Over and Over...Still. {Part 2: On Depression and Anxiety}

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My last post may have given the impression that I'm in the Anne Shirley condition these days, in the "depths of despair"…"a perfect graveyard of buried hopes."

It's not really the case, and I'm okay, for the record.

I can write vulnerably about depression and anxiety because I have some distance from the valley these days, and I'm blessed that I've never had to sit in that valley too very long without Hope and Light and Truth.

Sometimes, though, I need to drive through the old neighborhood with the windows rolled up, lock eyes with the brothers and the dealers, the pushers and the hustlers, and keep on driving.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face (the hymn goes) and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

It all sounds too easy, I know. Jesus with the cape and the white horse, who swoops in and rescues and the earth goes dim and the credits roll.

Except he rode a donkey and not a white horse, and the whole rescuing business is a lot muddier and bloodier than maybe we're wont to recount. We come back to the rescue day by day and sometimes, minute by minute, and we learn and we heal. Because the beauty is so consuming that it's all we might be tempted to say, the rescue is so very worth it.

But there is still an old neighborhood. There are broken hearts and people who don't know and are just tired of all the mud and the battle. For them, and for us when we forget to cling tight, the things of earth are raw and real and not strangely dim at all. So we tell our truths, go back into the valley when we can, when we're secured tightly to the harness of Grace, and extend healed hands but not clean ones and do what we can to help them turn their eyes.