CHAPTER 1
WHY DEPRESSION? YES IT HAPPENS TO THEM TOO!
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Jeremiah 20:14 - Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed!
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Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. Why? Well for one, he wept! It is strange that we as people of faith find it odd that tears are part of that faith. It would be hard to find a place in God’s Word where tears, pain and depression are not found. In my years as a believer in Christ I never thought, or even considered, what lie ahead for those that the Lord would use. I often wonder if the Apostles knew what would befall them as followers of Christ. Would they be so quick to lie under His Cross?
Depression: As I looked up the word depression in the Webster’s Dictionary, I was amazed to see the plethora of bombastic definitions. For example, the definition ranged from being depressed; a hollow or low place on a surface; low spirits; gloominess; sadness; a decrease in force; a decrease in functional activity; area of relatively low barometric pressure; low; an emotional condition characterized by feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy.
From this description we can logically see that not all uses of the word depression is of the emotional type. Yet one thing is clear, low is at the center of the word. Whether it is a low in the economy or a dimple depression in the horizon, low is low. It is the opposite of high.
It is amazing the magnetic pull we have towards height. To be above is one of the first things we desire as children; to be on our father’s shoulders, to be on top of the monkey bars at the playground. When the parade is coming down the street we stretch our necks to see. That is what we really desire - to see! Yet, what if seeing is not what we need. We know as parents our first reaction to a horrific scene on the television or to an automobile accident is to hide our children’s eyes from it. Why? Why do we hide, or if I may bring low, our children’s ability to see pain or horror? Is it not to keep them from that which they are not quite able to bare at such a young age? Maybe in not seeing one thing we are actually making them see another.
When I was first dealt the debilitating blow of depression, my first thought was to see higher. To see what the Lord was keeping from me. All of the joy and fun of the day was no longer in my grasp. It was as if my heavenly Father was keeping my eyes from seeing what I so desperately desired to see; life, joy, the sun again. Why would a loving father keep me from seeing what I so desired to see? Again, maybe He wanted me to see from a new vantage point. Maybe He wanted me to see what could only be seen through forced perspective. Why Lord? Why bring me low when high is where I long to live. Where high is, where the clouds dwell, and that is where I desire to live again. Well, I don’t know if I ever lived in the clouds in the first place but I certainly knew I desired to be there when depression took its hold.
Friend and fellow soldier of the wounded heart, I have been in the depths of depression, Clinical Depression, where the desire to live or even arise from my bed was hard to achieve. Yet through those times..............................
To hear the rest and more - keep your eyes open for my 2 part book coming out this fall. Tate Publishing
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