Monday, May 23, 2005

The broken promise of despair. . .

I found myself sharing a deep hard earned truth to my little brother the other day, the realization came from months spiraling out of control and deep down in the valley of depression. Depression is a scary, misunderstood place to be that requires a lot of grace from those we love. Time, therapy, drugs and lotz of hugs are the only way to bring daylight into your personal darkness and the only reliable thing about depression is that it is not reliable at all. Each person experiences something different and needs different things, time, levels of healing etc. But we limp along hoping for a break in the pain so we can breathe.

However, I have found that no matter how real depression is, it lies. A lie that is seductive and real. The horrible untruth of depression is that there is no real answer at the bottom of the pit. After we give into our soul agony and own up to what is happening to us there is a tendency to think that the answer to our pain will be found after we have finally run through it all and landed with a thud at the bottom. So much healing comes when we acknowledge our pain that we the only thing we learn to hope in is pain itself, that is holds the key to our truth. I hope my wonderful little brother won’t mind me sharing how fearlessly he has stared down his own pain and how I have seen him grow and move forward even when he felt like he was a goner.

But, I believe there comes a time somewhere between diagnosis and real life that you have to disown pain, it is not your friend, it does not love you and it will never allow you to be free. Pain is a symptom not a remedy; there is no promise of true purpose in pain. The people I admire most have done great things in and because of their pain but the testament to them isn’t their pain, but the honesty with how they dealt with it. At some point we all find ourselves lying with our faces on aged hard wood, alone and broken. For me, this wasn’t the end of my pain but it was the end of hoping in pain itself. I decided to truly hope in God. The only reality in my valley was that the further I down I had gone the further back I would have to go, so I had a choice. How far down to I want to “comeback” from? From this point or some point further down into oblivion? My pain was never going to give me a boost up it only gave me perspective and compassion. It refined me, if I could write from pain, then I could write from anywhere. That is how I discovered who I was, what I was called to do, my purpose in life. To write was to pick myself up and to start to live again.
My mother always said that there are consequences for our emotions just like there are for our actions. I am proud of who I have become in the refining fires of pain. I am proud that God wants to use me. I am thankful for the fact that God can turn something as ugly as depression into something that can be of use to others. And I am thankful that He gave me the strength, little by little, to pick my head off the floor and move me toward wholeness.

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