My childhood was filled escapism. I remember when my mother was in prison. It was such an unexpected situation I couldn’t wrap my mind around. A nine-year-old can’t emotionally handle the sudden absence of their mother. I remember those times like it was yesterday, so confused and alone, crying myself to sleep. My bed became my best friend. Sometimes the thought of never waking up is better than living life at all.
Many of us handle our problems this way. I am 22 now and there are some days when the world is loud and threatening. There are times when hope seems inconsistent with the reality I live in. To sleep is to escape, or to be absent from my reality. There are nights when I want to sleep forever, in hopes of waking up to a different outcome on life.
My last post was about anxiety and how I deal with the nights I cannot go to sleep. This will be for the mornings when I never want to wake up.
I have not been diagnosed with clinical depression (so I cannot speak from this perspective though I have many friends who are). However, I deal with feelings of sadness, restlessness, fatigue, and even suicidal thoughts. Depression is a sad reality plagued by hopelessness, which many of us deal with. How must we deal with this in a way that makes others feel loved and exalt Christ? I hope that this is an encouragement to you.
The Reality
Real people who love, pray, and risk their lives for others deal with feelings and symptoms of depression. The professors you bear with, the preachers you love, the friends you hang out with, may have feelings of depression and even clinical. It bears no race, cares about no age, and has no limits whatsoever.
Now, anyone can experience symptoms of depression, but not totally understand what it is like to live with these feelings. From one who struggles with this life to another, there is an empathy that cannot be compared. The problem in handling the situation however, is the sympathy of others. Sympathy is ‘feeling with’ someone, but empathy is to have actually ‘been’ where somewhere else is and know how they feel. Somewhere along the way we have forgotten what sympathy is. We must do a better job to understand how others different from us feel and work. We must strive our best to “love one another.” Job’s friends show a picture of what it means to sit in sympathy with a loved one, who is going through circumstances foreign from their own.
Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him. And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. (Job 2:11-13)
According to the Suicide Awareness Voices of Education website, suicide is the second leading cause of death for 15 – 24-year-olds. 15% of people with depression commit suicide.
Sorry for the morbid facts but, it is real life. Since 16 years old, even I have seriously contemplated suicide. This thought has decreased over time, but I’d be a liar if I said it has been annihilated. This is the final escape plan from a life that seems hopeless. Many people label it as selfish and leave it there. It’s up for debate, and I believe it’s a secondary issue which can be flushed out in more discussion. Focusing on those who struggle with the problem is the primary because people are fragile. People have experienced their own set of lives with their own wins and losses. This is how Christ approached people who were hurting, with sympathy and compassion and ultimately, hope.
The Lie
We live in a land damaged by sin. We are damaged as well. This affects us all mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually in some way, shape, or form. The major effect of the fall of mankind (Genesis 3) is our loss of a relationship with God. Our identity has become the flakiest thing about us. We are not satisfied with how we presently are. There is a discomfort that is present and a yearn for more, which we have all attempted to replace with God Himself.
Magnify this feeling for someone who suffers with mental disorders. For Christians, Jesus has won us back from the world, changing our identity and claiming us as His own. Eternally, we are safe, but how do we deal with the world as is?
Whatever you do, you are deemed unworthy. Unworthy of complete relationships, a healthy look in the mirror, and unconditional love. Your biggest enemy is yourself. This is the reality for men and women dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts.
Unimaginably alone: this is the only way I can describe my feelings at times. Extrovert or not, there are days when I am with a group of people who I know in fact love me and care for me and I still feel alone. This is the lie that we fight the majority of the time. No relationship, counselor, or medicine of this world can change that.
The Truth
There’s nowhere to go. No one to turn to. My relationships will always fail me while my worries will consume me. This is where I want to throw in the towel. I am powerless to change any of my fears, doubts, and anxieties, and I am afraid that there is no one who can.
That’s exactly what I believe this woman nearly thought in the upcoming passage. Jesus, the God-man, was on His way through a crowd to heal a synagogue ruler’s daughter, who was dying.
And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (Mark 5:25-34)
Imagine being worn and torn by such a physical disease as this for twelve years. Countless appointments with professional doctors and specialists with no remedy, while finally being casted away by civilians. I could imagine asking myself, “Where should I go? Whom shall I turn to? I have tried everything.”
Then comes Jesus, with grace in our failures and hope for our future. The power of God and the sympathy of the lowest has come with a hand to heal. The greatest thing about this scripture in my eyes, is the relationship with Holiness we encounter in the person of Jesus Christ. It is mind-boggling and yet, so beautiful.
The Jewish community shunned the disabled and ill, just as we are prone to adopt the confusion and hopelessness of society. While the “chosen one’s” rejected it’s most needed, the Highest slowed down and accepted us into His family. Jesus loves us with an unconditional love.
I will spend my life unable to fully understand this reality, because it is so foreign to what we believe about ourselves. The truth is that we are unable to fix the world around us and the damage within us but, we have a Savior who is willing to love and accept us when we do not have the ability to do so ourselves. This is what’s beautiful about true Christianity, it is all about the One who can actually change me from the inside out, not myself.
Conclusion
There are some thorns which will not be removed on this side of heaven, but will most certainly be extinguished in the next. God is making all things new! And though feelings of depression and thoughts of suicide will run as God allows it, so much more will His grace abound in our weaknesses. This is what makes it worth it to wake up in the mornings.
Today the world still feels loud and threatening. There are times when hope seems inconsistent with the reality I live in. This becomes so bad that I want to escape at times, at the lowest points, by any means necessary. Then I remember when all seemed lost, how God rescued my when I had nowhere to go.
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. (Psalm 18:2)
mitchjay 