The world is loud and terrible this summer. It is as if the entire planet has tilted on its axis and dipped us all in nightmare.
The grass outside my bedroom window is dotted with yellow maple leaves. I don’t know if this is because summer is already ending or because the largest and oldest of the maple trees is dying. Perhaps it is both.
Land and growing things are broken, nations are broken, bodies and minds are broken. And we respond by shouting at one another.
I indulge in shouting some days, but, mostly, I respond by retreating into silence.
When my children explode over cracked Legos and the last popsicle, I struggle to stay with them in the noise. I want only to slip away, to climb the steps to my bedroom, to sit in the curve of the bow window noticing yellow leaves on the lawn outside.
The world grows louder, and I grow quieter. Sometimes, this feels like wisdom, but I know it is also weakness.
It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.
It requires faith to tell small stories. To believe that what seems to be inadequate is of value.
When my fourth child was born, my body struggled to make milk for her. The hormonal peaks and valleys of that process seemed to switch a lever in my brain.
I became depressed.
I had so many reasons to be happy, but depression sucked all emotion from my mind and filled the emptiness with anxiety. I can remember sitting in my comfortable, soft rocking chair, holding my baby, and trying to remember why I had once cared about babies or repairing old farmhouses or ordering seeds for the spring garden or anything at all. I could no longer remember why it mattered if any of us ever got out of bed.
When I stopped trying to nurse my baby, and the last of my milk dried up, the depression lifted. A severe mercy.
It meant that I knew happiness again.
It meant that I knew sadness again.
Healing looked like a renewed capacity for both joy and sorrow.
This morning I read these words from Psalm 105:
Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done.
Sing to him, sing praise to him;
tell of all his wonderful acts.
And I remembered what had happened to me after my daughter’s birth and knew that I did have a song of praise.
Thank you, Lord. Thank you for healing me enough to grieve.
Exquisite in every way —- *thank you.*
Ann, thank you. It was your own recent post that prompted me to share my small story. So grateful for you and your brave words.
I don’t agree that grief is a gift, it’s terrible place to be. I could not breast feed my children, my milk did not come in at all. No big deal. When my second child was diagnosed with autism at the same time my parents became ill and dying, I thought I would never pull myself out of the black bottomless pit. After my parents died, I still had a child wit autism. I still don’t know to this day what future he has. I can say I’m not living in grief anymore. Grief is a gift…no way.
Perhaps I should say the “capacity” for grief? Because I agree – there is nothing good about death and loss and illness and suffering. I am not grateful for the heartbreak of this summer, but I am deeply grateful that I am healthy enough once again to feel the pain. When I was depressed I could not tell that some things were right and others were wrong because I had lost the ability to feel. When I was depressed it didn’t seem to matter to me if my baby was healthy or not, but of course it does matter. As you are experiencing, it matters a great deal.
True and beautiful. “It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.” Love this.
Thank you, Stephanie.
It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.
Ah, and this is the scariest part about pushing “publish” to me.
I see what you’re saying about grief being a gift. The things (and sins) themselves are not gifts, but the ability to grieve (and then push past?) is a gift. Because if we don’t grieve, we’re not healthy again. We become instead infected with bitterness.
Or, perhaps there is grace to grow with grief rather than become stuck within it? I’m not sure. I do know that while grief is terrible, it does at least open my heart to the fact that all is not well in our world. Depression lied to me (or made me vulnerable to hear the lie that is always out there) that life and death are meaningless. But the truth is that life is rich with meaning and death is our enemy. Depression would seek to make even the hope of resurrection seem unimportant.
“The world grows louder, and I grow quieter. Sometimes, this feels like wisdom, but I know it is also weakness.
It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.
It requires faith to tell small stories. To believe that what seems to be inadequate is of value.”
I just wrote a post that will go live on my blog on Monday that talks about some of this, and then I read what you said. And . . . I could just sit and chat with you all the livelong day. I find myself wanting to say, IF what I hold deep in my heart does end up coming to be (a second child), will you be there for me? Will you help me through the dark place that I’m afraid of happening again?
Your words always have a way of explaining my heart. I’m grateful for you.
Oh, Amy, I’ll be looking forward to reading your words. I’m grateful for you, too.
I’d say a “gift” grief gave me has been empathy. I’m much less judgmental about other people’s struggles having gone through my parent’s abusive marriage, adultery, and separation. Having gone through that (as an adult) it has left a huge scar, as I know it has others who’ve gone through such an experience. But I certainly have much more compassion than I did prior to the experience.
Empathy, yes. That has been true for me as well, Danielle.
I understand that horrific disconnectedness you’re talking about. And seeing grief as a gift, because it is feeling entering the vacuum of feelinglessness, lament displacing care-lessness.
I think it does have something to do with capacity, yes. A capacity for feeling after being … well, incapacitated. I hadn’t thought about that word in this way before.
For me, one question is, why have we been made with such capacities for grief, anger, lament, sorrow, as well as joy, mirth, wonder? What purpose is there in feeling the ranges of we feel?
Tears normally come easy to me, whatever emotion they’re tied to. But when I was in the pit, I couldn’t cry. For months. Strangest thing. It made me feel less than human. The first time I cried again, that was one of the ways I knew I was getting better.
I don’t know if this will make sense, Laura, but I felt such relief reading your comment. As if, all along, I’ve secretly wondered if it was only me. Of course, I hate knowing how many of my friends and family have experienced (or are experiencing) depression, but somehow this comparing stories is a good thing, yes? We really aren’t alone. And, yes, the question you ask – I ask it, too. Why this range of feeling? What is it for?? Such a significant question. I’m holding on to it.
The Mary Oliver poem “Wild Geese” comes to mind.
The Psalms come to mind, too, and that is one thing I was able to read in that stretch. So many of them seem to be written from somewhere in the territory of the pit. Then in so many of them, by the end, the speaker climbs out of it toward hope. Or sits there and makes room as hope climbs in.
Hi there–I recently started following your blog. Your opening lines spoke to my heart. I just wrote a blog post (here: http://spifftacular.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/iraq-the-context-is-that-we-are-human/) about the nightmare in Iraq, and was feeling weighed down. Thank you for sharing how you worked through the weight of depression, and in such a quiet, beautiful way.
Holly, welcome! I am so glad you found your way here. Thank you for your encouraging words.
The quality that draws me to read your blogs time and time again is the quiet that characterizes them and the stories that surround your life in your own family, back yard, and community. I have found your writings on such matters to remind me that where we shine forth in our faithfulness is not in the profound but the multitudes of little things in which our lives are lived out where no one hardly will notice except the very people into whose lives we have been planted. I enjoy hearing a feeling of restoration has touched you. Thank you for your gift of writing especially of the things which you do share from your life. Few blogs so consistently encourage me as your does.
Dan, it means so much to me to hear you say this. Thank you for taking the time to write it out. “Quiet” has become a significant word for me of late, and it is very encouraging to know that you find this in my words. Again, thank you.
This reminds me of the verses in Ecclesiastes regarding a time for everything. I think we would all agree that we don’t want room to be made for those things that cause sadness, grief and despair but even in those things, God uses them to shape us and speak of his faithfulness. It is often in the juxtaposition of emotions such as grief that we are able to fully understand joy and gratitude. I agree with Dan’s comment. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Hugs.
A time for everything … yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you, Shelly. And I am so glad you brought up the word faithfulness. When I consider God’s faithfulness in my own life, it is primarily his presence in the very darkest days that comes to mind. It isn’t that those dark days were not terrible or that I would want to relive them (no!), but I do not think I would have quite the same assurance of God’s faithfulness without them.
Christie,
This was a beautifully written piece. This line in particular resonated:
“I had so many reasons to be happy, but depression sucked all emotion from my mind and filled the emptiness with anxiety.”
You summed up ppd in one sentence. (It took me a whole book to say the same thing!)
(Btw, I am reading A Severe Mercy for the second time this year. I’m not sure why it’s resonating so deeply. Perhaps because for me, this has been the Year of Disruption, all kinds of change, and I am grieving the end of a good season of life and facing an unknown future. It’s always unknown, of course, but usually I can comfort myself with the illusion of expectations… But at least I am alive to the sadness. A severe mercy.)
Ah, Kimberlee, your comment means a great deal. I loved your book. Reading it was one of those “I am not alone” experiences we are sometimes given through reading. And do you know I was just thinking a few days ago that I should reread A Severe Mercy. It has been years, but something in me is feeling hungry for that story again. Interesting …
Ah, yes, Christie. Grief can be a gift when we’re sunk beneath response and feeling. Not an easy gift, but a gift nonetheless. Thank you for this. I wrote about this mixed upness of ups/down/high/lows/joy/sorrow this week – it felt necessary somehow. Weeks like this last one trigger that kind of storytelling, I think.
They do, Diana. And I loved your post. One of my favorite things on the internet in recent days.
“The world grows louder, and I grow quieter. Sometimes, this feels like wisdom, but I know it is also weakness.
It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood.
It requires faith to tell small stories. To believe that what seems to be inadequate is of value.”
Thank you for this post. Telling my small story every time God gives me opportunity…
Yes, we must keep on telling! Grateful to have you here, Marty.
Beautiful. I love the bleeding heart at the end.
Sharon, I was secretly hoping someone would pick up on that. A friend gifted me a huge tub of bleeding heart divisions this spring. Such a beautiful, powerfully symbolic plant.
As the world grows louder, I do long for silence. The anxiety has robbed me of most of the memories but God is guiding me through, step by step.
Your words are reverberating inside my soul. Six years ago, this was me, sitting in a rocking chair holding my miracle, inexplicably lost. Six years later, these words are life, as I’ve begun to share pieces of me: “It requires strength to share our stories. To risk being misunderstood. It requires faith to tell small stories. To believe that what seems to be inadequate is of value.”
Bless you, Sally Anne, as you share pieces of yourself. May Christ in you be like endless bread, a never-empty cup, a fountain always flowing.
The greatest grief of all time, brought about the greatest gift of all time , which is also the greatest story of all time.
Oh, yes, Connie! So beautifully put! “For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ” (2 Cor 1:5).
A Severe Mercy….that book changed my life, heart, and soul about 30+ years ago……and strangely! I’ve been thinking/praying a lot lately about both the book and the severe depression I’m in the middle of. Actually, it’s more chronic anxiety and to the very marrow kind of fear….
Anyway, that’s not why I’m commenting. I’m commenting just to say thank you for not throwing out trite and simplistic views and half truths of what depression is and isn’t. It can be a life altering gift, but it usually feels like hell inside of your soul.
It’s a severe mercy too. The kind that Velvateen Rabbits are born of……
Anyway, thank you. I don’t feel that I’ve made the sense I wanted to when I started this comment.
Lori, I know that anxiety and fear you mention. I think that is what made it so hard for me to recognize my depression. I had always imagined depression as a sadness, but I felt only intensely overwhelmed, anxious, and afraid. A simple task like going alone to the grocery store left me feeling panicked. Thank you for your words here. I am praying for you this morning, praying for rest for your soul.
Ann’s link to your story led me here and I’m grateful to find you. Bless your courage to say what so many cannot, especially when they are in the depths of the darkness of depression.
You are so good to respond to people’s comments, something that encourages your readers and something I need to be better at doing in my own corner of the blog world!
And I am grateful to have you here, Emily. I am not always so faithful to respond to comments (life does tend to get in the way of that, doesn’t it?), but I am overwhelmed by the response to my small story of depression. My heart is breaking with each experience shared with me here and via message and email. I am gathering these stories, pondering them in my heart, and praying God’s mercy for each of us.
I’m also here via Ann Voskamp.
I think it is rare to experience grief as a gift until you have been in that place of numbed emotion, but it is precious indeed. Grief, in all its intensity, like happiness connects us to life – in it there is the possibility of shared experience. Depression, on the other hand, separates and isolates.
May joy increasingly abound in your heart.
Yes, Judy! I am so glad you contributed these words. It is one of the most surprising gifts of suffering – that in grief we might be united with others and with Christ. Of course, we look forward to the day when there will be both perfect unity and no more tears.
Christie, thank you for putting into words where the gratitude goes in grief. To the capacity to experience it. It is personal to me. I have a chronically depressed brother who is “stuck” in the most awful place. He has attempted suicide multiple times. As I have become involved in his treatment I have seen the dark place he lives in day after day and pray for his healing fervently. I am so grateful for the gift of the capacity to grieve as well as rejoice because I see how hopeless a life can be without them both.
Vickie, I am praying with you for your brother this morning. Having shared a bit of my story, my heart is newly broken for those who suffer long-term and the ones who care for them and observe their suffering. May God be your comfort and strength.
Coming via “A holy experience” your words are a gentle encouragement to me and “ah ha!”
18 months ago after a right mastectomy in a foreign country(missionary) I have had high and low times…. but about 2 months ago I felt like something lifted and your words have just described for me what was happening… and how I came through…. There were times when I knew I was depressed but other times I did not acknowledge and tried to push through.
I had 3 months at home last year and although that was helpful – spending time with family and counselling with my beautiful pastor was a blessing!! – I don’t think I really worked through a lot of it until I came back ….
Moving on slowly, gently and in HIS arms always…. whatever the “weather”
Oh, Gail, your words make my heart glad. Not that you have suffered or continue to suffer, but that you found encouragement here. Praying God continues to walk you toward fair skies.
Oh my. Lots of tears dripping from my chin after reading your post and all the comments. Grief of various kinds comes for all of us eventually. I believe there are varying degrees of grief–some perhaps easier pits to climb out of than others. But all of it is suffocating. Some of us can’t get our breath for much longer periods than other. I know the grief of a husband sitting his family down for an unexpected, surprising Sunday afternoon chat to tell them he is leaving the home for good. I was immediately shoved into deep water and began drowning, with only occasional gulps of air that I struggled to break through the surface for. For months, I felt like I was constantly going under the water, and my lungs burned with the need for air. Eight years later, I am breathing normally and can actually swallow. And the grief was, in some ways, a gift that allowed me to look at “singles” very differently. I see them sitting alone at church, often with no one making an effort to include them. I know what it is like to grocery shop and not need an entire loaf of bread or even a full quart of milk. I know what it is like to be replaced. I have gained the gift of empathy for a segment of the population I once ignored. But I wonder about those who experience far worse things in life, like losing a child. I don’t know how they learn to breath again . . . or swallow . . . or move on. And, quite honestly, I never want to know that depth of grief. But if I do, I pray others who have been in those deepest waters will through me something to grab onto.
What is grief? Misery, pain, heartache, sorrow at its greatest depth? A gift? Seemingly not. I lost my daughter 18 months ago. She suicided at age 40 after struggling with manic-depressive disorder and a recent abusive marriage of only 18 months. Our family supported her and helped her raise her three children (from a past marriage) for all those years. It has been the worst pain and grief I have ever felt. And now we are in a custody battle over our granddaughter who is 6 years of age still living with her abusive stepdad. I too, felt like I drowning and could hardly breath. It is hard to look at this situation as a gift – yet, this situation has brought me to my knees and has taken me right into the arms of my loving Lord. I have experienced Him in a way I have never dreamed possible. That is the gift. My grief and pain brought me into His presence, His comfort, His hope, His strength, His sustaining power. We don’t appreciate light, until we are in the dark night. We don’t appreciate warmth until experiencing the chilling cold. I could not experience comfort, without grief. I could not experience healing without the pain. That is the gift. God is good and righteous and just and I cling to the belief that He does all things for our good and will turn this situation into His praise and glory.
Oh, Susan, I can’t possibly add a word to what you have shared. I just want to say thank you for being here, for sharing your story. This morning, I am grieving with you. Like you, I am clinging to our comforter.
I hopped over here from Ann Voskamp. Sometimes depression is easy – we find the problem, we remove the problem and the sadness goes away. But my river of sadness is so big that i often feel alone of a raft being buffeted by the torrents of water as it rushes by me – that is life, it is all of life!
Beverley, my first impulse is to quote all sorts of comforting scriptures, but my second impulse is just to say how deeply sorry I am. Your name and this small glimpse of your story are planted in my own heart now. I am praying that this river of sadness carries you into new waters. “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God” (Psalm 46:4).
Hi Christie,
I too on occasion battle depression. Of course I don’t like it, and I can pretend it’s not there, but of course my heart knows better.
And I don’t wish for others to know it, because they sincerely wish to help me, but I know they really can’t. Plus it tends to bring them down too, and that’s the last thing I wish to impose on anyone. I might tell my adult children, because I know they’ll understand. But between them, God, and me, we’re usually the only ones who know.
It simply takes time to heal as I’m sure you know. It’s certainly a desert experience, but then I remember the words, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .” and I’m reminded of Who it is that’s with me.
And I’m further reminded of this poem that was read at my wife’s memorial service some 12 years ago now. And I’m reassured that there will again be mountaintop experiences: http://llerrah.com/dreams.htm
May God continue to bless you, and give you more mountaintop experiences than desert ones. The combination of both I think has made you a deeper and more heartfelt person. One who no doubt God is quite proud of.
~ Larry
Your words sparked my own blog post. Although it’s not really about depression. I do love how words can ignite a whole string of ideas.
just finished reading Larry Crabb’s “Shattered Dreams” – it was truly a life changing book. Because it’s an answer to my broken heart – why does God allow things to happen that are so damaging, corrosive, cruel, breaking? This blog post confirms a little bit of the sense i got from the book.
Thanks for sharing, Stephanie. I don’t know that book though I do know Larry Crabb. I’ll look for it …