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.

Over and over and over and over

It is odd and unseasonably chilly, rain shooting sideways and trees pummeled, assaulted by wind and rain and it's exactly how I feel today, assaulted by too many voices, too many hands and needs, pummeled by the daily drudgery of bills and water leaks and bad news and work and emails. I am sleeping too long and my patience too short and there is guilt.

So much guilt.

The bookshelf boasts a worn copy of Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and I see it and nod to no one in the room because it feels like company. It is the twin brothers that suffocate, Depression and Anxiety, and they intertwine around me, strangle with bony fingers like they did Sylvia with her head in the oven.

I know what Sylvia did not know. I know how to loosen their grip, but the busyness and responsibility of mothering widens the gap and in the midst of suffocation, I am playing Matchbox cars and pouring apple juice and my soul screams silently all the while.

It all makes me a little bit crazier: Metal wheels on coffee table, boys sniffing snot over and over until my own tongue tastes salty, and the sound of humming, water running, cartoon laughter, unending questions. The click-clack of plastic building blocks fitting together while I simultaneously come undone.

"Jesus."

My heart calls to Him, guttural, like a battle cry and a curse word… a whispery, groaning plea.

This? This is how I battle the brothers, laid bare before the One.

I tear open lace curtains with grubby fingers for a glimpse of foggy vapor and drenched treetops, gasping for beauty like air and through panes I am flooded by green, poured over with Love.

And healed.

It is momentary and to be healed, we are always returning, over and over and over and over to the cross.

So I fold it over and over and over in my hands, the olive wood crucifix my in-laws brought me from Jerusalem, until it splinters my fingers and makes them bleed.  

This is healing… turning the cross over and over in the heart, in the mind, like I do in the hand, letting it splinter straight through and draw blood and breath and bring me back to life.

{Read part 2 of this post, here: Over and over... still. Why go back to the old neighborhood?} 

Linking to: Imperfect Prose on Thursdays at Emily's place.




Might you also consider pre-ordering Emily's book for those with loved ones struggling through an eating disorder, and spread love for the broken and hurting? Consider it for your church or school library, perhaps?