God Archives - Page 3 of 3 - Lawyers With Depression

Spiritual Hope – A Postscript

I have been listening to a wonderful audio interview with author/educator, Parker Palmer produced by a company called, Sounds True. Check out their website. Its catalog of authors address wellness, meditation, spirituality and personal growth is simply amazing.

Parker is currently 70 years old and a Quaker. In the interview, he recounts the three major episodes of clinical depression he went through during his life. He said some insightful things to say about those experiences. He doesn’t believe in “formulas” or “How-to-Lists” to cope with depression. He speaks about depression in the context of his spirituality:

“Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against even the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer. ‘There are no foxholes,’ I guess, and depression is the deepest and deadliest foxhole I’ve been in. It may be the ‘dark night of the soul’ that the mystics talk about but in depression it is not so much that one becomes lost in the dark as that one becomes the dark. I have never been able to ‘do theology’ when I am in this state; the best I’ve been able to do is hang on. Only later, in the light of day, am I able to understand that God walked with me in the darkness even though I could not feel God’s presence at the time.”

Later, he talks about how he survived his depression: he “slogged through it.” And maybe, sometimes, that’s all we can do. While we may feel that a depression will never end, it’s important to remember that it always does and we can use that knowledge to slog through it.

A Spiritual Sense of Hope

In my previous Blog, I looked at hope from a psychological perspective. This writing will focus on the spiritual dimension of hope and the experience of depression.

Hopelessness is a common feature of depression. During the depths of my episodes, it was my constant companion. I believe that hopelessness is strongly connected to a sense of helplessness: no matter how sincere or noble our efforts to overcome depression, we don’t. We hit a wall; a wall of spiritual darkness. In this space, there is the sense that God doesn’t care about us, that he has abandoned us, or that he doesn’t even exist. If he does exist, why would he allow me and others to suffer so? It is the pointlessness of our suffering which seems so hard a cross to bear.

Barbara Crafton, minister and author of the book, “Jesus Wept,” captures this sense of sorrow:

“Religious people want there to be meaning in everything. Randomness is hard on us: that things just happen for no reason sometimes brings us closer than we want to be to the possibility that we’re not central to much of anything . . . . And so we hope and expect the universe to have a message for us. Let there be something just for me, we pray and expect, something that will make it all make sense. A plan.

And yet, the crushing weight of depression lies precisely in the meaninglessness that characterizes it. A flat voice within contradicts every hopeful thought: live with it long enough, and the hopeful thoughts don’t even bother surfacing. Muffled and parched, bereft of any vision that might ratify your journey or give it a reasonable goal, you trudge on and on for no particular reason other than that you know you’re supposed to.”

What is our spiritual response to this state of affairs? As we drift out to sea, we long for a voice that will show us a way home. We may go long periods of our lives with no such beacon. And then, it happens. We have a sense of God’s presence in the midst of our pain. Jesus certainly understood such pain. Contrary to the movement in some Christian circles to paint Him as a salesman of happiness, he was a man “well acquainted with sorrow.” His life suggests that in a spiritual life we are not changed from some sad state into, necessarily, a happy one. That’s not the point. God doesn’t want some happy, well-adjusted and self-satisfied person per se. He wants a real and authentic person. Such authenticity often comes at a very high price. We must walk through suffering.

The Twenty Third Psalm says:

Even though I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death,

I shall fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

In one form or another, all humans most walk through “the valley of the shadow of death.” There is simply no escaping the profound experience of suffering. Depression is one such form of suffering. It is a valley; a trench from which we so often feel there is viable exit. During depression we stop walking through that valley. We are immobilized by our pain and can’t step forward. The “rod and staff” of God, however, tells us that depression is a “shadow”. It doesn’t have the final say. God does. We must not stay stuck in the valley, but keep walking.

As we walk through our days, what are rods and the staffs that comfort us? If they are the false sirens of success – of money, status symbols and power – they may temporarily satisfy us. But they won’t sustain us. At some point – it is hoped – we will recognize them for the phantoms that they are.

Whatever our spiritual orientation, chose a spiritual sustenance that isn’t borne of your small sense of self with its limited plans and agendas. But rather a grander hope and vision of which we are intimately connected to. A view of ourselves not distorted by depression, but by how God views us. We are indeed precious in his sight, His children. We can hope in his vision and plans for us.

In closing, sustenance for the day from Saint Ignatius Loyola:

O Christ Jesus,

when all is darkness

and we feel our weakness and helplessness,

give us the sense of Your presence,

Your love, and Your strength.

Help us to have perfect trust

in Your protecting love

and strengthening power,

so that nothing may frighten

or worry us,

for, living close to You,

we shall see Your hand,

Your purpose, Your will through all things.

Amen.

The Dead Zone Of Depression

There is a zone in a depressed person’s life where nothing seems to happen — except the pain of the absence of everything.

Such anguish is so overwhelming that every other concern is squashed in its wake. Our capacity for willful actions seems to be gone; we can’t “figure it out.” We are stuck.

I have learned a lot about the zone over the years and how to handle it. It’s really like surfing a giant wave. To handle these waves, you study them and prepare yourself for when the next big one rolls in.

When I feel I’m entering a Dead Zone, I start a deliberate and kind conversation with myself that is practiced and rehearsed. I don’t let the toxic voice of depression drown me out. It’s important to empower ourselves in whatever ways we can during these times because depression will lead you to falsely conclude that you’re helpless to lift your dark mood. This conclusion is one of the central tenets of depression; one of its main “themes”. We need to create – and we can – different and healthier themes for our lives.

Start with a three by five index card. Use it to create your own deliberate and kind script of themes for yourself that day. Here’s is an example of what I had written on one of my cards:

— This depression isn’t forever, it will pass.

— I have handled it in the past, I will handle it now.

— Get out of my head – don’t sit around and ruminate.

I usually write a new card out every morning. When depression is absent (and there are long periods of time when it is), the theme of the card might be more celebratory or grateful:

— I appreciate all of the goodness in my life.

— Thank you God for all of the wonderful people you’ve put in my life.

— I am happy that I am not experiencing depression today.

Try this for awhile and see if it helps you. Don’t wait until you are in the zone of depression to construct the cards because your thinking during such times will be distorted. Doing this is a healthy and self-empowering step that you can take today.

Lying in the Hands of God

Growing up in a Polish-Catholic home, I was more of a cultural catholic than a church going sort. But, my alcoholic father would make us go with him sometimes. I think it gave him a sense of normalacy; a feeling that he could be with other people without throwing down shots of Jack Daniels at a local watering hole. Only later did I develop any real sense of my own spiritual search. I’m still on that journey.

All religions have a lot to say on the topic of suffering, but not so much on the topic of depression. I guess you could say that depression is a “form” of suffering. Personally, I think that doesn’t cut it. When someone says to me, “Well, everyone suffers,” I walk away misunderstood and feeling the worse for the encounter. Maybe there’s not much dialogue about depression in our churches because of the raw fear that faith can’t fix everything.

When I first became sick, I didn’t know I had “depression”. I just thought I was having one of life’s many existential emergencies. I would kneel and pray that God would take away my pain. But, it simply didn’t happen that way. Sometimes, I would give God an ultimatum: “You either take away this damn pain, or I’m turning my back on you fella”. I demanded “a” solution, an answer. One wasn’t forthcoming.

As time went on, something happened. I stopped trying to dictate so many of the terms of my recovery from depression. Instead, I just began to surrender myself. I began to see that God was bigger than my depression. It didn’t mean that I wouldn’t suffer now or in the future from it. But a light appeared through cracks in depression’s armor. There’s a sense of joyous relief that comes when we stop the war against depression. We lay down our burden.

In the new album by The Dave Matthews Band, Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King, there’s a beautiful song (listen now), called Lying in the Hands of God. In one part, Dave sings: “If you feel the angels in your head. Tears drop of Joy runs down your face. You will rise.”

At my best, when I feel “the angels in my head”, I weep with joy knowing that depression doesn’t have the final say in my life. Yes, there will be times when I suffer from it. But, it doesn’t last.

In her article written for my website, Sister Kathryn James Hermes (who suffers from depression), author of the book, A Contemplative Approach to Depression, wrote that prayer leads us 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”.

Tune out the drumbeat of depression for a bit today. We don’t have to understand or control it all. Try lying in the hands of God awhile. And rise.