Voices from the Pit

There are a lot of things I am easily willing to expose about myself, things that are not particularly flattering, but which I share anyways because they might help other people know they aren't alone in life.

Examples may include:

 “You aren't alone, sometimes I lose my temper and scream at my kids too…but I have gotten better at learning how not to do this as often…”

“I understand. I too am regularly baffled by the depth of my own selfish tendencies…but God is always faithful to mold and shape me…”

“Yes, I have also wrestled senselessly with God while He pursued me….it was quite painful…it is much easier to stop kicking against the goads…”

“I also had no idea that parenting is so hard…..I had no idea that I would be so exhausted…and some days, the best thing for all of us is just to watch some extra cartoons….”

 “My name is Amy, and I’m an alcoholic…I also used to be entirely baffled by my own inability to stop drinking whiskey and doing drugs….I thought I was permanently broken too…but there is hope….”

I really believe that we identify with each other in our brokenness, and therefore we should talk about it. There is healing in the talking about it – it is not so powerful, not so broken when we talk about it, when we bring it into the light and look it up and down, and realize it’s nothing special to humankind. We identify with each other in the broken places and the way our cracks get filled with grace.

But for me there is one area where it is very hard to carry this happy philosophy.

Sometimes, I suffer from depression.

Just saying it out loud feels like puking – like I want to clean it up and explain it away.

Why is this such an unforgiveable, grotesque weakness to me? 

I do not find it to be such in others. When others are struggling with depression, I know how awful they feel, and I tell them to be kind to themselves, to rest, to get help from the people around them, to know that they are loved and that it will pass. But when it shows up in me, I am disgusted with myself.

The thing about depression is that it is characterized by an inescapable sense of self-centered neediness. The nature of depression itself is such that it magnifies every possible thing I could hate about myself or the world. Character tendencies in me which could normally be relieved through prayer, Scripture, self-care, and talking to others – these things are completely inescapable under the veil of depression. And not just inescapable, but MAGNIFIED. It is just self, self, me and my needy needs.

That is why I hate it. Because it is way too much me. Because there is no solution to it, no fix, no amount of work that I can do to make it better. It is just a big ugly gloomy cloud looming, making everything seem darker than it really is. And I just have to ride it out.

This time it has been here for just over two weeks. Thank God within those two weeks, I have had some grace-filled good days, days when the sunshine has hit my skin and brought tears to my eyes, days when I can actually get through the day without a nap, days when I am not wondering if it will ever lift. Those days give hope that it is getting better. Maybe. Eventually.

This guy speaks my language

Depression feels small…like being a tiny voice in the bottom of a deep, deep well. And the thought of trying that hard to be heard is absolutely overwhelming. It feels a lot like screaming silently, like being trapped in someone else’s very unwilling body. It feels jumpy like nightmares and creepy shadows at night and intrusive fear of bloody tragedies everywhere. It feels like a whole lot of Adam Duritz on August and Everything After (if you love this cd, you are my kind of crazy).

It feels like noise is amplified exactly to the level of nails on a chalkboard. Like I am a prickly cactus porcupine. It feels like a 30 minute homework assignment is suddenly the equivalent of an 8 hour final. It feels like the thought of cooking dinner could bring me to tears. It feels very, very heavy. It mostly just feels like I want to take a nap….like I have not slept in years and I just need to sleep it off. Every day. It feels like time is slow and two weeks seems like two years.

It also feels like guilt – it feels like dripping with grandiose, irrational, over-the-top guilt. It comes in waves when my 2 year old tells me about his Triceratops (“Tops”) with his little voice, and I am washed away by how I just don’t have enough to give to these little guys right now. It knocks me over with sadness when I fold their little socks and I just want to have more love to give them, to give everyone, to give to myself.

It feels like sliding down a stupid, idiotic pit – pointless and going nowhere. It feels like carrying a very useless but constant awareness of how much I don’t feel like myself, an awareness which serves as a nagging reminder that I am currently dysfunctional, and better remind myself of it because I can’t seem to think of much else, other than how I don’t feel good all the time. It feels like being so sick of yourself you can’t even stand it, and you feel blessedly free when you actually forget about yourself for a minute.

It feels like losing all of your productive abilities, all of your top-notch qualities, all of those favorite things about you which highly recommend you. Someone robbed them. They are gone. You are just a blob, a big, needy, tired blob. Only mostly no one notices except for you.

So that is how I have been feeling, and I am both glad and disgusted to share it with you. I know many of you can relate.

One thing I have learned:

When my first son was born, one of the unexpectedly shocking things about motherhood was that it was no longer so easy and convenient to get fed. Worship? Crying baby. Sunday school? Time to nurse. Listening to an entire sermon uninterrupted? Those days were over. At some point…I felt like I was starving.

My sister, wise mother of six and fellow depression sufferer, told me this simple thing: God knows what you need, and He who once fed you with the feast of entire sermons and deep theological discussions can now sustain you with just a few sentences, just a snippet, even just ONE word of grace. And it will be enough.

She was (and is still) so right.

And it’s true for depression too. He still rains His grace down into the pit. He is, after all, the helper of the helpless. And we are so quick to forget it, when we aren’t forced to wallow in our own helplessness.

So there are blessings too, even down here in the pit. Blessings which come from mom and mom-in-law swooping in to help, because they somehow see how tired I am even though I didn't tell them. Blessings which come from Word and song, from friendship and tiny affirmations that all is fundamentally well. Blessings which whisper of God’s warmth melting the ice, blessings which sing that His power is made perfect in our weakness, blessings which soothe our souls in this dark winter. 

And it is enough.