Category Archives: depression

waiting it out…

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It’s so obvious I never even saw it until a couple days ago.  A friend and I were talking about how hard things can be, even and especially during the holidays.  He was reeling from the sucker punch of a less-recent blow combined with a fresh jab, I was nursing a new sore spot in a long history of bruises, and things began connecting in my mind in a way they hadn’t before.

I’ve been familiar for years with the problems of undiagnosed illnesses and hidden injuries and the understanding that these things have to be found and examined and treated before healing can begin. But this season I’m learning another aspect of how old wounds continue to manifest. I’m learning, really learning, that healing is rarely if ever complete in this life, and never neat and linear. I’m discovering that even after infected areas are cleaned and bones are set and therapy is done, the aches and pains still flare up when I’m overtired, when the weather changes, when someone unknowingly jars me at the site of an old injury.

Of course this is how it is. How could it be otherwise? And of course it will pass. This flare-up will wind down and all days won’t be so hard and glimpses of joy will surprise me from unexpected places. This is just one of the days when I have to wait it out, drawing strength and comfort from the prayers of friends, and from words I came across in Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation this morning:  “But the goal (in contemplation, in prayer, maybe in just getting through the day) is not success at all, only the practice itself.” (parenthetical statement mine)

A Prayer on Waking

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Dear God, I cannot find the breath to pray.
Words wheel in silence but won’t be pinned down.
I don’t know how to face this dawning day.
I can’t walk; I can scarcely stand my ground.

I haven’t anything to offer you
but all I am:  a fragile, empty man
waiting for you to fill me up anew,
to feel your Spirit move in me again.

It seems like I’ve been waiting here forever –
I wonder, Lord, do you remember me?
Why are your hands closed, bountiful gift-giver?
Am I to wait here through eternity?

If so, give me the strength at least to stand.
Let me reach through the dark and find your hand.

~ Rebekah Choat

dawn takes forever…

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photo by Chris Choat

photo by Chris Choat

Dawn takes forever some days.
the sky remains unchanged for hours,
oblivious to the ticking of the clock
growing louder each second.

It’s no use to sit and watch for it.
I know.  I’ve tried.

The best you can do is
go on about your business,
muddle through however you can in the dark,
until you are surprised, dazzled by the light.

~ Rebekah Choat

These times we know much evil…

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photo by Rebekah Choat

photo by Rebekah Choat

These times we know much evil, little good
To steady us in faith
And comfort when our losses press
Hard on us…

For we are fallen like the trees, our peace
Broken, and so we must
Love where we cannot trust,
Trust where we cannot know,
And must await the wayward-coming grace
That joins living and dead,
Taking us where we would not go —
Into the boundless dark.

~ Wendell Berry

My Life as a Real Girl, continued

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This becoming a real live girl isn’t easy; it’s not a straight and clearly marked path.  A lot of my experience has been a process of trial and error; a small victory here, a familiar pitfall there…I’ve worked through a lot of long-pent-up emotional damage, yet sometimes still slip back into the well-worn pattern of repressing my feelings so as not to make others uncomfortable.

I’ve taken medications for anxiety and depression, quit taking them when they didn’t work well – or when they had worked well enough that I didn’t think I needed them anymore – tried different ones, adjusted dosage levels, and finally gotten onto a pretty even keel.  I’ve gone to counselors, some of whom were helpful, some not so much.   I’ve been blessed with incredibly patient and insightful friends who have done more for me than I will ever be able to tell them.

I’m learning, at last, who this elusive real girl Rebekah is:  to discern what is truly important to her and to stand up for what she believes, to recognize what is harmful to her and to dare to protect her, to trust her instincts, to be comfortable with her.  By the measureless grace of God, I think I’m growing up to be me.

Shadows, Part Five

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Shadow:  (1) an inseparable companion or follower  (2) pervasive and dominant influence

The son of a well-known minister of the gospel ended his own life a few nights ago.  By all accounts, he was a loving and beloved young man, sensitive and compassionate to the pain of others.  Despite his parents’ and his own best efforts to find help through medicine, counseling, and God knows how much prayer, he succumbed to the shadow.

I think it is truly impossible for people who have not had close dealings with mental illness to grasp how dogged a companion depression is, how deep and all-encompassing its reach.

I don’t know why the most carefully-tailored medication regimens, the most faithfully-followed lifestyle adjustment programs, the most empathetic counseling, the most fervent prayers don’t effect a cure.  But for many of us, they don’t.  We function well most of the time:  we work productively, we interact successfully with those around us.  We experience moments of genuine happiness.  We are grounded in grace and we have ardent hope for the future.  But the shadow is never fully dispelled.  It is only exiled just out of sight, always hovering, seeking new avenues by which to darken our thoughts, testing old ones again and again.  I don’t know why.

My Life as a Real Girl, Part One

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Simply realizing that I was a broken doll didn’t result in my overnight transformation into a genuine real live girl.  No blue fairy with softly shimmering wings appeared to anoint me with starlight and set me on my way.  In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, my familiar little world had been badly shaken and my support network scattered at that time.  And to make matters even worse, as I thought, we moved to an area where I knew no one but my parents-in-law, who were in the middle of a bitterly ugly divorce.

With the remarkable clarity of fifteen years’ worth of hindsight, I recognize now that all these things had to be.  Had I stayed where I was, I most likely would have remained as I was:  desperately miserable but paralyzed to do anything.  The terrible upheaval in my life both forced and freed me to admit that I needed help from somewhere I hadn’t looked before.

My Life As a Doll, Part Four

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By the end of my twenties, I had begun to recognize that I couldn’t go on as a wind-up doll forever, that no matter how faithfully I followed the programs and performed the tasks expected of me, I could not win the deep affection and unmitigated approval I longed for.  No one could love my true self, because no one – not even I – could see my true self, obscured beneath so many layers of attempts to appear acceptable.

Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t hold my world together.  My husband lost his job and had to go back to working on the road, leaving me alone with three young children from early Monday morning to late Friday night most weeks.  My church fell apart and the friends to whom I clung desperately to keep me afloat were no longer there.   None of my well-rehearsed scenes were playing out according to the script I had studied, no matter how hard I tried to adapt my lines.

Sometime around my thirtieth birthday, when I was broken open enough so that a bit of light and air could get through to my real buried self, I made a decision to stop:  to stop trying to be perfect enough to make my parents happy, to stop trying to be sophisticated enough to mingle with my husband’s business associates’ wives, to stop trying to be spiritual enough to accept human leaders’ foibles and failures as God’s master plan.  I realized that I didn’t want to be a ventriloquist’s puppet any longer, reciting the speeches my various audiences wanted to hear.  I wanted to be Rebekah, a real live girl of whom I had caught occasional glimpses through the years.

Sticks and Stones

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I believe strongly in the power of words.  I’m sure whoever – I always imagine it was a frazzled mother trying to comfort a distraught child – first spoke that ditty about sticks and stones meant well, maybe even believed it herself, but she was sadly mistaken.  Words can inflict deep wounds that take much longer to heal than broken bones do, perhaps precisely because the word-wounds are so deeply hidden and therefore not recognized and treated.  We’re taught to brush away insults, to shrug off epithets.  I think something in that shrugging motion actually causes the barbs to work further in under our skin, where their poison seeps into our bloodstream.  But we don’t mention our discomfort, won’t let ourselves succumb to the “weakness” of admitting our disease.

Sometimes we can pull it off.  We’re strong enough to absorb small stings with minimal lasting damage.  Some of us, sometimes, are so tough that we walk around with embedded shrapnel, trying not to limp and pretending that we aren’t in pain.  But some of us have been pierced with words like Morgul-blades:  the skin has closed over the wound quickly, leaving only a small white mark; but the scar conceals a deadly splinter, festering, working its way inwards.  If that malicious fragment is not found and excised, it will destroy us.

We are rarely, if ever, able to perform the operation ourselves.  We are too bewildered to recognize what needs to be done, too lost in pain to be able to focus our attention on the precise source of the infection, too weak and fearful to begin the excruciating process.  This is one of the many reasons it is vital for us to live in community, to surround ourselves with trusted friends who can often see our wounds more clearly and objectively than we can; who will encourage us, even carry us if necessary, to seek help and healing; who will sit with us and hold our hands through the dark, painful hours, speaking words of light and life.

This piece was first published as “The Power of Words” on http://www.booksbybecka.com on October 4, 2012.

My Life as a Doll, Part Three

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I married at barely past twenty, and for the next decade I functioned more or less acceptably, much like one of those dolls with a pull string on the back of her neck that makes her talk.  I developed a repertoire of stock phrases and behaviors that, if they didn’t quite fit the circumstances, if they didn’t ring exactly true, were yet close enough for people to gloss over and interpret as what they wanted to hear and see.

I didn’t realize it then, but of course the mask works both ways.  The smooth, resilient exterior that prevented people knowing what I mess I was inside also undoubtedly kept me from absorbing much light and love that might have been mine.

Over time, by the grace of God, the polished finish began to wear through in spots, and the pull string started fraying.  Around my thirtieth birthday, I began to wake up inside, began at least to realize that I had been suffocating.