story of a friendship...part 3

So life went on, back east and out west.  Our children grew taller and looked so grown up.  We marveled at them and loved them.  Our conversations gradually went from wading through pain in the aftermath of Jack‘s death, back to the day-to-day happenings of life; and as we talked, we again were struck by similarities...our little boys (who happened to be only a few months apart in age) getting into the same types of mischief, the same colds and flu bugs seeming to strike at similar times as if we could pass them to each other over the phone.  I began to hear happy voices in the background again when I talked to Anne.  Childhood’s resilience was kind to her babies...they learned to laugh again, although I would see a depth and maturity in their eyes later that I knew spoke of sorrow.  On the whole, they all seemed to be adjusting well to life in their new home.  Finally, Anne had a phone plan with the same company I had.  It was great--we could talk when we wanted to without worrying about using up too many minutes on our respective phone plans, or confining our conversations till after 9 pm or on weekends.  We took advantage of this new freedom--we could talk more than once a week without sacrificing sleep or time needed for caring for our families.

We shared the dubious privilege of more health problems than the usual, for our relatively young ages--late 20‘s, early 30‘s.  Some of the things we suffered were similar, some were totally different.  (At least we knew we weren’t mirror images of each other.)  I began to be very concerned as i listened to increasing pain and weakness in Anne’s voice when we talked.  It became a regular thing.  This was not the emotional pain and grief that I knew from earlier (although that still came up at times); this was physical.  I knew she had had surgery in childhood to correct a severe spinal curvature, and now daily lived with pain from the rods that had been placed in her spine then.  But this was different from the usual.  There was something very wrong. 

My gut feeling was correct--something was quite wrong.  After a bit of a runaround, she finally found a doctor who she was comfortable with and who seemed to take her seriously.  If I could hear that something was so wrong, over all those miles between us on the phone, how could a doctor sitting in the room with her, and having the advantage of today’s medical care and testing, continually brush it off?  But her persistence paid off, and she was finally scheduled for much needed surgery.  Her choice of doctors proved to be a wise one as well; after surgery he informed her that it was a complicated procedure.  He found he needed to remove masses of tangled blood vessels which had been spontaneously bleeding into her abdomen; then he was able to repair and remove the worst of the damage.  I was vastly relieved at how much better she sounded afterwards. 

Meanwhile, back east, I was facing my own joys and challenges.  Allow me to backtrack a bit. 

My husband had promoted to the rank of sergeant back in 2009...Merry Christmas to me. 

I knew he had not been sure of how he would do on the sergeant’s test.  He had taken it once before; and, while he earned a respectable score, he knew that it was likely not high enough to earn a promotion.  He said it wasn’t a big deal to him--he enjoyed the job he was currently doing.  He had just wanted to see what kind of a score he got.  I was proud of him no matter what.  In the job he was doing at the time, he was earning a solid reputation for common sense and fairness with a low tolerance for nonsense and manipulative head games.  But for his sake, it angered me that a good man could not get a promotion based on his abilities and worth on the job. 

So when he tested again, just to see how he would do, neither of us expected much. 

A few weeks later, when we had almost forgotten to be curious about his test score; a plain white, rather unassuming envelope arrived in the mail holding a rather momentous piece of paper.  Not only had he done well, he had gotten the highest score for the entire county.  The unassuming white piece of paper ranked his score against the other scores in the group that tested...how many tested higher than he did; and how many tested lower.  In the “number who tested higher” column, there was a fat little zero.  I was so happy for him.  I knew he was good at what he did, but now it would be next to impossible for the powers that be to turn a blind eye to it. 

At the tail end of the opening of Christmas presents that year--after the childish glee was somewhat muted and most of the tissue paper and bows were picked up, he presented me with a small ring box.  I wasn’t sure what to expect--money was a bit tight and I hadn’t been expecting anything too expensive.  Jewelry?  But okay.  I popped the lid, and found lying on the velvet a small pair of chevrons--the “Sergeant’s Stripes” worn on the collar to denote rank.  I was thrilled. 

I was delighted for my husband‘s sake, but I also knew that my load would be heavier.  We were still homeschooling, which seemed to be the only way that our kids would have much time with their daddy now.  In his new job, he was now starting as low man on the totem pole of seniority.  With this came an evening shift position for an indefinite amount of time.  He would leave for work around lunch time and come home about 11 pm.  If the kids had been in school, they would have only seen him briefly in the mornings (if he dragged himself out of bed in time to see them off to school), and on his days off--some weeks “daddy time” would only be two short evenings in the middle of the week.  So homeschooling was certainly advantageous to us in that regard.  But in addition to carrying the majority of the load of schooling our children, I would now be almost solely responsible for evenings at home as well.  But, I was happy for my husband and optimistic about the future.  I would deal with the day’s work as it came along.  And back then, we were quite hopeful that in a year or two, he would work his way up the seniority list high enough to be awarded a day shift bid when one became available.  But there were no guarantees, no sure timetable.  It was ultimately out of our hands.


So I tried to adjust.  I tried to teach the kids to help me out around the house as much as possible.  I hired a neighbor’s teenage daughter, Emma, to help out one afternoon each week, for a while.  She was a good worker, a delightful kid, and will always have a special place in my heart.  (Time has flown by since then; and she is looking forward to getting married in a few months.  I have no doubt she will be a delightful and capable wife too.) 

But no matter how I tried to make this combination of evening shift and homeschooling work-able...I was still always tired.  Never caught up, and almost never a break.  My house was usually layered with dust and clutter in spite of Emma’s best efforts.  We were always in our house, always working on school, cooking meals, and just living there.  Someone once said that trying to clean with children underfoot is like trying to brush your teeth while eating oreos.  Nowhere is that more true than in the house of a homeschooling mother, and we were the poster children for it.

Never a quiet moment when kids were in school, hubby at work, and I could breathe freely.  I loved all so dearly...but I was suffocated.  I felt guilty for my frustration.  How many infertile couples would be glad to have 3 such lovely children?  How many jobless families would be glad their daddy had a job, any job, any shift?  How nice was it that I had a “maid” (as teenage girls who helped young moms were referred to in the conservative Mennonite circles that Emma and her family were part of).  Many of my other mom acquaintances expressed slight jealousy for my good fortune of hired help.    They didn’t see the constant pressure of our day-to-day life, and how Emma’s help was sometimes the thread holding my escaping sanity somewhat intact.

All of this added up to convince me I was being selfish and was definitely doing something wrong, since I couldn’t keep up with the daily demands of life without feeling overwhelmed.  Everywhere I turned, I found evidence that if I couldn’t keep up, it must be my fault.  I should learn to rearrange, to make it work.  There are lots of great homeschooling resources that put forth this outlook, coupled with lots of ideas to rearrange and make things work.  But none helped the situation I was in.  Rather, they just piled on the guilt because, slithered in between all the creative homeschooling ideas, there was also the reminder that it is always mom’s responsibility, mom’s fault, when the workload of homeschooling gets too heavy.

How could i cut out anything else?  Rearrange anything else?  Kids had to start school in the morning, or we would be at it all evening.  Besides, evenings were for sports or church activities.  If i cut those out, my homeschooled kids would be deprived of important social interaction with people.  And in the morning, I was trying to get morning school finished up with the kids at the same time as I was putting our main meal of the day on the table.  I wanted to send my husband to work with a good dinner under his belt.  He often got the short end of the stick when it came to my day--the least I could do was feed the guy.  But I couldn’t help being a little resentful at how difficult it was to do school with the kids, with Daddy underfoot.  Mornings were the kids’ only time to see him, and he is the head of the household as well...so his agenda usually took first place in the morning.  Again, I wasn’t sure what do differently under the circumstances...but it was a heavy load on my shoulders as I often had to play catch-up for the rest of the day when the morning’s schoolwork and housework had not gotten completed.

It was an exhausting pace.  And the next day, I got up wearily to start the process all over again.  When could I rest?  Sometimes I dropped off to sleep from sheer exhaustion while reading school material to the kids in the afternoon.  I tried to go to bed in a timely manner, but it was so tempting to enjoy a quiet house between the time that I put the kids to bed, and the time that dear hubby got home from work, that I was guilty of staying up later than I should have, much too often.  And even when i did go to bed early, it didn’t change the feeling of suffocation that followed me everywhere.  The structure of the day did not change; I had people underfoot from the time we got out of bed in the morning till the time I got them back in bed at night.  Once in a while I had a chance to have a few hours out.  It was nice, but it was a band-aid, not a solution to a structural problem. 

So for me, the next three years went by mostly in a blur, punctuated by events in other people‘s lives, and remembered when I look at the pictures I took during those years.  Sometime around the beginning of 2012, the blur began to darken.

I could blame it on the work load I carried.  I could blame it the discouragement of facing yet another surgery at the end of March, 2012; after I had thought I had put the majority of health problems behind me, as well as the possibility of any more pregnancies and deliveries (much as I loved my kiddos, the arrival of a new one was always difficult for me emotionally as well as physically, although I would never admit any possibility of postpartum depression at the time), after a hysterectomy in the summer of ‘09.  I could blame it on hormonal changes following all that.  I could blame it on the opiate painkillers that I took after the 2012 surgery.  I could blame it on genetics--there is a high incidence of mental illness running through my family...but wherever the blame lies, I was in a downward spiral.

I still kept a tight rein on how much of my inner self to reveal to anyone, even my husband.  I didn’t tell my hubby what I was experiencing until several weeks into it, when I was overwhelmed with pain which was largely mental and emotional, although residual surgical pain played a part as well.  He, of course, was completely supportive of this decision to shut him out.  On the bright spring morning that I sat in the dining room holding my hands to my head and telling him that I couldn’t stand to be inside my own mind, I believe his exact words were along the lines of, “Why the hell didn’t you tell me before it got to this point?”  (His job has made him refreshingly blunt of speech.  A person doesn‘t need to wonder where they stand...he will let you know.)  And I said something about there being nothing to be done about it anyway, since it was all in my head.  Of course I knew that it was simply a character flaw and a weakness I had to bring under control...well, actually, I now know that not to be true.  But at the time, I treated it as such; and when it began to subside, I took personal credit for having survived relatively unscathed.  (I was certainly a bit misled...as Anne later pointed out, “Who did you think you were, God?“  Well, not really...but I was having a bit of trouble with human limitations and reasonable expectations, to say the least.)  I slowly came out of it--one of my post-surgical pain meds had exacerbated the situation, although it was not the cause.  The onset of the depression had been some weeks before the surgery.  So I had a short reprieve before the next onset of blackness descended on my soul, and I fell apart again.  We went on in this fall-apart, pick-up-the-pieces fashion for the summer, with me feeling steadily more overwhelmed with life.  My parents and several of their church friends were involved in a serious vehicle accident in late summer, which resulted in the death of a close friend of my mother‘s.  These events also contributed to another downturn of my wider and wider mood swings.  Although, again, it did not cause the problem--just sent me spiraling downward in another round of a variation on the general theme of the spring and summer.

We finally hit a new low in early November which caused dearest hubby to lay down the law--send the two oldest kids to school.  No fuss, no argument, he was making the decision as a loving husband slowly driven crazy by his overwhelmed, and exhausted wife.  I was only too happy to agree, having gotten to the point where I was having a hard time getting through a day.  Panic attacks had overtaken most of my waking hours--which were many, as sleep was often elusive after 4 a.m.  Any tasks I got done needed to be tackled in minute portions--I couldn’t look at a sink full of dirty dishes.  I could wash one dish.  Then the next one.  It was not a fun way to live. 

I was ready to push the kids out the door onto the next bus that went by, hopefully one that was headed to a nice boarding school with a one-week summer vacation.  If I could have started them in school the next day, and had mostly peace and quiet thenceforth, I may have recovered quickly enough to have been able to keep shutting the rest of the world out, at least enough to hide the worst of what I was experiencing.  For the first time in my life, I also became open to the idea of pursuing medical treatment for this, pretty much only out of desperation.  I was hoping that I could quietly find a doctor, get some therapy or medication, and have life go on a bit more quietly in its new routine.  And hopefully very few, if any, of our friends and family would be the wiser.

But it was not to be.  Because of the upcoming Thanksgiving vacations coinciding with my reaching the end of my rope and needing to address these things; initiating both school entry for the kids and medical treatment for me became a long, drawn-out process.  In the meantime,  I was getting worse. 

Over the next weeks, Anne was my lifeline.  She had a way of pointing out that God still loved me even though I was failing at everything...being a mom, wife, friend (I was just not friendship material, remember?), homeschooling...all of it.  As I said before, God seemed to speak to each of us through the other.  I am convinced that God was whispering in her ear as we talked during those dark days, often telling her “this is what I want you to say to Rose, right now.“  I began to feel that I was still worth something.  And not only did God still want my friendship, she did too.  I knew my family loved me.  My husband loved me dearly and assured me that he wasn’t going anywhere.  My children loved me desperately, sometimes smotheringly.  I had supportive extended family.  But all of those close to me were tired from dealing with this, and often frustrated with me.  I didn’t blame them.  Many of my other friends had gone by the wayside, either by my choice or theirs.  I didn’t blame them either.  (Besides not being great “friendship material” to start with, hiding out in one’s house and shrinking away from human contact has a way of pushing people away...I was getting quite good at this.)  But this girl, she was still there.  There were 2000 miles between us.  She could have backed out and walked away from the stress that tends to follow the loved ones of someone with an anxiety and panic disorder.  But, in spite of how easy it would have been to tell me, “Take care, have a nice life,” she stuck by me.  She earned my fierce loyalty.

story of a friendship...part 2

Together, over my battered red Nokia phone and Anne's ever-changing phones with features she could never figure out how to work (her dad talked her into getting texting on her phone plan; the guy in the store looked at her like she had 2 heads, she said...I found this funny because I had picked out my phone the same way--but without anybody talking me into getting more stuff on it--I wanted something simple to work and cheap to buy, much to the bafflement of the AT&T people...) but anyhow, in our simple, technologically challenged way, we walked through the tragic death of her husband Jack’s mother and the painful stuff of cleaning out her (Jack’s mother’s) house and her things.  I began to get a clearer picture of who Jack was and the anguish of growing up in a home where a mother hoarded things and left her children to their own growing up.  A house that was so little of a home that his dad could not handle staying there, even for the sake of his children.  It was a life that scarred Jack’s sister so badly that she took her own life when Jack and Anne’s oldest daughter was a baby.  It made me angry and sad that Anne bore the brunt of the pain that Jack carried...but I also knew the hurtful things overflowed from a well of pain.  Jack did know Jesus...but here on earth we are still broken, and he was so very broken.  One Saturday my phone rang, and when I heard the ragged edge in her voice, I knew. 
“He did it, Rose.”
“Did what?” I asked stupidly, although I think I knew before she said a word.
 He was gone.  To where his badly broken heart would have no more pain, to where he could laugh and his eyes would not be sad even when he smiled.  His healing would not be here on earth, but he was finally healed.

And so we walked through more pain. 

Two thousand miles between best friends can be hard.  But it can also be a safety net.  It was hard to trust those around us who did not understand the lives we were living, who sometimes said well-meaning but ill-timed things.  Who judged without walking a mile in our shoes.  They didn’t know what life looked like from our perspective, and we couldn’t blame them for that.  But it didn’t bring on the warm fuzzies either.  The closest I could come to describing my relationship to my family and friends in those days was a description of a cowboy that had been part of the song “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys,“ that had been a hit for Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson some years ago.  The part that resonated with me was this:

“Them that don’t know him don’t like him;
and them that do, sometimes don’t know how to take him.
He ain’t wrong, he’s just different,
and his pride won’t let him do things to make you think he’s right.“

(“Mamas Don’t Let your Babies Grow up to be Cowboys,” written by Ed and Patsy Bruce, recorded by Ed Bruce on his 1976 self-titled album for United Artists Records; recorded by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson for their 1978 duet album Waylon and Willie on the RCA label; recorded by the Gibson Miller Band for the 1994 album Red, White and Blue Collar, Epic Records.)

We lived in a sort of parallel universe to our friends and families who lived close to us--going to church, training our kids...beside, but not with, those around us.  Schedules didn’t mesh with other people‘s; homeschooling was not always met with resounding applause in circles where people were not familiar with it.  Homeschooling itself is isolating; we were usually so busy getting our subjects and required days covered that we had little time for anything else.  We had accepted the fact that our close friends were few in number.  And the fact was that most of those friends fell by the wayside, not because we didn’t care about them; but because we had so many demands on our days that our only time for friends was when our children were snugly tucked in bed, our day’s work was done, and we had settled down to an evening or night alone, or the evening wait for hubby to get home.   

Several times I had said in frustration to my husband that I was just not “friendship material.”  Who, here on earth, could I trust?  Where could one find unconditional love tempered with honesty?  Did friends even come like that anymore?  I couldn’t handle any more misunderstandings, any more rejection.  It hurt too badly.  I had begun putting my effort into pushing people away, instead of drawing closer to anyone.  I didn’t even want to be close to those around me who hadn’t hurt me yet.  I was sure it was just a matter of time before I botched yet another relationship. 

But what did either of us have to lose?  If it fell flat...well, there were 2000 miles between us.  It was our safety net.  People were never meant to be alone, even we who don’t feel like we are friendship material.  We didn’t realize at the time how gently and graciously God was leading us, providing a safe place when we had each closed the door firmly on the idea of any more close friends.  So, while I was busy trying to build distance, God sent me someone to talk to.  I found that, with all those miles between, I could be myself without fear or misunderstanding.  After all, she and I did share a brain... 

And so we built a friendship--this one built on solid Rock--as we talked and laughed through the mundane stuff of everyday life; and walked through the fire together.

Somehow, Anne and her children got through those difficult days after Jack’s death.  I ached for them and wished she were close by so I could do the things that friends do when there is a death in the family--sit with the grieving, bring food that nobody feels like eating, watch the kids...just be there.  But it wasn’t to be.  I wrote her new address and phone number in my rolodex and changed the familiar phone number in my beat-up red cell phone when she and her children moved across the state line to get away from some of the painful memories.  And prayed that this would be the start of better things to come for them.

story of a friendship...part 1

January 2013

It was a cold, windy, beautiful day in the west; out where the sky seems endless and blue.  The sun was shining, but there was a prairie blizzard somewhere between the airport and my destination.  My panic meds were still working...sort of...as the plane touched down.  I was on my way to spend a week with my best friend.  We had known each other for four years now; had shared things we could not talk about to anybody else; had talked each other through some of life‘s most painful and frightening changes; had prayed fervently for each other and with each other...but we had never met in person.  Suddenly, I was afraid she wasn’t going to like me.  But my flight back didn’t leave for a week...she was stuck with me.  I headed for baggage claim and as I was getting my bags, telling her on my cell phone where to find me, she said, “I know, I’m right behind you.”  Then I was getting a hug from this girl who had become the sister I never had...

August 2013

About four years ago, I was searching for natural solutions to some health issues when a church friend told me about a website where she found a lot of information on a variety of topics.  The site did have a lot of information, and also a lot of chatting between moms wasting time on the computer.  For a while, I also spent/wasted a lot of time scouring informational threads, finding natural solutions for anything you could think of from head to toe.  One had to sift through an awful lot of useless information to find the useful stuff.  I ran across a lot of good information...and some information I had no use for.  Colonics?  Seriously?  It did not sound healthy.  Or natural...oh my...

The site also had a feature that allowed members to send personal messages to other members.  I had run across some information that was helpful to me, and I had a few questions for the person who had posted it.  So I sent her a message.  We chatted back and forth a bit and somehow in our conversation it came up that I was of Mennonite background...which piqued her interest.  Could she ask me questions without my becoming offended, she wondered.  So a tentative email correspondence began.

Then, one day, after typing for quite some time trying to put together a picture of a situation I wanted to ask her about, I thought how much easier it would be if we would just talk in person.  So we exchanged phone numbers and hoped a conversation wouldn’t be awkward.  It wasn’t.  We talked for almost an hour till our respective children finally drove us crazy as kids do when their moms are on the phone.

The one conversation turned into another, and we began to joke that we shared a brain.  We would often be making the same meal as we talked (without previously planning it), or washing clothes with the same laundry detergent...again, without planning it that way.  We each had 3 kids, my daughter and one of her daughters had the same name, the two of us  were the same height and shared a frustration with being unable to gain any significant weight even though we were both had times of being so thin that it affected our health.  And...the most useful thing...we shared a love of God and our most common ground was that He seemed to speak to each of us through the other.  As Anne so eloquently said once, “When we talk [about our problems] we don’t just want to vomit on each other.”  We genuinely wanted to know when and where we were wrong and what God wanted us to do.  So we could talk about the hard stuff.  And not get upset at the other if she was the person God used to tell us something that was difficult to hear. 

Our husbands were both in professions that took a toll on them...and their wives.  Mine was in law enforcement; hers in the military.  We talked about long working hours, deployments, and training absences.  We both homeschooled our kids in order for them to have more time with their daddies.  And because our families and friends mostly had not been in our shoes, we shared the pain of sometimes being misunderstood and at times feeling rejected by the tightly knit families and very conservative Christian communities we had grown up in.  We were not living our mothers’ lives--with husbands who had weekends off and a regular schedule.  We could not make our own schedules and our plans were often subject to change on short notice.  Our schedules, and most other aspects of life, were at the mercy our husbands‘ occupations.  We learned what Anne termed the “alphabet soup” of abbreviations they used on the job.

We attempted to do normal stuff.  We tried moms’ groups, Bible studies, or other ladies’ fellowship groups.  We did have friends.  But sometimes being in those groups only accentuated the isolation we each felt.  We showed up alone at church, alone at family gatherings.  Sometimes simply wanting to skip the whole thing.  Tiredly corralling our children homeward at the end of the service, at the end of the night.  Wishing for our husbands to be able to be with us; knowing our husbands wanted to be with us but couldn’t.  We tucked our kids in bed and curled up on the couch with a blanket and the phone.  We became each others’ lifeline.

testing ground...

“For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”  Job 19:25

“But He knoweth the way that I take; when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”  Job 23:10

I find a lot of encouragement in the words of Job.  This man who lost everything--wealth, children, friends, health--so that he even despaired of his life.  But he said of God, “though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”  (Job 13:15a)  Job trusted, but he desired to reason with God and plead his case before Him.  The cry of Job’s heart, described in the book of Job, echoes the pain of all of us who ask “why, God?  Why must this be?” 

This has been a weekend of testing.  Maybe for someone who does not battle chronic anxiety it would not seem such a difficult test...but God tests us according to our strength and where our rough edges need to be refined.  So He has been testing me exactly in the areas where I am weak; and it is a question of whether I will fall apart, or whether I will grab His hand tightly and hold on.

Part of my chronic anxiety is great fear for my family.  Sometimes stemming from a legitimate source of anxiety, such as an illness or injury; but my anxiety takes a rational uneasiness to a level of fear that sometimes almost paralyzes me.  And, as every mom knows, if someone in the family is sick or hurt, the last thing a mom can afford to do is to be paralyzed with fear to the point of not being able to function.

My children have all had asthma from the time they were babies.  When my oldest was just under a year old, he contracted pneumonia; and, a few short months later, a frightening combination of pneumonia and RSV.  And my next two children developed asthma as babies.  So, although their asthma is much better controlled now that they are older, I am always legitimately uneasy about respiratory infections.

And, for the last two weeks, my youngest has had a cold that just will...not...leave.  Aaahhh.  Nothing major, no high fevers or severe asthma attacks or anything else that looked urgent.  But after it hung on this long, I finally took him to the doctor.  It turned out to be a sinus infection that should be reasonably taken care of with antibiotics.  But the combination of nagging fear and dealing with a sick, miserable child for the last while has been wearing me down.

My middle daughter had been out at a sleepover--another thing which wears on me.  I like my people home in their own beds for the night.  But, neither do I want my children to be slaves to my fears, so to the sleepover she went.  With a bunch of little girls, there was very little sleeping involved. 

And...a few hours before that, my oldest had been dropped off for his first ski trip.  No more needs to be said on that.  Other than that it took a supreme effort on my part to drive away.

So, in this worn out state, the next test wore on my last nerve like a rough pick on a stretched out guitar string.  My husband works hard for us, both at work and at home.  We have an outdoor wood burner to heat our house, and in the process of filling the fire a week or so ago, he caught his finger between a large piece of firewood and the side of the firebox.  It gave a nasty blood blister on his finger (thank God he had gloves on) but seemed to be healing ok.  Then a few days ago, while cutting firewood, he dropped another piece of wood on it and reopened the wound.  The next day or two, I thought the finger looked swollen, but when I questioned him he said it was fine.  Of course it wasn’t.

Friday night, he felt sick, but we were all passing this cold/low grade fever thing back and forth and I chalked it up to that.  Then, Saturday morning, when he got up for work, he couldn’t bend his injured finger, and it was swollen back to the 2nd knuckle.  At least he didn’t protest when I said he needed to go to the doctor, and even agreed to leave work early to do so (something he almost never does).

At his doctor’s appointment soon after lunch, the whole finger was swollen.  In spite of doubling his first dose of antibiotics so as to get a good jolt of them in his system, the swelling began to go back into his hand.  My kids were getting a good lesson in why, before antibiotics were developed, people used to chop limbs off immediately after an injury to avoid blood poisoning.  By 7 pm Saturday evening, I drew a line around the outer edges of the swelling and told my dearest hubby in no uncertain terms that if the swelling went any further on his hand in the next few hours, we were going to the hospital.  We put the kids to bed, sat up to watch a movie and wait. 

The prayers I sent up throughout that evening were what kept me from falling apart.  My dear friend Anne once suggested to me to invite Jesus into my moments of terror.  I had never thought of doing that--sometimes I was too frantic to think that clearly--but slowly, I had begun to make a habit of it.  So I prayed for the infection to stop (fighting back the thought of all the news stories of people who died or were maimed for life from a massive infection that started out just like this) and prayed frantically for calmness.  (Yes, that is possible...)  And Jesus came and stayed with me in those anxious hours. 

When the movie was done, we checked the hand again and the swelling had not expanded beyond the lines I had drawn.  And when he put his gloves on to go out to fill the fire (I had offered, but he stubbornly refused to let me do it), the left hand glove went on further than it had earlier.  It seemed to have turned a corner in the right direction.  I was thankful beyond words.

We are still watching the hand.  It is slowly improving and he is not feeling sick anymore.  But he cannot miss any doses of antibiotics, that is for sure.  Small Bear is still wiping his nose and sneezing all over things I don’t want sneezed on.  But he seems to be getting better.  Oldest son had a blast skiing, and was not the kid who went to the hospital with a concussion.  (Someone on High said, “enough is enough, she does not need that test too...”)  Daughter is still sleeping off her sleepover and seems exhausted.  I am hoping she does not get sick.

But I have not fallen apart.  Jesus has come in, to every dark and frightening corner of this illness in my mind.  And He is enough.

“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?  declare, if thou hast understanding. 
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest?  or who hath stretched the line upon it?  Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened?  or who laid the cornerstone thereof;
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?”  Job 38:4-7

...only He can be in the game with us...

Sometimes in this world, God sends someone across our path who is in almost complete sympathy with our own hearts.  I have just such a friend.  We joke that we share a brain...

Lord willing, I will share more of the story of our friendship as time goes on and as I continue this blog.  And then it will make perfect sense why I often call her Anne, although that is not really her name...but for purposes of my stories here on this blog, "Anne" she will be. 

Not terribly long ago, I was having a rough day and, as I often do, called her up to add some sunshine to my day.  (And hers...  :)  )  And  in our chat, she said something that really stuck with me...it stemmed from a discussion about something else, but so fit with depression and other people’s understanding of it that I am still mulling it over.  In her situation, she was referring to someone who was able to make suggestions to her about things but was not in her shoes.  The gist of it was:

“It is like they are standing on the sidelines yelling instructions to someone (me) who is playing on the team that they are rooting for.  They can see you, watch you, tell you to “go, run the ball!”...but they are not in the game with you.” 

It was exactly what I was feeling.  Everyone around me--no matter how they love me or want to help--they are not in the game with me.  They are not in my head.  No one can do my job, as my kids’ mom.  As my husband’s wife.  This is not a job where they can replace me if I am not able to do well at it.  There is only one me.  No person can be in the game with me, no matter how much they love me or want to help.  They cannot be in my head, cannot feel the terrible fears that sometimes come in, cannot feel the blackness that sinks into me.  They can give my kids a ride somewhere, talk to me when I am lonely, or help me cook, but they cannot help me to be me.

Finally, unable to finish cleaning up the mess in my kitchen after my daughter‘s usual Sunday afternoon baking spree, (it was way more than one dish, and I was back to being able to only look at one dirty dish at a time) I sat down with my Bible.  I wanted to look up the story about Elijah, when he falls prey to depression and exhaustion after Mount Carmel.  The afternoon, as well as the dishes, looked insurmountable.  But what choice did I have?  Life must go on, whether I felt like dealing with it or not.  I wanted to go crawl under the bed with the dust bunnies.  But it was not possible.  Maybe in the story of Elijah, I could find something that I could take with me, something to help me through the afternoon.

I couldn’t remember where the story of Elijah was, but I came across the story of Hezekiah.  (2 Kings 18-20, 2 Chronicles 29-32)  King Hezekiah led the people in purifying the temple and turning back to God after a season of rebellion.  God protected Hezekiah and gave him miraculous deliverance from Sennacherib king of Assyria.  God prospered Hezekiah and the kingdom during Hezekiah’s reign.  When Hezekiah was “sick unto death” and pleaded with God for his life, God told him, “I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal you.” (2 Kings 20:5 NIV)  God granted him 15 more years of life.  But, in the account in Chronicles 32, it says that when “the envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous sign (his healing) that had occurred in the land, God left him, to test him and to know everything that was in his heart.” (v. 31)  

 After I finished Hezekiah, I found the story of Elijah too (1 Kings 19).  When Elijah was tired and discouraged, God sent an angel to minister to him.  The angel brought him food; Elijah rested.  In the strength of that food, he went to Horeb, the mountain of God.  First God sent a great wind that tore the rocks and mountains apart, but God was not in the wind.  Then God sent and earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake.  Then a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.  Then God came with a still, small voice.

I have been reading through the book of Job with the kids.  It is easy to look at Job’s three friends and say, “with friends like that, who needs enemies?”  It is easy, with the whole picture, to see how God was allowing Job to be tested in the trials he endured.  But Job could not see the whole picture.  He only knew that he felt as though God was punishing him, although what could it be for?  Job was human and imperfect; but he was a righteous man, a man of integrity before God.  He did not see how God was testing him to know what was in his heart.
There seemed to be a theme here.  Whether God is testing me, whether there is a heavenly battle going on that I have no glimpse of, I will not know this side of eternity.  It does not matter; I don‘t need to know now.  What matters is that I stand strong, and listen for His still, small voice.

So one thing at a time.  One more dirty dish, now clean.  After enough of them, they get done.  One more afternoon completed.  Fears and failures hang over my head, blocking out the goodness and beauty that I try to look for around me.  Pain squeezes tightly around my soul, so that i feel suffocated.  I can’t breathe; it takes much effort to focus on something else, something to distract me from it.  Each time it returns, I fight it with denial at first.  No, this can’t be...not again.  But as the darkness seeps into me again in spite of all the denial I can heave in its direction, I slowly accept that it is here to stay for a while.  I have to accept that this is a part of life.  In time, it will go away, but it will be back again.  When it does, i will fight to get normal things done; I will let some things undone.  But I will not give up. 

Sometimes, looking through the fog, it is hard to figure out how to go about standing strong and listening for the still, small voice.  But to do the next thing and not give up, that must be it.  And what a wonderful feeling it is when the blackness lifts.  When it does, I am so grateful for a clear mind.  Can anyone who has not endured the darkness be truly grateful for the sunshine?

I am slowly learning to accept my best as ok, and trying to not compare myself to others.  It is especially hard not to compare myself to others who, on the surface, seem to have challenges just as difficult as mine, or more so; but who seem to keep life more together. 

But I am not them, I am me.  Melancholy is a temperament, and it doesn‘t make me worthless.  How freeing.  I have inwardly criticized myself time and again, over the years, for things that were not right or wrong--they were just me.

So, I am learning to think differently--more objectively and rationally, I hope.  I finally don’t hate myself for things like shyness.   Even before the panic attacks, I have never liked to be in groups of people.  I try to be sociable, but usually end up somewhat glued to my husband or another friend I trust.  I watch for social cues, and at times, in spite of my best efforts, I still seem awkward because of the anxiety that grips me in groups of people.  It has improved, but will probably never completely go away. 

What comes across as “negativity” in someone who battles depression may be an unjust criticism.  How do we read someone’s mind?  Truly know their hearts?  We are not God.  In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis examines this question in the chapter, “Nice People or New Men?” 

“If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is.  ‘Why drag God into it?’ you may ask.  A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easily to you...Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them....Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought to recognise their need for Christ at all until one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered.  In other words, it is hard for those who are ‘rich’ in this sense to enter the Kingdom.  It is very different for the nasty people--the little, low, timid, warped, thin-blooded, lonely people, or the passionate, sensual, unbalanced people.  If they make any attempt at goodness at all, they learn, in double quick time, that they need help.  It is Christ or nothing for them.  It is taking up the cross and following--or else despair.  They are the lost sheep; He came specially to find them.  They are...the ‘poor’;  He blessed them.”

(C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity.  Copyright 1952, renewed 1980.)

What no one sees are the battles I fight with the blackness--battles to look for the good and the beauty around me.  It is the only way to fight the darkness.  It is Christ or nothing for me.  If I have failed at this task--the task of following Him, the task of holding the ‘negativity‘ at bay, it is because, in scaling a mountain, sometimes a foot will slip on a loose stone.  But the way to conquer a mountain is to put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing it.  So I do my best.  And i rest in the assurance that, where I have failed and come short, the blood of Christ covers all.

But no matter how the rest of the world looks at me, none of them are in the game with me.  The only one who is truly in the game with me, and can help me be me, is Jesus.  I can say with Christians through the ages, that “Christ liveth in me.” Though I am often but a poor reflection, the day will come when I will see Him face to face.  I know with a firm assurance that, in spite of how I feel, He is there and will never leave me. After all, He said “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”  David Livingstone, the missionary, referred to that promise as “the word of a Gentleman.”  And a gentleman keeps his word.
 
In the end of the 3-hour finale of MASH, (the 11-year TV saga of a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in Korea during the Korean War), peace has been declared and the war is over.  The last two surgeons to leave the MASH unit are Hawkeye and B.J., two civilian doctors who were drafted into service and were forever bonded by the time shared and the tragedies they witnessed during their time in Korea.  Their friendship will never be the same--they are returning to the States; B.J. to his home in Mill Valley, California, while Hawkeye goes home to Maine.  During their last days at the MASH 4077th, B.J. repeatedly brushes off Hawkeye’s attempts to tell him how much their friendship has meant, denying that this is really goodbye.  But as they stand in front of the chopper that is waiting to carry Hawkeye away, he can’t avoid it anymore.  With tears in his eyes that are threatening to spill over, B.J.’s parting words to Hawkeye, as he hugs him, are, “I can’t imagine what this place would have been like if I hadn’t found you here.”

(Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.  Directed by Alan Alda.  Written by Alan Alda, Karen Hall, Burt Metcalfe, John Rappaport, Thad Mumford, Dan Wilcox, David Pollock, Elias Davis.  Release date: February 28, 1983.)

I love this scene, although it is sad.  Because this is how I feel about Jesus--I can’t imagine what this world would have been if I hadn’t found Him here.  The best friends here on earth can still only cheer us on from the sidelines.  They live in other minds, other bodies, other houses, other states.  Only He can be right there in the game with us; and when we have invited Him in, He will be there to the end.I know that, whatever I have been through and whatever is in store for me down this road, it will all have been worth whatever it takes for Jesus to show me Himself and His love.  And someday I will get to hug Him in person and tell Him so.

Why Jesus...part 2

Part 2.

“...this I know; for the Bible tells me so.”  This left me with another dilemma.  How did I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I could believe what the Bible told me?  How fickle were the man made rules and the tide of popular opinion.  I began life surrounded by a small church family of cape dresses, coverings, black stockings, plain suits, and black hats.  But by the time I was entering the middle school years, the churches I had attended as a child were dividing. 

(In the rural area I grew up in, it was customary for two small Mennonite churches to share services, so as to not have to heat both church buildings in the winter.  One Sunday we would have services at one church, the next Sunday it would be at the other church.  When one “joined the church,” as a teenager or adult, he or she chose one or the other congregation to officially affix one‘s name to, on the membership list.  In this way, there were technically two congregations.  But because both congregations worshipped together each week; to a little girl, it felt like one church.)

By the late 1980’s, most of these “conjoined churches” had divided into their respective congregations and held services at both churches each Sunday.  The churches my family attended were the last two in our area to hold alternating services.  But the two congregations were being pulled two different directions--one group felt that the more conservative, “plain,” lifestyle was being compromised; and that important scriptural doctrines were being compromised in the process.  The other group (the one my parents were members of) felt that there was more room for differences of opinion in man-made rules such as how one was to dress, and whether one allowed television in the home, etc.; without violating important scriptural doctrines and principles.  In 1988, the two congregations officially separated and began holding separate services at each church, each week.  I was sad.  My Sunday School class that had been full of little girls was now just me and one other little girl.  We had always been friends--it was not that we disliked each other--but it felt terribly lonely to be just the two of us.  We missed our other friends.  My dad’s parents were members of the congregation that we now belonged to, but my mother’s parents had stayed with the other congregation.  I missed seeing both sets of grandparents each week in church.

And now, with some of the man-made rules being relaxed, I felt adrift.  If i had struggled to please God before, how was I to do so now?  Where was I to get my compass?

It was over this time that i began to want to read the Bible.  I had never thought of doubting it or questioning its truth.  But now, I needed to find a direction to go.  I needed a compass.  If I were not ensconced in church rules, I needed to know how “plain” one had to be to please God.  Now there were so many things that were not “wrong” anymore.  I even had the freedom to wear jeans instead of skirts, if I wanted to.  And the pressure to wear a head covering was eased considerably.  Now that the stricter dress rules were relaxed, there were ladies in our church who did wear coverings, but some who did not.  Some had exchanged the traditional white “basket” shaped coverings for a “doily” or a small veiling of black or white netting.  The pressure to wear a covering was the main reason I had not wanted to join the church up until that point.  When the two congregations were combined, wearing a covering was a requirement to join the church.  I was not ready to wear a covering.  If there was so much disagreement between mature adults on which covering was acceptable to God, how could I, as a child, know which one He would approve of?  And if I couldn’t know for sure which He approved of, why wear it?

Which direction should I head?  Was faith in God a reasonable thing?  Why believe the Bible at all?  I kept coming back to what I had experienced so far in my life.  In spite of the murkiness of the man-made rules, I couldn’t believe man could have just appeared, “poof!”...out of nothingness into this remarkably crafted world we live in.  Evolution did not make sense to me.  I grew up in one of the most beautiful areas of the country.  Many days, the view from my house was poetry in motion.  Ever changing, alive with color and sound.  All around me were beautiful rolling hills and mountains and valleys, woods with tall trees, the changing of the seasons...I could not buy that each tiny blade of grass, each snowflake with a different design, the majesty and beauty of mountains and valleys and clouds and flashes of lightning and rolling thunder...that all of that could just appear, “poof.”  I just couldn’t believe that.  But, if Someone created it all...Who was that Someone?  All this beauty had to be made by Someone Who was Goodness itself.  Beautiful, terrifying Goodness.

It had to be real.  He had to be real. 

And the Bible, the Story of the Ages, made sense.  A God who was Goodness and Love, creating the world.  Man, the crown of His creation, made in His image.  Mankind not as little gods, any more than a copy of a Stradivarius is the real thing.  Only He--God--could sound the real chords, the true sweetness of His song.  But mankind could echo His music.  Mankind was made to echo His music, to commune with Him.

Then, the Fall.  Seeds of doubt planted in the mind of Adam and Eve, planted by the force of evil in the form of a serpent.  Did God really say not to eat of the tree?  Does He really know what is best for you?  And so, Eve doubted...and disobeyed.  She gave some of the fruit to Adam...and Adam doubted, and disobeyed too.  Sin, corruption, sadness, sickness, death...all of this entered His beautiful world.  Can any of us doubt that that exists?  Can we doubt that there is a force of evil, bent on twisting all that is good and right and true?  But even evil can only take the Goodness and twist it.  Evil cannot create.  It cannot boast of anything original.  But twisting the Goodness was enough to satisfy the purpose of the Evil.  It had entered the heart of mankind and separated the crown of creation--mankind, made in the image of this powerful, beautiful, terrifying Goodness...evil had separated it from its Creator.  And the heartbreak and sadness that the Creator must have known...   

His very nature being Goodness, how could He commune with His creation, now corrupt?  How could He bring them to Himself?  The payment for sin was death.  Death and sin meant eternal separation from Him, because He who was Goodness could not allow corruption in His Heaven.  He gave His laws to mankind through the Jews, His chosen people...laws not meant to bind them, but for their good and to show them His nature.  And to show them how they, in their corruption, could never, never satisfy His Goodness.  The blood of animals...innocent and unblemished animals...served as the poor sacrifice for their sins.  But the Creator was not finished.  When He had banished Adam and Eve from His beautiful garden, He had promised that one day, He would send a Redeemer.  That most beautiful but most heart wrenching part of the Story...the Redeemer. 

The mystery of Jesus...God’s own Son.  God’s Son sent to mankind, to be born as a baby, to be the ultimate sacrifice.  He never sinned, but He allowed the sin of the whole world to be placed on His shoulders.  He never sinned, but He allowed Himself to be placed on a cross, to die the death of a criminal, to pay the price for our sins.  But He didn’t stay dead!  He arose again, to ascend to Heaven to sit at the Father’s right hand.  Where He now intercedes on our behalf to the Father--intercedes for those of us who have admitted our sin and accepted His sacrifice on our behalf.  The blood of Jesus, the perfect Lamb of God, now the eternal sacrifice covering our sins.

I read this great Story over and over, not wanting to miss anything, searching for meaning.  What did this mean for me?  If it was all real, if Jesus had covered my sins, I didn’t have to strive in vain to please God.  He loved me.  Jesus loved even me.

It had to be real.  He had to be real.

Do I know without a shadow of a doubt?  Do I know without a shadow of a doubt that my dining room chair will hold me when I sit down at my table for supper tonight?  Maybe not, but it looks strong and sturdy.  It has held bigger people than I.  i have seen it do so.  It has not let me down yet; never have I pulled it out from the table, settled my body into it only to have the legs give way and me come crashing to the floor.  So I will sit down in my chair tonight for supper with faith that it will hold me. 

So I will hold onto my faith in God.  And my faith in His Son, and in His ultimate good purposes here in this world.  I do not pretend to always understand Him or His ways.  But I don’t have to understand everything about Him to recognize when He is there.  He has never yet let me come crashing to the floor...but He has held me up, more times than I can count.

Why Jesus?

Why Jesus?  Why do I turn to Jesus when i hurt? 

From my earliest childhood, I have memories of growing up in a Mennonite home.  We didn’t have horses or buggies; we did have electricity.  And a radio.  (Always tuned to a Christian station, of course, except for my mother’s unholy enjoyment of Paul Harvey’s news and commentary, which was carried on a secular station.)  But no tv in our home when I was a child--all the movies and tv I got to watch were at my friends’ and neighbors’ houses, mostly at Christmas and Thanksgiving.  When I was a little girl, my hair was braided in two pigtails (sort of like “Laura” on the “Little House” tv show of the 1980’s), and I was always supposed to wear skirts or dresses.  We went to church almost every time the doors were open.

Religion was so engrained in me...but dresses, pigtails, and head coverings are no comfort when your heart is aching.  Could there be more?  Could God truly love me?  Me, this girl who was so painfully, achingly inadequate?

No matter which rules I followed, I came up short somewhere.  I had family and school friends who were “plainer” than I...my girl cousins’ dresses were plainer, their head coverings covered more.  


(I didn’t even wear a head covering.  Years later, a co-worker of mine referred to the head coverings as “sin-sifters” and it made me laugh when I first heard him say that...from my perspective as a child, it seemed to hit the nail on the head.  But I do know many dear, sincere Christian ladies who wear head coverings that I am glad and proud to number among my family and friends.  And if that is what God has called another to do, who am I to say that they should not?  I am simply speaking here of my own experience and the process God used to draw me to Himself.) 

But back to the “plainer” people than me...Their stockings were black.  I wore whatever...semi-fashionable...cable-knit tights came in my bag of hand-me-downs from our neighbors.  One memorable pair was even light blue.  My boy cousins wore plain suits...nothing like my dad’s (lovely) green plaid ‘70’s polyester leisure suit.  (I think it was worn for his high school graduation?)  Not all of Dad’s dress clothes were that “worldly;” he had a few other suits that were, for their time, probably fairly conservative, like plain dark green; and his wedding suit had been a plain suit...but definitely not all of his suits were collarless and plain.  So who was holier?  Not me; that was for sure.  Even among we who were “plain,” or at least somewhat plain, the varying standards were confusing to me as a little girl.

How could I measure up?  How could God love me?  In Sunday School we sang a song titled, “Jesus Loves Even Me.”  But even me?  I was not rebellious in my heart...I truly wanted to please God.  But I kept doing “rebellious” things, unwittingly, unknowingly...things that i didn’t even realize were rebellious until my cousins or friends enlightened me.  How could God possibly love me if I were constantly sinning against Him like this?  And, if it were so easy to offend Him, what hope did I have of ever gaining His approval?

But, in spite of the man-made rules that I could never seem to measure up to, I had two wonderful grandmas who were somehow able to get through to me that Jesus loved me....”Jesus loves me, this i know; for the Bible tells me so.”  I held on to that.

But, the way to conquer a mountain is to put one foot in front of the other, and keep doing it.  Any tasks I got done needed to be tackled in minute portions--I couldn’t look at a sink full of dirty dishes.  I could wash one dish.  Then the next one.  So I kept trying to do housework, washing one dish at a time.  I had homeschooled our children until this point, but that was no longer possible.  So I got the kids on the bus for school in the mornings.  (Thank God, they could dress themselves and brush their own teeth and put one foot in front of the other to walk out to the bus.)  I made meals, very simple ones.  Sometimes.  And sometimes my hubby still did it; because, on some days, to put multiple things together in a lunchbox or for a meal was too much for me to wrap my mind around.  But I tried, and sometimes I got things accomplished.  I read the book, sometimes one paragraph at a time.  And then the next book.  

I was pegged as an anxious, nervous patient from the beginning.  What gave that away? maybe the panic attacks?  But I was ill, not stupid.  I was not being anxious or picky in order to make anyone else’s life difficult.  I was not refusing treatment--I desperately wanted to get better.  Using the techniques I was learning (one paragraph at a time) I attempted to keep from falling apart when panic attacks hit.  With time and practice, I began to be able to calm the racing thoughts that often precipitated them.  I still hated to ask for help, but I began to recognize when I needed it.  Slowly, with some setbacks along the way, I began to scale the mountain. 

Depression is a multi-layered thing.  At the root of it are a myriad of thinking errors.  How a person gets to them, and then getting out of them, is the tricky part.  So many things play a part--genetics, environment, brain chemicals.  Sometimes there are catastrophic life events that lead to a depression in someone who was not depressed previously.  For me, the latter was not the case.  I had battled depression and anxiety in varying degrees for most of my life.  The first three factors most likely held the key to why I had gotten to the point of not being able to deal with life.

But again, no matter where the blame might lie; if it were possible, I needed to get better.  But the prospect of the healing process was almost as discouraging as the illness itself.  I blamed myself.  I was defective--I had to be.  If not, then why did my mind fall prey to all these errors?  What made me so much worse than those around me--some who had challenges just as difficult as mine--who did not have episodes of curling up in chairs shaking with terror; who could get through church services or other group settings (sometimes even sitting between people on a bench...not sitting on the end so that they could bolt); who could manage to listen to an auction coupled with noise and chaos of children running around...and so many other things that I could no longer handle?  The answer had to be that they were simply better, more worthy, human beings.  

It was a terribly painful thing was to have to reveal the inner workings of my brain to someone else--at least enough to get some kind of help--and then hear what was wrong with me.  Even though I knew it was necessary, it made me feel worse.  The general overriding impression I got was that it was all my fault.  Everything that was meant to help me--the consultations and the questionings and the general picking of my brain--left me feeling like the blame was placed on me.  The horrible feeling of shame was the worst--I can still hardly stand to write the word, but I think that the word shame describes what i felt the most.  I don’t think anybody specifically meant to shame me, but in my distorted thinking, I was horribly ashamed of myself.  And how to tell anyone how this felt?  If all of this was meant to shame me, i felt that i certainly deserved it.  

And the resources that I was supposed to benefit from...oh, horrors.  I had to read.  I had the concentration of a gnat.  I used to love to read, but now?  I couldn’t make my mind focus on much of anything.  I was supposed to find something fun to do.  Fun?  i had no concept of enjoyment anymore.  I couldn’t remember what it felt like to look forward to anything, to feel happy.  I was supposed to write--it seemed to be therapeutic for me.  (So said the people who were assessing my condition and trying to help me.)  What did they know?  I used to write, but now...I had the concentration of a gnat.  When I did manage to put words together, my writings were very bleak.  Not only was I failing at life, recovery looked far, far, out of reach.

Depression 101...part 2

Another installment of the beginning of this story of mine...

November 27, 2012

I am so, so, tired.  I want to shut down, crawl under my bed with a blanket, a pillow, and the dust bunnies (and I am not joking--I wish I were); and not talk to anybody until I feel like coming out.  Which may be sometime in the next week, or sometime in the next month.  But I can’t.  I can’t be sick.  Life goes on, kids need to be cared for, husbands need dinners and suppers and clean clothes (another exhausting job--I had no idea doing the wash took so much thought).

A few days later...

Another episode past and gone for the time being.  Gradually, over the last few days, I have “woken up” and been more able to handle life.  I got my house cleaned, the clothes washed.  I have cut a few corners here and there, but the important things are done.  I am able to listen to little voices chatter again, and even give them intelligent answers to questions, although I am not usually the one to initiate the conversation. 

I feel that this is my burden; I don’t want to bother anyone else with it.  Besides, most people don’t understand and just think I am being difficult because I am selfish.  Or I have also been told that I am just a “negative person.”  If the person who said that only knew how hard I have to fight, these days, to come across with some semblance of normal.  

This is not the first time I have fought this monster of depression, although it is definitely the worst battle I have had so far.  Often I didn’t realize that I was depressed till I was well into it--and even then sometimes not.  I tended to blame other people when I was down, not realizing it was the way I was looking at things.  But even if I had known, it may not have made a difference--until recently, I couldn’t put all this into words that would be understandable to someone who hasn’t been there.  How could they know, if no one can tell them?

The guilt over not being able to keep life under control when an episode hits is sometimes overwhelming too--I should be strong enough to handle this; to not give in to pain, fear, and weakness.  Or sometimes I think that if I only keep going, it would all go away--it’s my fault I am feeling so bad.  I should just put one foot in front of the other.  Then it would be better. I try.  But I’m not sure which direction to head, in the worst of times.  Then, I go hour by hour, or sometimes minute by minute, leaning so hard on the Lord to get me through the day that I’m pretty sure He is just dragging me along sometimes. I often can’t even pray, or read my Bible.  In the middle of the most painful times, I am too tired or hurting too badly to ask God why this must be.  And I don’t think I will ever have a complete answer.  But in the middle of the worst, I have come to know Jesus as my very best Friend.  I can’t explain it.  I just know with a firm assurance that, in spite of how I feel, He is there and will never leave me.

I have always loved music.  Sometimes it drives my children crazy...sometimes they love me for it.  They make fun of my love of hippie music; they complain about having to practice a piano piece or sing a difficult harmony over and over till it is right...but now they put together their own mixes of music that they love, from assorted gems through the last 60 or 70 years, not just music that is popular now, on the radio, that all their friends listen to.  Although some of those songs find their way in, too.  And when they are grown, I don't think they will ever look back and say, "we so wish our mom had never taught us to sing, never insisted on piano skills."  It doesn't usually happen like that.  

There was a time when I couldn't sing any more, couldn't stand to listen to music--it was about the time I stopped talking.  Thank God I am not there any more.  There are some times when a song says it best...times when I can't find words but I know that "there is a song for that."  Songs are so layered with meaning...i love old hymns and the art of word arrangement by some of the writers of generations gone by is unparalleled.  Or sometimes the performance makes the song...the singer's passion, emotion, or beautiful voice.  

The links at the bottom of this post are two versions of the same song...it has been a theme through my life in the last year.  "Whispering hope, oh, how welcome thy voice...making my heart, in its sorrow, rejoice."

I loved the harmony of Daniel O'Donnell and Mary Duff...my hubby introduced me to a bit of Irish music a few years ago and I fell in love.  But this talented duo only performed the first two verses.  So I also added the link to Willie Nelson's version which includes all three verses.  Because third verse is just pretty awesome...

"Whispering Hope" performed by Willie Nelson
"Whispering Hope" performed by Daniel O'Donnell and Mary Duff

Depression 101

Depression 101.  According to my old Webster’s dictionary, depression has 10 different definitions.  But the ones that lend themselves to my topic are the ones that describe a state of mind or being:  (3) low spirits; gloominess; dejection; sadness, (7) a decrease in functional activity; (9) (psychol.) an emotional condition, either neurotic or psychotic, characterized by feelings of hopelessness, inadequacy etc.

I don’t want to offer pat answers or the same old stuff you could find by googling depression.  The market is flooded with that information.  Where my special gift lies, is in unwrapping some of the layers, and giving my readers a bit of a window into how the depressed mind works.  A dubious gift, maybe.  But one that was bestowed upon me, whether I wanted it or not.


“November 27, 2012

My heart hurts.  I can’t describe it very well, but that will have to do.  Most of the time, when one has some kind of heart-wrenching pain, there is a cause for it.  For me, right now, there is no cause.  My heart just aches, like someone just died or something terrible happened.  But no one has died; nothing awful has happened.  I’m also scared.  Sometimes it goes beyond scared to terrified.  Of what, I’m not always sure.  Sometimes, my mind will look around and fix on a point to place the terror.  It’s usually something that isn’t rational.  Someone has a cold, and I suddenly am afraid that they are at death’s door.  (Deep down, I am sure it is pneumonia, cancer, or Alzheimer’s.  Or maybe all three.)  Someone has a small cut, and I am shaking visions out of my head of what they will look like with the prosthesis once the infection has overtaken and the limb is amputated. 

Understandably, I can’t handle sentimental books, movies, or songs very well.  I have no patience for shallow sentimentality either.  Give me the real, heart-wrenching stuff if I must have it...The shallow stuff doesn’t move me, the real thing moves me way too much.  The effort it takes to hold tears back in front of the rest of the world is exhausting. 
 
The effort it takes to keep my fears in check and not show my family how scared I am is also exhausting.  I sometimes find myself shaking, breaking out in a cold sweat, and my heart racing.  I try to calm myself down.  I tell myself it isn’t rational, that I’m scared of nothing.  My addled brain protests that I am still scared.  I try to enjoy my kids’ happy laughter and goofiness.  But my mind can’t handle the noise and talking.  I shut down, and stop talking or answering; or ask them to be quiet--and I try not to be angry with them.  After all, they are just kids, and delightful ones at that.  But my short replies are not what they want--they want Mom to be here, with them, to be herself.  But who am I when I am like this?  It is in my heart, my mind, and in my soul.  If those things don‘t make me who I am, what does?  But this is not me.  I am not me. 

When my mind gets like this, I (obviously) can’t gather my thoughts together very well.  Even simple tasks like making a meal or cleaning the house are almost too much.  Any projects that involve actual thought processes are sure to end in chaos.  (A few have.)  I don’t want to talk about what I’m experiencing.” 

I wrote that over a year ago, when talking about it was too painful.  A friend who found out later how difficult the time had been, expressed her sadness to me that she didn’t know.  She wished she could have helped.  But how could I tell anyone?  I could barely articulate how I felt to myself.  Writing it out was a bit of a relief, but so hard.

On the surface, I tried to keep it normal as much as possible.  I did my best to hide how bad it was, or if I couldn‘t hide it, I hid out in my house till the worst had passed and I was able to function with a degree of normalcy.  It didn’t come on all at once.  In the space of about a year, I slowly retreated from as many social situations as I could possibly get out of.  Before this, my husband had always joked that I talked too much.  But when I stopped talking almost altogether, except when I absolutely had to talk, he was not relieved.  It was no longer a thing to joke about.

It has been over a year since I began to get better.  Things are much brighter now.  But it has been a long road.  I am also beginning to accept that, to some degree, I will always live with this burden.  Better means better.  In my case, it does not mean totally healed.  But no matter how heavy the load, no matter how dark things have gotten, God has never left me.  In the middle of the hardest times, He has been the closest.  So that is why I am writing here.  I want to share how He has loved me and offer hope to one who may be hurting but cannot speak of it.  Sometimes pain is too great for words.