Strength in Depression

I’m posting the following as sort of a Public Service Announcement. I’ve always heard about the “stigma” of mental illness, but until recently I was only aware of it in a vague sense, as in feeling like I don’t quite fit in culture’s standards for happiness. For a long time I didn’t really talk about depression, not necessarily because of some perceived stigma, but because I didn’t think it was anybody’s business. Now I figure that I may at least be able to use my experience to help others understand and cope with their own or a loved one’s illness.

My perception changed a bit recently when someone made a comment about not wanting to add to my depression by adding to my stress. Thinking about it later, I realized that depression is not well understood if people believe that it is always reactionary. This particular website provides a quick summary of the many types of depression, and reactive depression is only one of them: http://www.promises.com/articles/depression-articles/depression-is-not-a-sign-of-weakness/

Speaking for myself, most of my episodes of severe depression have been unrelated to life circumstances. I’ve had times of major depression when all outward circumstances have been favorable. The most frustrating part of this illness is its unpredictability. If I knew what caused it, I could do something to try to fix it. But when there is no known cause, all I can do is wait it out and continue to pursue all the medical recommendations like staying on medication, eating right, exercising, getting sunlight, and spending time with close friends. The episode may pass in days or may linger for months, and there’s not much I can do about it. In my experience, the stigma is not so much an active aversion to people with mental illness (although I’m sure that does happen in some cases), but a lack of understanding and an uncertainty of how to interact or to help.

As the title of the above article states, “Depression is not a sign of weakness.” Googling that phrase will bring up an abundance of articles refuting that myth. A common phrase that comes up is “Depression is not a sign of weakness, it means you have been trying to be strong for far too long.” I’d have to say that I agree with that in general. From a biological perspective, enduring high levels of stress in childhood can condition the body to handle a lot of stress, but not in the ways it should, resulting in a chemically induced depression. And relationally, that same childhood stress can teach young people to rely solely on themselves and to distrust others, which can also contribute to later depression.

Among those I know who struggle with depression, I see people who are strong, independent, capable, and high achievers in whatever they pursue. So it bothers me to hear depression correlated with weakness and used as a basis for judging a person’s ability to handle stress. While that may be true in some cases and situations, it is by no means universal to those who suffer from depression.

My suggestion for interacting with friends or loved ones with a history of depression is pretty simple—don’t assume anything. When in doubt ask questions, but realize that we may not always be able to answer those questions.

• Is there something specific bothering you? –I don’t think so.
• Is there anything I can do to help? –Not that I know of.
• Can I pray for/with you? –Absolutely!

I would also suggest that even if there is an element of reactive depression, it’s better to know something is coming than to be surprised with bad news. Like a parent whose child has a major illness, it’s best to know the probabilities and prognosis from the beginning so you can better prepare for the road ahead—mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. We all need time to process difficult news and figure out how to cope with the next steps.

Recently I’ve seen a couple comments on Facebook that “there’s nothing that can disturb you unless you let it” and “you choose your mood.” While it’s true that you can choose to a degree how you are going to respond to something, clinical depression creates a mood that is often unrelated to your choices. To bring it all back to Scripture, the faith of the believer can remain strong despite outward circumstances or inward feelings. Psalm 112:5-8 says:

“For the righteous will never be moved; he will be remembered forever. He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid, until he looks in triumph on his adversaries.”

David and Elijah in particular are seen as suffering from some depression or sadness, yet they are also known as men of faith. So many of the Psalms are a mixture of sorrow and faith. Those aren’t mutually exclusive. However, it’s good to be reminded of the promises of Scripture at any time, and that should be our default source of encouragement regardless of whatever issues we may be facing in life. God’s love and faithfulness never change.

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Check out this post as well: http://dulinsgrovechurch.org/thebody/2014/08/14/encouragement-for-the-depressed/

Wrong Again

I’ve shared some quotes from Ed Tandy McGlasson’s book The Father You’ve Always Wanted, and he makes some good points. However, someone reading the book might get the false impression that when a person becomes a Christian and accepts God as their Father, they will immediately become a perfect father or mother themselves. There is a brief clarifying sentence near the end of the book, “That wasn’t the day I became perfect—that day will never come on this earth, as my wife and kids can testify!”

An apt illustration comes from Killjoys: The Seven DeadlySins. In the chapter on anger, Jonathan Parnell writes:

“The most consistent cause of my anger is the disobedience of my children. On one hand, it is right to be appropriately incensed by their foolish behavior. I love them, and the trajectory of their foolishness is harm. But on the other hand, their disobedience isn’t always the real issue. The tricky question is whether I am angry because I’ve been inconvenienced by their disobedience. If I am loving my children more than myself, my anger responds to their disobedience with patient and particular care and discipline... But if I’m mainly concerned with myself, my anger is not love for them; it only deals with the inconvenience their disobedience is to me... I am loving myself at that moment, not my children.”

It seems a little silly to have to say it, but there are no perfect parents besides God. We’re all screwed up people who hurt one another even when we have the best of intentions. Access to the wisdom and guidance of the Holy Spirit does not guarantee that we will always make the best decisions or that they will be received as such. The steadfast love of God does not keep us from causing pain at times. First John 4:18 says that “perfect love casts out fear,” but God is the only One able to love perfectly at all times. I was a bit surprised to find that the Bible never instructs us to trust one another, and in fact usually urges caution against trusting anyone besides God.

We wouldn’t have to be told to forgive one another if there weren’t harms being done even among those who are dedicated Christians. I return again to Colossians 3:12-13— “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” Paul wrote this to believers, the “saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossae” (1:2), not to unbelievers or just to those who were recently converted. We need these instructions every day of our Christian lives. We’re all works in progress, but we sometimes forget that fact. We sin intentionally or unintentionally; we err in judgment and understanding; we make incorrect assumptions and have misplaced expectations.

Those we most love and trust are the ones who hold the most power to hurt us. Vulnerability can be quite painful. I’ve been there recently, and it’s not a pleasant place to dwell, nor any easy hole to climb out of. But I recognize the fact that the choice to avoid pain is also to avoid love. It may be somewhat easier to live behind walls, but it’s also joyless. Even as I’ve been hurt, I find myself reaching out to trusted friends rather than retreating to the fortress as I would have in the past.

Forgiveness may be the greatest and hardest lesson we need to learn, both in our relationship with God and with one another. We are forgiven by God, so we can forgive ourselves and forgive others. God has extended more grace and mercy than we could ever begin to earn, so we can learn to do the same for our fellow imperfect brothers and sisters in Christ. I’m sure it will never be easy, but by grace perhaps we can make progress.

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” -1 Peter 4:8

Living in the Shadows

I was recently reading the book of Revelation and particularly noticed the words Jesus wrote to the seven churches. In brief summary:

• 2:3, 7 (ESV)- “I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for My name’s sake, and you have not grown weary… To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.”
• 2:9, 11- “Do not fear what you are about to suffer… Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life… The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.”
• 2:13, 17- “I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is. Yet you hold fast My name… To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.”
• 2:19, 26- “I know your works, your love and faith and service and patient endurance, and that your latter works exceed the first… The one who conquers and who keeps My works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations.”
• 3:3, 5- “Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it… The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life. I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels.”
• 3:10, 12- “Because you have kept My word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming… The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of My God.”
• 3:19, 21- “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent… The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also conquered and sat down with My Father on His throne.”

The believers are reminded repeatedly to keep enduring as there are eternal rewards for overcoming. Although these are great and wonderful promises, I still have a hard time finding motivation to keep enduring. The problem is that this life is the only one we are familiar with, so to wait for something better yet to come doesn’t always make sense, especially when it is so different from what we’re used to. We can’t begin to wrap our minds around the descriptions of eternal life in Scripture, so we cling to the things of earth more tightly than we should.

Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” However, the afflictions of this life rarely seem light or momentary when we’re going through them. They often feel like heavy boulders instead.

We are living in the “shadowlands” (to use C.S. Lewis’s term). Ultimately, the things of this life are going to be forgotten as we encounter the solid reality of immortality. In the meantime, we need constant reminders from Scripture and from fellow believers that these difficulties will not last forever and something better is coming. I can’t imagine trying to live without daily doses of the Word and frequent encounters with encouraging friends, particularly as we digest the Word together.

Despite my affinity for Paul Simon’s “I Am a Rock,” I know it’s just wishful thinking to believe I can make it through this life and all its challenges without the support and help of my family in Christ. The boulders get heavier the longer we try to carry them alone.

It’s worth noting that the letters in Revelation 2-3 were written to groups of believers, not to individuals. Community is essential to sustained endurance in difficult times. I have little doubt that the Jews and Christians kept in concentration camps such as Auschwitz fared better than individuals kept in solitary confinement.

If we’re going to endure to the end, we need to encourage, uplift, pray for, and strengthen one another through whatever difficulties may come.

“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! …And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, 12).

Unlimited

I’ve been inspired and challenged lately by reading Lloyd John Ogilvie’s book Autobiography of God, which studies the parables Jesus told as a reflection of who God is. One chapter is on the parables of the “new patch and new wine” in Luke 5:33-39. In these parables, Jesus is not very subtle in pointing out that the Pharisees were so absorbed in what God had done in the past that they missed what He was doing in the present through Jesus. Although we tend to judge the Pharisees for missing the Savior, we can be guilty of the same thing today. Ogilvie writes:

“There are Christians who can recount with elaborate detail how they first discovered God’s grace in some experience of need or challenge. Often the treasured memory becomes more important than God Himself. His question is, ‘What have you allowed Me to give you and do for you lately?’ ...Many of us have built a whole theology on our personal experiences of God. Soon our experiences build us. They become limitations to further development and expansion of our understanding. We become rigid and immobilized. We insist God must always do what He’s done and be for us what He’s been.”

Holding on to past experiences may result from complacency, a satisfaction that what’s gone before is sufficient. It can also become a comfortable place that’s free from risk. If God has free reign in our lives, there’s no telling what He may do in us and through us. Ogilvie says:

“The false security of the familiar constantly must be replaced by trusting God with the complexities and uncertainties staring me in the face today... The Lordship of Jesus Christ cannot be poured into the old skin of our settled personality structure, presuppositions about life, prejudices about people, plans for the future, and predetermined ideas of what He will do or how we will respond.”

That’s a challenge when we’re not certain where our path will lead. It seems easier to rely on what we’ve experienced of God in the past than to trust Him to do whatever He wants in the present. Not that the past is bad. Throughout the Old Testament the Israelites were reminded to consider how God had been faithful in the past in order to trust Him in the future. But we can’t let those experiences define how God will always work. God is not limited by history or tradition, or by human understanding and expectations. God is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20), so why would we want to limit Him to what He’s already done before? But fear of the unknown is a powerful demotivator.

Thinking through this for myself, I see various areas where I’ve tried to limit God by my own limitations in knowledge, experience, personality and wounds. Ed Tandy McGlasson writes in The Father You’ve Always Wanted, “One of the devil’s main goals is to convince you to name yourself by your brokenness. He wants your future horizons to be completely limited by lies... But God loves to change broken stories and make the impossible possible!” Sometimes God is just waiting for us to say “Your will be done.”

As we were reminded in Sunday’s sermon on Proverbs 3:5-8, our role is to be faithful to God in our everyday life, and trust Him to reveal each step of the path as we come to it. That doesn’t sound too spectacular until we acknowledge and accept the fact that God may do something new and unexpected.

Ogilvie comes to a conclusion that is worth considering:

“I have learned a great deal through study of Scripture and years of fellowship with the Lord. But I suspect that my most exciting years are ahead. How about you? If so, I want to surrender any false pride or dependence on the past and make a fresh beginning. My past experience of God can never substitute for the experience of God today. ‘Lord, here is a fresh wineskin; fill me. Here is my naked need; clothe me with Your character.’ Now I can’t wait for what the Lord will do!”

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” -Isaiah 43:19

-Photo by Dawn Rutan from parking lot of Dulin’s Grove Church 1/30/15.

Keep Fighting

As happens to me periodically, I’ve received similar messages from multiple sources in recent weeks. The first source was Tim Keller’s book Prayer. He was talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the fact that the provision of needs and deliverance from temptation are daily prayers, not just occasional or spur of the moment prayers. Soon after that Ron Thomas made a similar comment during his Sunday school lesson on Genesis 3, as he urged us to frequently ask ourselves “Where are you?” Most recently, I read John Piper’s short book Sanctification in the Everyday, in which he writes about fighting sin. He says that he learned to fight sexual temptation with aggressive, conscious, daily opposition. However:

“What I realized was that I was not applying any of this same gospel vigilance—what Peter O’Brien calls ‘continuous, sustained, strenuous effort’ against my most besetting sins. I was strangely passive and victim-like. I had the unarticulated sense (mistakenly) that these sins (unlike sexual lust) should be defeated more spontaneously.”

I’ve found the same to be true in my life. Until these themes converged upon me, I’d never really considered the need to pray regularly for deliverance from evil even though that was part of the Lord’s Prayer. At some subconscious level I believed that frequent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer would become rote and useless. But, like Piper, I also mistakenly believed that temptation didn’t need to be fought until it arrived, so I wasn’t terribly proactive about it. I had a vague idea of what I would do when temptation came, but that’s about it. I’ve repeatedly read 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” For whatever reason, I assumed that meant I didn’t need to look for the way of escape until the temptation came.

I began to learn the truth over the last year out of a sense of desperation as I pleaded with the Lord to protect me from temptation, because I knew I was too weak to fight it myself. These recent messages have helped to solidify and verbalize what experience has shown to be true. It also gives fresh meaning to Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” When a child asks for something that they want and need, parents are delighted to provide. So also God wants to provide for us, but He won’t force us to take something we don’t yet want or know that we need.

God wants us to be victorious over sin, but so long as we are trusting in ourselves to fight temptation when it comes, we will continue to be disappointed. We have a real enemy who wants to keep us feeling helpless and defeated, so we need the power of our Savior to set us free. He’s already done the hard work of defeating sin and death, but we have to learn a daily reliance upon His strength rather than our own. It’s not often that God provides instantaneous deliverance from a temptation, though there are those who have found freedom from drugs and alcohol and the like. Most of the time it is a slow growth in learning to depend on Him, and that doesn’t come until we realize our own weakness.

The fight against sin is not one we are meant to battle in our own power. This battle isn’t going to be quick and easy, but we are assured that one day we will see the ultimate defeat of our enemy. Until then we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep putting on the armor of God, and keep fighting all day every day. “Will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” (Luke 18:7).

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” –Ephesians 6:10-11

Do What?!

The Australian Open Tennis Tournament made the news recently when an interviewer asked Eugenie Bouchard to twirl to show off her outfit. Although I missed that bit of “news,” it came to my attention later through a post by Matt Reagan on the Desiring God blog. Reagan’s post drew quite a bit of negative attention on their Facebook feed as being sexist in itself, along with not making a great deal of sense. I wanted to make a couple comments on his post, but then to look at what Scripture has to say.

Reagan implies that twirling is an activity pursued by little girls, but not little boys. Evidently he hasn’t spent a lot of time around little boys. Perhaps his emphasis was intended to refer to girls showing off their dresses, but I’ve known plenty of little girls who won’t wear dresses. He asks, “Why are Eugenie and Serena wearing the outfits in the first place? Are they not intentionally demonstrating their feminine beauty to the world?” I would counter that they are wearing those outfits because that is the standard for their sport, although there is some variation within the WTA. Women in the WNBA aren’t wearing little skirts and being asked to twirl for the cameras. Personally, I think Eugenie responded graciously to an idiotic request. I dare someone to ask a UFC fighter to twirl for her fans!

Both the original interview and the blog post serve to illustrate a problem we have created with gender issues in this country. Apparel and behavior are often linked to gender in ways that are inconsistent and nonsensical. When children (or even adults) measure themselves by this arbitrary standard, they may feel there is something lacking and therefore believe they are in the wrong body. I’m not suggesting little boys should be allowed to wear dresses, but we do need to take a careful look at what our standards for femininity and masculinity are and where they come from.

There are a few references to apparel in Scripture. Perhaps most familiar is Peter’s appeal to wives in 1 Peter 3:3-4, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (ESV; see also 1 Timothy 2:9-10). Alongside that is God’s statement to Samuel “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7b). Jesus had some pretty harsh words to say about the Pharisees concerns for appearance: “They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long… Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:5, 27).

God is far more concerned with the state of our hearts than the style of our clothes. Some of the most beautiful people are those who are outwardly marred or crippled, but their love of God shines through. Jesus Himself “had no form or majesty that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2).

I’ve searched on multiple occasions for Scriptural instructions that apply specifically to women aside from those related to spouse or children, and the Bible just doesn’t say much. The Proverbs 31 description is about the extent of it, and there is very little there that could not also be applied to men. Conducting business and the affairs of the household with diligence and integrity are the duties of every person. Once again verse 30 makes it a matter of the heart: “Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” Certainly there are plenty of points where debate could be raised, such as women teaching in the church (1 Timothy 2:12) or hair length for men and women (1 Corinthians 11:14-15), but those are a topic for some other blog.

I come to a couple conclusions: 1) Both men and women want to be recognized primarily for their accomplishments, not their apparel; for their deportment, not their dress. 2) God honors those whose hearts seek after Him regardless of their outward circumstances. God found David to be “a man after His own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14). We get into dangerous territory when we create our own standards that have nothing to do with God’s law— “This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:8-9).

Perhaps if we truly chase after God’s heart, we can learn to let go of all the secondary issues and fulfill Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:9-10: “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” What better way is there to honor someone than by recognizing the desire of their heart above all else?

--Also check out my friend Rebecca Chasteen’s blog post on a similar topic: https://thesteadyblog.wordpress.com/2014/05/19/and-then-you-remember-shes-not-you-and-youre-not-dying-on-that-hill/

Blossoms Through Brokenness

I don’t usually share my art, but I wanted to make a couple comments on these two recent drawings. These were inspired by a question from the Chase Bible study by Jennie Allen asking what God is looking for in us and what He is chasing after in us. It occurred to me that God is looking for growth to come from our wounded hearts. He rarely waits until our wounds have healed completely before He uses them for His good purposes. Indeed He can even bring fruitfulness out of brokenness.

That can be a bit of a challenge when we’re hurting and looking for healing and relief. That’s not always God’s first priority with our pain. He allows difficulty in our lives not to disable us, but to make us useful to His kingdom for His glory.

After drawing these, I was reminded of a scene in the allegory Hinds’Feet on High Places by Hannah Hurnard. The main character, whose name started out as Much-Afraid, was renamed Grace and Glory, after which the Shepherd instructed her “Open your heart and let us see what is there:”

“At his word she laid bare her heart, and out came the sweetest perfume she had ever breathed and filled all the air around them with its fragrance. There in her heart was a plant whose shape and form could not be seen because it was covered all over with pure white, almost transparent blooms, from which the fragrance poured forth. 

“Grace and Glory gave a little gasp of wonder and thankfulness. ‘How did it get there, my Lord and King?’ she exclaimed.

“‘Why, I planted it there myself,’ was his laughing answer. ‘Surely you remember down there by the sheep pool in the Valley of Humiliation, on the day that you promised to go with me to the High Places. It is the flower from the thorn-shaped seed.’”

Those thorns that pierce our hearts now may one day blossom into something beautiful for God’s glory, and that day may come sooner than we think. The fragrance of the blooms may be found in remaining faithful (1 Peter 1:6-7), enduring suffering (1 Peter 2:19), comforting others (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), praying for others (Revelation 8:3), doing good (Galatians 6:9), growing in grace (2 Peter 3:18), sanctification (1 Corinthians 6:11), and scores of other ways. Whenever we let our wounds drive us closer to God those seeds start to grow. Just as a broken bone is stimulated to grow in order to mend itself, a broken heart is enabled to grow in love for others.

Even though we may not see the growth ourselves, God knows, and we have the assurance that one day “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

Images copyright © 2015 Dawn Rutan. All rights reserved.