tessi, I would share with you the fact that I have lived with
depression since childhood. That’s over 50 years.
I haven’t a
clue - as to why we’re all on earth, to begin with.
Life seems utterly absurd.
Yet I did note that - if I pay casual attention - to thoughts that arise, often they are thoughts about what I am really interested in. This boredom, for me, is what is termed, by existentialists, *“ennui.” *A feeling of intense ‘non-interest’ in life.
14 years ago, I did do volunteer work, to help pass the empty days. I was told, then, that I was in severe depression. Now I’m in my ‘everyday’ depression, that I have known for 50 years.
quote: tessi
I try to carry this cross but after nine years I’m beginning to think of giving up.
I surely hope that you have discussed this with your personal physician. I can say, tessi, that I have found that some decades in life are harder than others.
When in severe depression, people urged me to “pray.” I looked at them with dull eyes, wondering why they could not understand that I had used up all the energy that I had, on a given day, just getting dressed. “God loves you!” they said. “Surrrre He does,” I thought. “I can hardly write out a grocery list, I’m so dragged down with depression. I can hardly keep my “nose above water,” and their rolling on about ‘praying.’”
Those were truly absurd ‘exchanges,’ albeit kindly meant.
Truly and utterly absurd.
I will not know, until I see God in the Face, how much the prayers of others assisted, and continue to assist me. To hear “I am praying for you,” I found of far more support, than those who urged me to pray.
There is only one upside that I can see, about depression.
One comes to know, in depth, what the psalmist is talking about, when he wrote:
“I was sinking, and You pulled me out of the mire,
You set me on a high place.”
For the mire of depression, is a mire, indeed.
When it was dreadfully bad, on a given day, I would picture myself just sitting at the foot of the cross, leaning against it, with Jesus above me. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.
I knew that He knew what abandonment felt like.
I knew that He cried out, in terrible grief and loss
“My God, My God -
why have You abandoned Me?”
Those who suffer greatly, in life, can be with Him - as He is lifted up on His cross. All is an eternal “now,” to God, and we can go back, 20 centuries, and keep Him company, as few can.
Does God not reach across the centuries, and choose those who will be company for His crucified Son? Those who understand?
I am praying for you, tessi.
Please know that you are not alone in this experience of depression. It takes more raw courage, to get through a day, when heavily depressed, than others not so afflicted can even guess at.
Those who can understand have, themselves, suffered great loss, or endure profound physical or mental or emotional pain.
To just sit and lean against His cross, saying nothing, is understood, by these human beings. There is a great price to be paid, to be one with our suffering Lord.
reen12
