Late February Lights

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It’s late February and the lights are starting to come back on. I’m talking about the “lights” of my mind.

They began to dim noticeably in October. In November, they began to flicker and “brown out” more frequently. By early December, there were frequent total blackouts interspersed with diminishing periods of pale, sickly luminescence that could scarcely be called light. When Christmas, the season of lights, arrived for most other people, I had been plunged into a terror of black darkness.

The weeks that followed are a smeared timeline of desperation and fear. Hopelessness. In the dark. Alone….even when surrounded by loving hands and consoling voices seeking to support and guide me. However in my freefall, the hands couldn’t reach me; the words of my comforters were beyond my hearing. But now it’s late February, and the lights that I feared were forever snuffed out are starting to come back on. I’m starting to breathe again, to hope again. The miracle of coherence is wonderful.

Depression is an inexplicable enigma to those who haven’t lived it–and even to call it “living” seems far off the mark. Many times I thought of “Ol’ Man River”, an iconic song from the old Broadway musical Showboat. That signature song, a lament, really, was sung by Joe, an African-American stevedore on the Mississippi riverboat “Cotton Blossom”. It is visceral, and bleeds with the harsh, oppressive life-conditions of the black boat-workers in contrast to the privileged comforts and advantages of the white passengers and work-bosses.

A line from the song, sung in a rich, bass negro dialect, moaned, “Ah’m tired of livin’ and skeered of dyin’.” That line encapsulated my morbid lack of hope. I was tired of living, but feeling like God’s castaway, I was terrified of dying in that condition. It was awful. Black. A daily funeral of all my hopes and a continuous-loop film of all my worst fears.

Great Britain’s Charles Spurgeon, the revered and prolific Victorian preacher, who himself suffered from cruel, recurring depression and anxiety, spoke of depression’s “wild thought”, and said of his fellow sufferers: “All our birds are owls or ravens”–birds of prey. No cooing doves or shimmering hummingbirds. Only predators.

But it’s late February, and the lights are coming back on. And I am so grateful. It’s hard to describe the wonder of recovery. It must mirror, in some small way, the incredible experience of Lazarus being called out of death’s abyss to stand before the Light of the World. In both our cases, Jesus is center-stage. Thank you, Lord Jesus.

In his first epistle, the Apostle Peter wrote: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” One rendering of the original Greek word for “humble” is“depressed ”. He continues, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you….After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you” (1Peter 5:6-7, 10).

Now, a strict expositor would likely question the contextual accuracy of my exegesis, but I think, painting with broad strokes, it falls within the spirit, if not the precise letter, of the passage. All I know is I once was depressed and now the lights are coming back on. I believe the Lord will allow me to rejoice in this time of raising-up because it’s the “proper time” and He cares for me.

During some of the darkest days recorded in my journal, I would sit at my desk, crying out to the Lord for a glimmer of His presence, for a word of hope–which actually were given, but I didn’t have a mind healthy enough to “hear” them. And, as I lamented before the Lord, outside, somewhere in a tree draped with early-morning darkness, some unseen raven would croak out its distinctive, abrasive call. And in the throes of depression’s “wild thought,” I fought the temptation–sometimes successfully, sometimes not–to hear that raucous sound with morbid foreboding. I pondered the apropos irony of Spurgeon’s quote about ravens.

But now, with the agonizing passage of time, the lights are coming back on. I don’t have the space to recount all of the people who sacramentally acted as blessed “means of grace,” sprinkled like myrrh and aloes on the graveclothes of my tortured mind. A number of them, however, stand out to me as especially humbling and poignant: my faithful wife, Shelley. Mark and Steve, my mental-health care team. And our small Anglican church family.

In a day of often-disposable marriages, I was the blessed recipient of the vicarious love of God through Shelley’s determined hope and sacrificial commitment. Her dogged, unflagging devotion and care all-but-physically carried me through what felt to me like a laborious, futile charade. Or a funeral procession. I felt doomed to lay down and die. By God’s grace, she wouldn’t let me. What a wife!

“...And, as a side-bar for Christians, navigating a mental and emotional crisis can be devastating. It wreaks havoc with your ability to perceive spiritual truths and life in general without distortions.”

Mark, my counselor-become-friend, steadfastly worked to help me identify, and call me away from, the cognitive distortions torturing my convoluted mind, all the while lifting up Jesus as my ultimate Healer. Steve, my medical psych provider, navigated the anxiety and my “slough of despond” to bring chemical equilibrium to my turbulent mind. What gifted professionals!

My little church family never gave up hope for me, even though I had already buried it. They loved and prayed, sent emails, devotionals, and text messages, even though for weeks I was unable to attend services or even to face them: it was too painful. What a congregation!

Our church’s little men’s’ group I had been leading was also orphaned by me for weeks. I tried to resign so that someone else could lead, but they dug in and refused. In lieu of our normal format, in my absence they got together, did work-projects around the facility, talked about guns–a kind of “cowboy show-and-tell”–and politics, biding their time till God saw fit to raise the dead. Me. Like the old “Motel 6” television commercial, they “left the porch light on” for me. And never once criticized or complained. What amazing men!

It’s been said, somewhat sardonically, that Christians are the only ones who shoot their own wounded. That can be a sad reality, but it wasn’t mine. I was tenderly carried on a litter to Jesus. Our rector, Father Steve–God bless him–sent me messages full of the cheerful expectation that I would return, and that when I was ready, we’d go out for coffee. No recriminations, no disapproval, even though our tiny congregation felt the absence of even one of the sheep. What a shepherd!

It’s late February now, and the lights are coming back on. I’m still a little shaky, but I’ve returned to worship with our church. The men have welcomed me back enthusiastically without missing a beat. We’ve started a study on the Old Testament names of God. The first one is ELOHIM–“The Mighty God.” Yes. He is.

The struggle with mental illness is a difficult one. Coping with a disease is always hard. Coping with an illness that impairs your ability to think rationally and perceive life accurately is a double-whammy. And, as a side-bar for Christians, navigating a mental and emotional crisis can be devastating. It wreaks havoc with your ability to perceive spiritual truths and life in general without distortions.

In a real sense you are at the mercy of others to help interpret life and truth to you because all of your input channels are fried. But if you have “interpreters” who only tell you that you have a spiritual problem at the root of the crisis, it can tie a millstone of condemnation around your neck and kick you off the pier. It was a tremendous mercy that I was not made to question my spiritual health in that way. I did plenty of that without any outside help. No, I was bathed in grace.

There’s so much more that could be said, more stories to be told. But not right now. For now, I’ll leave it at this: it’s late February, the lights are coming back on, and I am so blessed. I give thanks for the means of grace, especially all the people who believed for me when I couldn’t believe for myself. You know who you are.

I don’t have the space to recount all of the people who sacramentally acted as blessed “means of grace,” sprinkled like myrrh and aloes on the graveclothes of my tortured mind.