Category Archives: depression

December 9, 2014 · 10:20 am

do what it takes

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It has been a long time since I’ve sat here, staring at a blank screen. I’ve started a dozen posts in my head since I last wrote and mentally bookmarked just as many topics to address. I even have a small arsenal of posts that I wrote before my daughter was born  so that I could continue to publish regularly throughout “the hard weeks right after,” but somehow using those now seems false, not true to where (or even who?) I am now.

And the hard weeks…hahaha! If only just a few weeks had been hard.

Far from it.

DSC_0039She’s five months old now, with a smile that charms even the hardest of hearts, but every day remains a challenge. And the reality of transferring any of those thoughts to paper or completing any of those posts feels staggeringly difficult.  Continue reading →

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August 4, 2014 · 8:38 am

becoming four

Apparently having a newborn and a 21-month-old is no joke. I mean, not that I thought it was going to be easy, but – surprise – it’s harder than I imagined. And I have quite the imagination.

I’ve started at least a dozen blog posts since Hannah Grace was born (four weeks ago today — probably longer by the time I publish this post), but they have all been in my head. I did actually start one, but typing with only my left hand while holding a sleeping infant in my right didn’t allow me to get very far, and I probably fell asleep, was clobbered by a toddler, had to feed the infant, and/or other things before I could write more than six sentences anyway.

Also, I’m not sure if I managed to save those six sentences.

I debated dictating my posts, but wasn’t sure Siri could handle it. (Additionally, this debate took place in my head, since I rarely talk much to anyone over the age of 21 months.)

We are now a family of four, and in becoming a family of four, a change occurred. I lost our family of three. And, friends, I suck at change. Good change, bad change, inevitable change – all of it.   Continue reading →

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July 28, 2014 · 7:25 am

practicing hope (part 4 of 4)

I’m not a particularly optimistic person (understatement of the year). Depression hasn’t helped. But I’m trying out this idea of allowing the dark times to teach me about myself and also about God.

I’ve written about how I believe that God uses our depression to teach us about our hearts and how we should use depression as a tool to examine what we worship. I’ve also written about how even though Edward Welch’s book on depression argues that suffering should bring us closer to God – because our world is broken and we are broken, often the opposite is true.

All of these things are helpful. Welch’s perspective on depression is profoundly shaping and changing my own. BUT. What I really want to know is what to do about the depression.  Continue reading →

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July 21, 2014 · 7:53 am

a confession

I’m afraid to tell people that I’m a writer. I don’t feel like a writer. I want to be a writer – I’ve wanted it since I was about ten or eleven years old – but now, when I’m trying to focus on it with concentrated effort for the first time, trying to follow this longtime dream – I’m afraid to tell people.

Instead I say “I’ve got work to do” or I list the other half-dozen things that I might do during the two days that my son is in daycare. “You know, I’m cooking a meal for a friend that had surgery, and then I’m observing a bit of teaching for the girl I mentor and then I’m coaching a chamber music group and then I’m writing a proposal for a magazine. And then I’ve got to learn the music for that concert next week.” It’s never “I’m writing.”

Is it because I haven’t yet been published – outside the classical music realm and world? Is it because I feel like I’m just going through the motions – imitating what I imagine to be the life of a writer (who’s also essentially a full-time mom and in charge of everything in the home)? Is it because I’m afraid to tell people what I’m writing about?  Continue reading →

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July 14, 2014 · 6:47 am

how can we respond? (part 3 of 4)

Last time, I waxed eloquent about God’s role in suffering (according to counselor and theologian Ed Welch) – God uses our suffering to teach us about our hearts. Welch also argues that suffering actually points us towards God – in two ways:

  1. We need God to endure our suffering.
  2. The life of God’s son, Jesus, helps us to understand our suffering.

Now silence that little voice in your head that might be saying, Okay, great, but I still have to believe in God to care about this perspective. I’m with you, friend. I’ve been there. But stick with me. Welch is simply saying that bad things can have a good purpose. And also that we shouldn’t expect life to be a bowl of cherries:

The cross says that life will not be easy. If Jesus serves, we will serve. If Jesus suffers, we, too, will experience hardships. . . Suffering is part of the path that leads to glory and beauty.

BUT. It seems to me that suffering doesn’t always do what it’s intended to do – it doesn’t always bring good, and it doesn’t always bring us closer to God. Continue reading →

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July 10, 2014 · 4:28 am

looking under the hood (part 2 of 4)

In an ideal world, I endure suffering with grace and dignity, clinging to the Lord, quietly strong in my faith, exuding peace and composure even when faced with the hardest things. I am a poster child for how faith can help weather difficult times.

In reality, my suffering is ugly. I’m mean. I struggle with doubt and say sarcastic things to God and about God. I shut myself off from people and I shut people out. I scream and hit and cry angry tears. Sometimes I just feel numb. Sometimes I drink too much. Sometimes I eat too much. Sometimes I don’t eat enough. One thing is true – I’m no Mother Teresa.

But one other important thing is also true.

I’m willing to keep fighting, and I want to learn to do it better.  Continue reading →

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June 26, 2014 · 6:22 am

God in the stubborn darkness (part 1 of 4)

When I first started calling the Christian faith my own, I had a long list of objections, questions, and doubts. One of these was how to reconcile my understanding and personal experience of depression with what I was learning about Christianity. I (mistakenly) believed that if my faith was strong enough, or my “quiet times with God” profound enough, or my sense of identity secure enough, I wouldn’t struggle with depression.

I thought that Christians equated depression with weakness – or, even worse, with sin.

But I have known depression for years – decades. I have struggled with volatile emotions and hopelessness, fought the demons that insisted life wasn’t worth living and tempted me to cut into my own skin. I wrote in sixth-grade handwriting in a spiral-bound notebook, This can’t be normal. What I’m feeling is too much. I don’t know how to live like this.

I know depression. I know its ugliness, its self-centeredness, its reality of hopelessness and despair. I know emotions that are explosive and debilitating.

I first hurt myself when I was thirteen.  Continue reading →

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June 22, 2014 · 5:23 pm

deliver me

We must not underestimate our adversary, life itself. Uncomfortable even at good moments, difficult and unfair usually, and a complete nightmare much too often, life will stubbornly resist betterment, always finding new ways of being more than we can stand.

— Ian Frazier

Blessed be the Lord,
who daily bears us up;
God is our salvation. Selah
Our God is a God of salvation,
and to God, the Lord, belong deliverances from death.

— Psalm 68:19-20 (ESV)

This idea (life is hard, and God gives us the strength to persevere) seems to be following me around lately – showing up in tangible ways, like my daily Bible reading email (which I only sometimes open and/or read) or the Reflection in the front of the church bulletin. And I’m not one to really believe in coincidences.  Continue reading →

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May 7, 2014 · 3:12 am

tough week

This has been a tough week. The last several weeks have been tough weeks. Clearly, an ideal time to start a blog – to share the dirt and drama in a public space, for all to see. Luckily, I’ve generally been one to do things that make sense – so this falls right in line. (That last bit was a joke. It’s hard for a depressed person to be funny, so bear with me. And I’m not terribly funny even on a good day.)

My mom used to call me her “long-shot daughter” because I always went after things that she deemed long-shots…you know, the usual sorts of things, like applying to spend a summer studying monkeys in Bali when I had no background in behavioral science or field research; getting into a college that my college counselor told me was a waste of application fee; convincing a publishing house to hire me when I had never edited anyone’s words other than my own; etc.

I won’t bore you with my mottled resume, but wanted to say that doing this – starting a blog at a time when I can barely get dressed in the morning – seems appropriately “long-shot” and therefore, very me.  Continue reading →

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