitude.  I hope that in some small measure my story breaks the bondage of that loneliness, frees you to feel God's generous love, and connects you to the smile He smiles over you.  Love rejoices in the truth and these small installments are the unfolding truth of my experience.  Rejoice!  The truth sets us free.  Free from shame and loneliness.  If you have never been through depression, be patient.  The story may seem to unfold too slowly for you, but it would be unfair to those of us who have lived through stories like this one to tell this one as if it were a 20-minute sitcom, with all of its plot complications settled in a single episode.  Smile.  Smile because God is in the valley of the shadow of death with His rod and staff to comfort.  He is following us with goodness and mercy.  And on the other side of that valley, the sun shines brightly in fields of grass, soaking us through with warmth and peace, hope and freedom.

Random Dissonance 2 - The Storm I Should Have Seen Coming

[Jesus] said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is... You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?  Luke 12:54ff

"Planting a church isn't for wimps!"  That is what I would always say.  I still say it.  Only now, when I do I kind of feel like one of those wimps to whom I once gave such flippant reference.  Honestly, it stings to say it now.  It stings like a venomous puncture from the tail of one of those wasps that used to nest in the junipers that lined the street in front of my childhood home.  It stings because I sometimes wonder if I am talking about myself.  So I say it less.  But it's still true, so I do say it.

At the end of the second year of our church plant and more than a year before I would surrender to the imprisoning clouds of depression, we had a fantastic idea for a Good Friday worship gathering.  It seemed that is was not just our idea, but it seemed to be inspired by God Himself.  I was thrilled to see it coming.  If darkness describes my emotions those painful mornings in bed, then brilliant specter had to define my mood that Friday afternoon.  Albeit splendor punctuated with the panic of meeting our deadline and the anxiety of wondering if anyone would show up to the worship gathering to experience all that we were laboring to provide, our creative team was excited to both produce the event and participate.  The sense that God would meet people there and gift them liberally with His ample love and grace both compelled us forward like a tractor beam in a science fiction movie, and inspired our hopes like beams of light that extend from a single candle's flame, slowly and gently revealing unexpected treasures of increasing brilliance and value.  That titillating anticipation was a bloom sown in the soil of a lot of physical and mental effort. 

Physical and mental effort are definitely not uncommon to anyone who is part of a newly planted church.  Our church plant, like so many others, still does not have it's own facilities.  We meet in a school.  This situation is one that I love and one that I sometimes dread.  There are a few moments in the life of this small town boy, turned big city scholar, turned home town pastor that bring incredible joy.  Being with someone at the moment they are able to verbalize their faith in Christ, performing the marriage of two Christ-followers who have done all of the hard work to know and follow God's will in their relationship, offering up a child in prayerful dedication to God's purpose just to name a few.  But there are a couple of other moments that bring another kind of delight.  The kind of delight that my mother described to me once when she told me that she didn't experience any feeling better than the feeling of having all of her children sleeping under her roof: safe, close, together.  There is an unparalleled delight to seeing God's people together.  There are some moments when a gathering of Christ-followers seems to erupt into noisy and blissful friendship.  I love those moments when everyone truly enjoys one another.  And that same deep satisfaction comes when a group of Christ-followers join their efforts together in shared service and good ol' fashioned hard work; and they love the task for the blessing of sharing it.  There are times on Sunday mornings, when we set up church from a trailer, that those last two moments of pastoral glee converge.  And then, I LOVE being a church planter, meeting in a school.

As the Good Friday gathering began and people arrived, all appeared to be on track for a stunning fulfillment of all that we had anticipated.  Then, as if I was looking through a tunnel-like void, similar to Hollywood's rendition of a black hole in space, I saw something that I did not expect.  I saw a couple, new to our congregation.  This was not part of the portrait that I had meticulously painted for the event.  I had not overseen any strategy to make sure that new people were either welcomed properly or integrated into the collective experience.  And sure enough, as I kept my eye on them through the evening to track their engagement in the event, the moments when our congregation reached out to welcome them escaped my scrutiny.   I talked myself into calm for the sake of making it through the evening.  And that's about as far as I made it... through the evening.  By the time the event concluded and the gymnatorium was cleaned & reorganized for Sunday's Easter gathering, thoughts of failure attacked my brain like an infestation.  Dread put it's strangle hold on my heart.  And fear took my soul captive.  I was in so much agony, because I was convinced that my observation was an indication of looming failure for this mission to which I had sold my self.  After two years of life-hijacking focus on ministry, physical fatigue, mental strain, emotional exhaustion, and diminishing spiritual stamina had drained me of my defenses like a leach sucks blood.  I didn't see it happening, but the vision that once brought me vitality and focus had become strain, drain, and pain.  Clouds were engulfing me.  And like cataracts steal vision from a healthy eye beneath, this perfect storm of emotion was robbing me of the joy I had always had in ministry.  I should have seen the storm coming!

When the deepest part of night fell and I went to bed, sleep eluded me.  The darkness of night covered the sky but the the full moon's brilliant glow seemed to have the lumens of a WWII air strike search light with all of its beams focused on me.  My eyes wide-peeled, I succumbed to the multi-layered attack on my senses.  I got up out of bed and went to the computer to try to organize my thoughts...  OK, that's the white-washed version.  I got up and went to the computer to get it out, to unload.  And I dropped that load like a manifestation of the Manhattan Project.  What had begun as fatigue from believing that the success of our church plant relied on my leadership ability, my organization, my pastoral skill, my spiritual prowess, my personal charisma, and endless hours of dedication to prove my worth, was swirling inside my soul like a vat of nuclear activity, churned by a cartoon super-villain and nearing the point of critical mass. An explosion was on the very cusp of the horizon.  I sat down at the computer and typed out all my fears of failure and my anxiety.  And, I was not careful enough to protect the innocent.  Then, I did the most regrettable thing of my ministry life.  I posted that rant on a now-deleted blog.  The nuclear waste expelled, night came like a cozy comforter and wrapped me in wanton sleep.  But morning was coming, and the explosion of that blog post was about to reap destruction in more places than just my inner-life.

While I had never bothered to notice the dark dread-filled clouds of fatigue mounting in my sky, there was no missing the radiation cloud that followed that blog post.  It was the fallout that inevitably follows all such eruptions of nuclear poison.  It was harm, dropping like nuclear rain in the lives of so many of the people who surrounded me as faithful friends.  And it opened up the skies to an even greater storm that would eventually plunge me into depths of dark feelings I have never before known.

Random Dissonance - Through the Clouds

"Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief."
- C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

As I sit typing at my computer in the waning moments of this winter morning, I am enjoying brilliant sunlight and the shocking warmth of a 48 degree day.  It has been 3 weeks since the persistent clouds first cloistered the sun in their prison.  The light of the sun seems too bright for my fair eyes to withstand.  The warmth, shocking for my bare arms.  The revelations of daylight both painful and pleasurable at once.

I'm writing today from the light of day.  On the other side of dark clouds that once enshrouded my mind, my spirit, and my body.  For 18 months I was blanketed in depression, covered in shame, wrapped in fear, and lost in a fog that seemed to kidnap me from the truth that I know.  Depression stole from me the ability to connect truth and reality to spirit and mind.

It was Spring.  It was about 10AM.  The kids were already at school and I had not kissed their tender forehead or spoken words of love and affirmation to them to nourish their day.   I was cocooned in the blankets, blinds closed, pillow over my head when my bride came in to say her goodbyes as she set off on some errands for that day.  I heard the frustration in her voice as she unfolded her plans to me and ultimately asked me how long I was going to let this last.  (This was not the first morning which I had wasted, languishing in the darkness of a bedroom-turned-catacomb.) "People are asking me what's wrong with you and I don't know what to say."  She encouraged me to get some time with God while she was gone and to find someone I wanted to talk to about it.  But I followed neither of her suggestions.  Instead I embraced the fog, settled under the blankets and the clouds, and I allowed the numbness to engulf me.

There in the dark, numb fog of my soul, I thought about my despair.  I thought about it and wondered why I felt such despair.  I was angry that I was feeling it.  I was mad at myself, mad at the world, and perplexed by God.  I thought about my situation and I reasoned with myself that none of my reasons for such dark feelings were either reasonable or legitimate.  But there they were.  Then I tried to think of something else, but hidden under the camouflage of every other thought were thoughts of anxiety, darkness, dread, and despair.  They were becoming friends...  Perhaps that is not the word I wish to use of them.  Companions.  Fellows.  Always with me, they tainted every thought and activity.  They brought poison to my heart, mind, and soul.  Definitely not my friends, they remained ever with me none the less.  So I thought of how I felt, and I felt no better because of doing so.

When I finally showered and dressed that day, I made a critical decision.  I decided to not let anyone suffer with me.  I would keep my depression and anxiety to myself.  "After all, I'm a husband, father, and pastor.  People need me and I owe it to them to keep up a brave front while I work this out," I reasoned with myself under the drenching flood of the warm shower that could warm my skin but couldn't sooth my mind or my heart.  So, that was the last day I stayed in bed.  The last day I wore my dark emotions on my face.  I learned to put on my smile.  I created a new laugh.  One that was almost convincing.  I dug down deep for the words of truth that used to resonate with my mind and spirit, but that now only rung out of my memory and were spoken by shear will to do no more harm.  But of course I did do more harm...  Harm is the poisonous blossom that buds on the many branches of depression.

I am not a medical expert and have not undertaken to study all of the physiological ramifications of depression on the human mind.  I am not sure that I will even be able to illuminate any deep-reaching spiritual realities as related to depression.  But I do have a story to tell.  It is my story.  And I pray that by telling it I am able to walk more fully in the light of day, beyond the foggy veil of depression's dark clouds.  I pray that by reading it others may come closer to the break of day in their own struggle.  I pray that God will smile on us from His unbridled pleasure with the truth.  I pray that we will feel His smile and be warmed and renewed by His delight.