NOT WHERE I WAS BEFORE

Last weekend was rough. I was physically and emotionally depleted from a difficult week at work, grieving the loss of a dear soul (read about that HERE), discouraged by various relationship struggles, and missing my kids and grands something terrible. The world felt dark and heavy, and I languished like Jeremiah at the bottom of a murky cistern.

Been there, done that, way too many times to count.

It's not a place I like to be, but how to get out of that dark hole when overcome with weariness and grief?

Sigh.

There was nothing to do but try to start climbing...

Step 1: "I know that the way I feel today is not the way I will feel forever. My feelings will change." At almost 60 years old, I know that feelings come and go, and they can change dramatically in a short time. Life felt pretty dark and hopeless Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday...but by Monday, with a healthy dose of sunshine and warmer temperatures, my feelings began to change.

Step 2: "Despite how I feel today, I am not alone. There are people who love me and who are praying for me." And I began to name them. Teresa, Donna, Katherine, Brenda, Sue, Jill, Cindy, Cathy, Emily, Martha, Helen, Mary, Suzanne,.....

Step 3: "My life matters. Today, my feelings may tell me I have no value, but the truth is, my life makes a difference for good." Weekly, I am blessed to be able to pour courage and strength and comfort into dying people and into those who love them. What a sacred calling!

Step 4: "I am not where I was before." A few years ago, I frequently had no idea how I was going to buy groceries for the week, I drove a borrowed vehicle to run errands in town, health issues were ignored, and gift-giving occasions - like birthdays, Christmas, weddings, baby showers - triggered deep distress. Today, I have food in the fridge, a reliable car, am managing my blood pressure, and am seeing a therapist regularly to work through decades of pain and desperation. Last weekend was dark, but even in the darkness, I knew that my life was far better than it had once been, and that was encouraging.

Despite the fact that my challenges, struggles, and frustrations have not changed significantly over the past week, I am today in a much better place mentally and emotionally than I was last weekend. No big surprise there...but still, I am thankful.

I hope today is a great day for you.

But if it's not, please remember this: today is not forever.

Today is not forever.

Hold on the best you can.

I pray that God will give you strength to start climbing.

HOW BIG IS THIS SALVATION?

"Son," he said, "ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even the agony in to a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say, 'Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences,' little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin.

"Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven; the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness.

"And that is why...the Blessed will say, 'We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,' and the Lost, 'We were always in Hell.' And both will speak truly." - C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

* * * 

If I believe that Jesus redeems me and saves me for the eternity which yawns on the other side of this life - and He does - that is a glorious promise and a great assurance.

But I need more.

If I believe that Jesus redeems me and saves me today, when I have today injured another image-bearer, fallen yet again into that old sin, doubted the great promise that God truly forgives and truly loves the repentant sinner - and He does - that gives me comfort and healing and hope. Even as I fall broken at the foot of the cross for the umpteenth time, it gives me strength to stand and face a new day with the confidence that "Yes, Lord, I am yours, beloved and secure. Help me today to think and speak and live as befits a daughter of the King."

But I need more.

What about yesterday? What about last month? last year?

What about the decades of sin, my own and those committed against me? What about the hurt and the hard layers of scar tissue, running deep in my soul? What about sin-twisted coping mechanisms, learned over a lifetime, so well practiced now that they are reflex and I have little, if any, conscious awareness of them?

When I look back, I am deeply grieved by my own brokenness and by how my brokenness has shattered others.

What about the PAST, Lord: Is it too late to save what has already been? The pages are turned; the story is told - how can what has already been written be saved and sanctified for your glory and for my good and the good of the people I love?

Does the Gospel have power to redeem the past?

My story - The Story of Camille - began 54 years ago in a small hospital in rural Northwest Tennessee. Actually it began before that, with a young country lawyer and a pretty preacher's daughter. No...go back further, to that preacher and the strong-willed, strong-boned woman he married, and hundreds of miles away, to the hog farmer and his schoolteacher wife.

No, further still...

To German and Scots-Irish immigrants who, desperate for religious freedom and a future, braved an unknown continent on the far side of the sea...

Further...

Go WAY back, as far back as, well, as forever...

Ephesians 1:4 tells me that God was writing My Story "before the foundation of the world."

Long before my story became My Story some 54 years ago, as far back as the dawn of time and then further, it was God's Story, the one He began writing before my first ancestor walked this earth. That means...

Before the first page of My Story was written, there was the mercy of God, wrapped up in the Gospel, the One Great Story, of which My Story is simply a re-telling.

All of my past - the good and the bad, the bright and the broken, the joyful and that which causes me deep, deep sorrow - God has been writing all of it all along, and through ALL of it, He has been weaving the beautiful, unifying, redeeming theme of his glorious Gospel.

So, back to my question: Can the Gospel redeem and sanctify my past?

YES.

Because God's Story, the Gospel, is older than My Story, and its life-giving blood pulses through ALL of My Story, past-present-future, beginning to end.

I needed to take a few minutes to remember that today.

* * *

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you. - Jeremiah 31:3

LESSONS LEARNED IN DARKNESS

Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor or trained counselor. I am a middle-aged, stay-at-home mom with no college degree, no professional career. My resume' would fit on a 3-by-5 index card.

I cannot write about depression from the perspective of a physician or someone with an advanced degree in counseling. I can only write from the perspective of someone who has been into the valley and who, by God's grace, is making the journey out of darkness, back into the light. 

What have I learned that might be helpful to a person who is walking alongside a friend who is depressed?

IF YOU ARE THE FRIEND:

Pray, pray, pray. Pray and keep on praying - for your friend, for hope and for strength to persevere; for yourself, for wisdom to know how best to love and encourage your friend. Pray, pray, pray.

Checking in is helpful. Waiting for your downcast friend to initiate contact is not. "You can call me anytime!" No, I can't, not on days when simply breathing is a struggle. Call me. If I don't answer the phone, stop by the house. If I don't answer the door, send an email or text message or card. Find some way to make contact.

No, this won't make everything better, but it will do this: it will remind me that someone else in the world knows and cares that I am still here. It will remind ME: I am still here. And that is huge.

Listening - really listening - is helpful. Giving unsolicited advice is not. If I do answer the phone when you call, or open the door when you stop by, giving me a list of ten things you think I should do to solve all my problems is not helpful. Listening as I mentally work through things myself, identify problems, figure out possible solutions...that is helpful.

Most people don't like to listen; they prefer to talk. They'd rather tell you how to "fix" your problem. ("Have you tried fill-in-the-blank?") They want to make the unpleasantness go away, not walk with you through it. Which leads to...

Learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Let's be honest: depressed people are not generally fun to be around. Me, I cried a lot. I had days when I lacked the emotional energy to talk to other people. Even simple questions - "Where do you want to eat?" - were too big to process. (Some days are still like that.)

When you live under a big black cloud, folks don't like being around you. They don't make eye contact at church. They avoid conversation. They always have plans elsewhere. Being around you makes them uncomfortable.

Then there are those rare, precious people who, in spite of the awkwardness and discomfort, see the dark cloud and step under it to stand beside you and hold your hand.

I remember one time when my friend Joyce Tolar called. Joyce was the kind of friend who initiated contact.

Joyce: "How ya doin', Baby Girl?" (Joyce called everybody Baby Girl.)

Me: "I'm fine." Then, a long pause on the phone line.

Joyce: "I'm on my way over right now."

When Joyce got to the house, we sat on the porch swing together, and I had a good, snot-nosed cry. We didn't talk. We just sat there together, Joyce holding my hand, rocking the swing, watching the birds over the hay field and the traffic out on the highway. Joyce knew how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Do you want to be a good friend? Be like Joyce.

Do not minimize or dismiss your friend's emotions. Completely unhelpful things to say to someone who is depressed:

• "You shouldn't feel that way."
• "I don't know why you're not happy. Your life could be so much worse."
• "I don't know why you're not happy. You have such a perfect marriage/family/life."
• "Just get over it."
• "You didn't hear all this talk about depression fifty years ago. We're all a bunch of softies now. You need to toughen up."
• "You're just doing this for attention."
• "Real Christians do not get depressed."

Don't. Just don't.

Be patient. It takes a long time to find the way out of a particularly deep, dark valley. Instead of focusing on how long the process takes your friend, focus on progress. Celebrate every step - even very small steps - toward the light. Encourage. And keep praying.

Don't do nothing.

What would YOU add to this list?

LOST GIRL

"I knew you when you were a girl. I knew you as a young adult. You were smart and kind and funny. You loved life. What happened to you? What happened to the girl you used to be?"

A lifelong friend spoke these words to me several years ago. I was physically exhausted and emotionally and spiritually depressed. I was past desperate...had reached a point of passive numbness. My life was not without an occasional glimmer of joy or light, but, for the most part, life was dark gray. The lively, engaged girl from my childhood had become an automaton.

Why the change? Who knows, but I think several factors contributed to this transformation: extreme physical exhaustion, emotional isolation, financial insecurity. Life was so hard, for so long, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix my situation. I tried, repeatedly, and failed, repeatedly, and finally I just gave up.

I lost track of the girl my childhood friend had known. But when my friend asked me that question, and when she described the person she had known all those years ago, something stirred deep in my memory. I began to remember that lost girl, too. I began to ask myself, "What happened to that girl? Where did she go?" The more I thought about that lost girl, the more I wanted to find her.

Fast forward several years...

I am not the same person today that I was when my friend asked those questions. I have found a bit of the lost girl - I hear her thoughts inside my head, and sometimes I hear her voice coming out of my mouth. She is older now, for sure...gray hair, thick waistline, gimpy knees...but she is still curious, still likes to have fun, still a little shy.

Why the change? I don't think I know all the factors that helped resurrect the lost girl, but I do know a few:

I am no longer severely exhausted. I don't think it is possible to overstate the harmful effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, on both physical health and mental health. There's a reason sleep-deprivation is used as a form of torture in places like prison camps. Prolonged exhaustion...a quiet, subtle, slow trauma.

I no longer feel emotionally isolated. Through the magic of the internet, I am able to communicate with friends from my past, and I can stay in conversation with friends who live far away. (Moving frequently, leaving behind friends and having to start over again from scratch in a new location...it often takes years to build emotional intimacy. Having to rebuild so many times, another subtle form of trauma.) I am thankful for my prayer sisters, who pray with me and for me. I am thankful for Global Counseling Network, thankful someone recognized the need for affordable, biblical counseling services in remote places like the hills of Northwest Tennessee.

I don't know that I am any less financially insecure than I was ten years ago, but I'm not the one juggling the numbers. They say ignorance is bliss; it's not, really, but ignorance does involve less stress, or at least a different kind of stress. I have an ATM receipt from a couple years ago taped on my wall: "Ledger balance: $2.44." Groceries for the week ahead, gas for the van (Please, Jesus, don't let the van break down this week!)...how on earth were we going to make it?! I don't know how we survived. But I do know that today, although there may still not be money in the bank, we do have groceries in the pantry and a full tank of gas in the van.

Why am I sharing all of this?

My youngest and I were talking last night, and she was sad because she felt like people she loves misunderstood and misrepresented me, her mom. "They don't know you like I do," she protested.

But here's the deal...

I am not the same person today that I was five years ago, ten years ago, thirty years ago. If you, like my friend at the beginning of this post, had known me as a child and as a young adult, you would say, "Oh, I know Camille. She is like such-&-such." And you would be right. But, if you had known me during the long slow collapse of severe exhaustion, you would say, "Oh, I know Camille. She is like (something very different)." And again, you would be correct.

My youngest is more familiar with Camille-in-the-light, so she does not understand the perspective of those who are better acquainted with Camille-in-the-darkness. But the truth is, their perspective and their experiences are real, too, just as real as hers. The truth is, I am not one or the other, either/or; I am both. Light and darkness, swirled together like ink in sunlit water.

I think one of the deepest longings of the human heart is to be both fully known AND fully loved. People - even those closest to me - are incapable of knowing me fully, completely, because time and place limit their knowledge of me. We relate to one another in still shots, outtakes, film clips. Only God sees and knows and understands the full-length drama of our lives, of who we are.

"They don't know you like I do." No, no, they don't.

But God knows me as I am, all of me, completely, and He loves me! I am content.