"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too." - 2 Corinthians 1:3-5Before I get into the next part of this story, I wanted to thank all of you who left comments or e-mailed me about the last post in this series. Truly the verse I posted above is true. So many of you shared that you have struggled with the same things and maybe even now are currently struggling. My prayer as I continue to write about this is that the comfort of Christ would invade every word that I type, because Jesus is truly the only reason for so many of the blessings I now have.For it is you who light my lamp;
the Lord my God lightens my darkness.
- Psalm 18:28
Turn to me and be gracious to me,
for I am lonely and afflicted.
The troubles of my heart are enlarged;
bring me out of my distresses.
Consider my affliction and my trouble,
and forgive all my sins.
- Psalm 25:16-18
Depression feels like dying.
Not only does your body ache, but as days go by and the feelings grow deeper and more intense, more and more it is like you're being cut off from the world. The laughter of others sends you deeper within yourself, because you don't have the strength to laugh. Sleep is welcome, if only as an escape, but you know that with the sleep comes the waking up, and waking up means trying to talk yourself into why you should get out of bed.
The sunnier days are worse than the cloudy ones, because at least on a cloudy day it seems alright to feel so dark on the inside. But on the sunny days it feels almost criminal to be so downtrodden.
What's wrong with you? the voices say.
Sometimes tears come so easily you're unprepared for them; other days you wish you could cry and can't.
I remember when I was in ninth grade, sitting at my desk in my bedroom with my Bible open. I started at the beginning of the Psalms and kept reading, desperate for something, anything, to pull me out of the hole I was in. After some time, the clouds lifted and life didn't seem so difficult to live anymore.
The rest of high school smoothed over that early season of darkness, so much so that I almost forgot it had happened. Until it happened again.
My freshman year of college started full of promise. I was so glad to be out of a high school full of people who knew me. I wanted to be anonymous; I wanted to make new friends; I wanted a fresh start. All those things happened, and within a couple of weeks I had become good friends with a Christian guy who lived near me.
He was involved a local church and invited me to come to the opening night of a Christian comedy show his church was helping to produce. I gathered up some of my other friends - all freshman girls - who were just as excited as I was to have something fun to do.
At the end of the second skit, everything happened like the people on stage had planned - the lights went off, the crowd went silent, the main character in the skit held up a huge ceramic vase, pretending like he was about to accidentally drop it. The lights were supposed to go off at the moment he pretended to let go of the vase. He didn't let go, but the handle on the vase broke as he flung the vase up above his head - and the vase went hurtling into the audience.
I remember darkness, something white, something strange on the side of my head. I told my friend sitting next to me that I thought it might have hit me. The lights were still off, so she said we should go out into the hallway to see.
She opened the door out of the auditorium for me, and as I stepped into the light, she started screaming.
Forty stitches later, I looked like Frankenstein. A huge wound ran up my upper cheek, across my eyelid and through my eyebrow.
I spent several nights at home, then the next several weeks being nursed by the people who lived in my dorm.
The guy who had invited me to the show felt, of course, horrible. I didn't blame him, but I think he felt a certain indebtedness to me that he really couldn't ever repay. But I was desperate for companionship. I leaned on him far more than I should have, and even though I knew it couldn't last forever, I wanted to believe that it could.
It was in the weeks after the vase incident that the darkness started creeping back into my heart and mind. At first when I didn't feel like getting up in the morning, I attributed it to the way I looked. I didn't feel attractive at all with scars across the right side of my face. I had missed a lot of classes and going to them reminded me how much I still needed to catch up. That's why I didn't want to get out of bed - it was perfectly normal.
But the darkness didn't go away when the scars started to fade and I caught up in my classes. If my friend wasn't around to talk to or hang out with, I felt miserable. And yet when I was with him, there was nothing much I felt like doing. As time progressed he seemed less and less available, which only plunged me deeper into self-pity and hurt.
It all came to a head when I overheard him telling someone that he wished I would leave him alone, because he felt like I was suffocating him.
And from the words of someone whose friendship I had once treasured so greatly came feelings of despair I would never forget. Before, the waves of depression had just been lapping at the shore of my heart. Now I was in the middle of the ocean, drowning.
I didn't blame him for feeling that way. I knew what he said was true. But by that point I had been feeling the same way for so long that I had developed a new perception of myself:
You are a sad, hopeless, obnoxious person who can't have healthy relationships and who will probably never be really happy again.And that was the lie I started to feed myself.
And lest you be tempted to be impressed at our preparation, here's the rest of Stephen's room:
Isn't it adorable? She is an expert knitter - far better than I can ever hope to be. This sweater will be perfect for the spring days when we go for a walk. The only thing that makes me sad is knowing that he won't be able to wear it forever!
We still need a lot more to be ready - but honestly, even if he came today, we'd have a place for him to sleep and clothes for him to wear. And, of course, a mama and papa who love him a whole lot!
