In January of this year, my husband and I were in more pain than we’ve been in for many, many years. Our pain was so intense. It was a physical force, attacking our mind and body in continuous blows day and night.
I had forgotten how bad depression felt –
really bad depression.
My husband had lost his job on the last day of work before the Xmas break. It was totally unexpected – a real shock. His boss kept saying ‘don’t take it personally’, but how can you not take it personally?
If it’s not personal, then why me? Why now?
He was an excellent employee. He didn’t have a single sick day in his first 12 months on the job. He always got to work early. He worked at late as required – overnight when necessary. Even though lunch breaks were almost unheard of, he never complained.
So it seemed really, really unfair.
Now this, by itself, could have easily led to depression – or at least shock and sadness, but the bigger problem, we’d had hard (and sometimes) devastating things happen to us for years.
We were battle weary. Enough was enough.
Every time something goes wrong, my husband gets angry at God. I don’t. I keep trusting God – until this time.
My husband was in the depths of despair and so was I. Seeing the pain that he had been through over and over and over again was unbearable – I couldn’t bear to see his pain any more. I “lost it”.
I started screaming at God “I hate you. I hate you”.
Something I have never felt or said before. I broke down and sobbed floods of tears in my anguish.
I lost my faith that God was good.
How could God be good – when He let so many bad things happen to people. I had never felt this way before.
When I lost my faith in God, that’s when the really serious depression really hit.
The physical and emotional pain was palpable. It was unbearable.
Down, down, down we went into a world that only had depression – nothing else.
Thankfully, I realised that it was my “thinking” that was really making me depression worse.
The more I thought “poor us”, “my poor husband”, “God isn’t good” or “God doesn’t care about us”, the more depressed I got. My faith in God had always brought me through hard times in the past.
Thankfully, I had the realisation that it was my thoughts that were dragging me down.
I also realised that no longer trusting in God was also dragging me down.
So I did two things:
- I finally made a decision to change my thoughts; AND
- I decided to deliberately put my faith in God again.
I didn’t feel like trusting God. I felt that He had really let us down, but I was DESPERATE to feel better. I had hit my rock bottom and I could not physically stand to feel that depth of pain anymore.
To my surprise, just changing these two things started helping me to feel better quite quickly.
Not fully better straight away, but just a step or two better.
Enough to help me to keep moving forward.
Slowly but surely, I climbed out of the deep depression.
I started deliberately thinking of all the things I was grateful for
– simple things like having clean drinking water and being able to have a hot shower any time I felt like it with just with a turn of a tap. I was grateful that I have arms and legs that work – many people don’t.
I started also started to remind myself of the ways I had seen God work in the past.
I recalled Romans 8:28 “All things work together for good, to them that love God”.
I had seen this come true many times in my life. Hard, hard things in the past that I could see God worked out for my good in the end.
I continued to slowly climb out of the deep depression.
I started reading the Bible again and found scriptures like these ones:
Psalms 86: 4 “Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you.”
Romans 15:13 “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.”
And my favourite in Proverbs 3: 5 and 6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways submit to Him and He will make your paths straight”.
This reminded me to stop try to work it all out myself. Stop asking ‘why’.
Just choose to trust God – no matter what the circumstances looked like.
It probably took about a week, but I slowly returned to some semblance of normality through choosing the trust God and to be grateful on purpose.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying this is a magic pill for clinical depression. I’ve been on medication for depression for half my life and it has been a tremendous help. But it’s helpful realising that it’s more than just medication.
When you are in a deep depression, it can help to:
1) choose to be grateful and
2) choose to trust your Creator.
Try it – and see how it goes.
I would love to hear your stories in the comments below.
Can you relate to my story?
What are some things that have helped you crawl out of a deep depression?
