Editor’s Note:

Sister Kathryn James Hermes, F.S.P., entered the Daughters of St. Paul in 1978 and is the author of the book, Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach. Here she offers her thoughts and observations about depression from a contemplative and Catholic perspective.

I am sitting in a darkened chapel, alone with the Lord.  The only light being a single candle flickering valiantly in the shadows.  I am waiting  on God for the words for this article.  This time is a luxury that I have day after day, time in the early hours of the morning before the day begins to listen.  A luxury many lawyers do not have.  Lawyers seem to face the pressures of maximizing billable hours, competition, confrontation, of getting the most for one’s client that one possibly can.  It’s all part of a lawyer’s training in the adversarial process:  the penchant to see troubles as pervasive, a range of a whole host of possible catastrophes that need to be defended against for the sake of a client.  The analytic, objective and emotional detached thinking.  The excessive pressure to perfection and high achievement.  In short, the traps that come with the profession.
 
Jesus’ invitation to live with the simplicity of the lilies of the field wasn’t for everyone EXCEPT lawyers.  It was for everyone.  Working and praying 14 to 16 hours a day, I have trouble myself living as a flower that receives its entire existence, achieving nothing of its own.  I have struggled with depression.  I continuously rebuild a net of control over the outcome of my work with others.  My brother, a police officer, does too.  He finds himself interrogating his kids like the last person he picked up for drunk driving.  Always in control.  He, too, has struggled with depression.  Though a lawyer’s work stresses may make it much more difficult to relinquish control, they aren’t far outside the realities we all have to face about ourselves.
  
In this article I will present two possible spiritual strategies that one might find helpful, along with the more traditional therapies, in surviving depression.  
 
First, the analytic mind that can be such an asset in the courtroom needs to be counterbalanced with observation, or, to put it in terms of the mystics, contemplation.  Objectivity yields prudence, contemplation leads to wisdom.  Now it is true that one cannot win cases the way I write articles, asking for the guidance of God and waiting upon his direction.  However, it is true that the human person, in order to live truly in a human way, needs to spend some time not thinking his or her way out of problems.  There is a wisdom in sitting with problems and allowing a deeper direction to emerge from within the situation itself.  For a “professional” thinker this is hard to do.  An idea to get you started is simply to set aside twenty minutes a day for this exercise.  Begin by just noticing what’s around you, focusing on your breathing.  Return to your breathing every time your mind goes off on a trail of thoughts.  Or just sit with a client’s situation or a family member’s needs, holding them metaphorically with open hands.  Or repeat a short phrase from the Scriptures in coordination with your breathing, such as I surrender myself to you.  Jesus, have mercy.  Like the lilies of the field.  If you are faithful to this practice, analytic thinking will deepen without losing its power.  And in the midst of a long day, these contemplative moments are rejuvenating.  
 
Secondly, this work with the breath and prayer, this interrupting of analysis with contemplation, has a way of breaking apart one’s sense of domination.  A light from a larger world appears on an otherwise darkened horizon of human certainties.  One’s intellectual capacity to spot potential problems can be contextualized in the larger drama of God’s providence in which lawyers have the privilege of accompanying their clients at crucial moments of their lives.  Of course, one could see this as a spiritual mumbo-jumbo if it were not for the fact that life is much larger than a client’s lawsuit –  their life, your life, the life of everyone else involved in the case. 

God is the one who is working bringing good out of an unhappy, messy and sometimes awful situation which you see as your case.  So step back and watch from the bleachers now and then.

Watch what?  Watch what God is doing.  
 
Both of these practices lead to vulnerability – the learned powerlessness of the truly powerful who can simply be:  simply wait, simply be present, simply wonder, simply trust that much larger hands are holding us and knows for whom we work in view of a much larger plan that we cannot as yet understand.   So if we simply don’t have the control, we have the possibility of spiritually healing from depression.