Honesty


God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Psalm 46:1

God knows what He's doing.  After all I've been through in my life, I have come to know that full well.  So, I have to believe He knows what He's doing right now.  I don't want to write this blog.  I don't want to post it.  I don't want anyone to know.....and pity.....and wonder about motives.   Coming from a point of complete transparency,  I am posting this so someone who 'knows' can realize they are not alone.  And so someone who doesn't 'know' might be informed.  And empathize.  And pray for those who 'know.'

Know what, you say?  Know the feeling that overcomes and controls you.  A despair for no reason.  An unhappiness when in reality you have everything to be happy about.  An unexplained hopelessness.

I am sure there are many who 'know'.  People who love God completely, but still suffer from the dark clouds that cover their sky once in a while.  For some, those dark clouds may be intermittent, fleeting, only there occasionally.  For others, the clouds come and don't leave for a long time.   So many days where you feel suffocated, like the sky is pressing you into the ground...... a fight or flight feeling where you don't feel like fighting or flighting.  Hopelessness.  Fear.  An 'I don't care' attitude when you really do.

A Christian with depression is like a prisoner with two sets of handcuffs on.  One is the depression itself that binds you to be helplessly down and in despair.  The other set binds with the beliefs of many fellow Christians that depression is somehow a sin, a weakness that should be overcome by the devout Christian.  After all, how could you be "right with God" and be depressed?  How is that possible? A double set of cuffs that combine to make what feels awful even more debilitating.

I only know what I believe.  What keeps me from complete despair.  What I have to cling to.
Here's what I've come to 'know':

1. Depression is a condition, just like cancer or the flu.  It is not a choice.
2. God is in charge and  is with you, whether in the center of the cycle of depression or out of it.
3. Sometimes God does not choose to remove the thorn.
4. We all have thorns, and they are all different.  Different does not mean wrong.
5. Staying connected to God is possible while dealing with depression.  

I don't know why God allows these things.  But this is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians:

"Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth.  But I refrain, so that no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, or because of these surpassingly great revelations.  Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.  Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest in me.  That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.  For when I am weak, then I am strong."( 2 Corinthians 12:6-10)

 So think about thorns.  Think about what yours are, and what someone else's are.  Pray about your own, and those of others.  And remember, no matter what the thorn may be, and even if it doesn't seem like it, He's there, He's listening, He CARES, and He wants you to sit on His lap and tell Him about it.  I know.



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