Sunday, December 6, 2015

Depression For Christmas

Depression came calling last month. No tragedies befell me, no cancer recurrence or family deaths.  A bunch of little nothings in particular over several unremarkable months imperceptibly mounted a sneak attack on my mojo.  I couldn’t write a thank you note, let alone a blog.  I missed appointments and struggled to focus on the ones I did not forget. 
A couple of weeks ago I took a step back and recognized that my old nemesis, depression, had moved in. I have an intimate knowledge of this condition as a psychotherapist, but more importantly, as a patient. So I knew what to do for myself to get well, the first being to reach out to safe people and let them know I needed support.
One such person is a leader in breast cancer activism, and to my surprise she admitted that she, too, was struggling with depression. Neither of us had known that the other was in trouble, and we both felt encouraged by the empathy shared. 
Because that shared vulnerability bolstered me so deeply, I decided to share my own experience with suicidal depression to let others know that they are not alone, and that things do get better.  Below is a meditation I wrote thirty years ago about my  

DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL

Often I would cry through the night, the family mercifully unaware of yet another collapse.  On one such night I sobbed alone by the fire until my sides hurt.  I frantically thought of harming myself, or ending my life impulsively, before the part of me that wanted to live could stop me.  Such thoughts terrified me, that I might lose control and kill myself.  I had to evaluate my feelings about dying as opposed to living in agony:  I did want to die, to end my suffering, but I kept holding on because wholeness is worth the struggle (so I heard) and because I knew my dying would hurt my family too much.  
Besides, what if the unpardonable sin was suicide (a notion I rejected when in my right mind) then I would only succeed in condemning myself to an eternity of the despair I sought to escape.  Anyway, suicide was not an option for me because I had already promised God to keep myself alive.
          As these questions rummaged through my beleaguered mind I trudged through day after endless day, looking at the clock for signs of nearing darkness and the escape into sleep.  "Only ten minutes have passed?"  Then sleep would give way to another day of waiting for hands on the clock to move.
          Three steps forward, two steps back—permanent residence in the pit gave way to moments up, then moments linked with others to give me a day of relief.  Days linked to each other into periods of something like happiness.  I functioned again as a wife and mother, yet gloom clutched my heart.  I looked like a concentration camp victim, even when I smiled.  Inevitably I would buckle under the effort, and plummet to the pit.
THE PIT

The pit is filled with tarry mud that weighs heavily on my limp soul.  With titanic effort I lift my head, look around at the black heaviness, and drop my head in defeat.
I pray for death.

God is silent.

Eventually the misery of despair yields to the agony of hope; I push through the layer on top of me, gradually working my way to a standing position. From there I can see where I've been and where I need to go.

I must scale a very steep grade that is covered with a thick layer of mud oozing downward, engulfing me if my concentration on the ascent slips, i.e., simple things like keeping the head up and forward, lifting one foot up, down, then the other up, down, straining all the while against the pull of the mud. 

When I stumble from exhaustion, or from looking down, I collapse, and hope vanishes.   But I learn that if I scoop the muck from my eyes, to my amazement I find that I am not at the bottom of the pit—my face is mired only a pace or two back from where I fell. All is not lost!

It just feels that way as long as my face stays in the mud. 

So I drag myself up again…and again…and again, NOT from the bottom of the pit, but from a ledge on the wall that I could not see from below. 

And from here I see glimpses of a rim of this pit where I hope I shall be able to step clear out of the mud, shake off all the residue, and run and play and laugh again.


But never so far that I would not look for others in the pit, to show them how to get out.

I did recover from that Major Depression with the help of good therapists and appropriate medication. I have had ups and downs, but never as severe as my time in the pit, not even during two bouts with breast cancer. 
My recent dip into depression was painful and immobilizing, but short-lived, largely because I have learned how to read the signs and take action quickly.  It is very common for cancer patients to experience depression of varying degrees of severity. It is critical to talk about it, and to get professional help in severe cases.



Saturday, June 20, 2015

Missing My Dad On Father's Day

The beach played a big part in our family life.  It was only an hour's drive and free, so we spent many weekends body surfing, picnicking, and playing foxes and geese.  This snapshot suggests that my enduring love for the ocean was formed before I could walk.





When we weren't at the beach we were usually involved in the arts in a lowbrow sort of way.  All of us at one time or another participated in local or school theater, but music was the one art we all did together with equal enthusiasm.  Both Mom and Dad had gorgeous voices and a deep appreciation for most types of music.  None of us kids inherited our parents' talent, but what we lacked in quality we made up for in gusto. We sang in the car, around the piano, at the dinner table and at parties. 
Daddy had no musical training but his natural gifts were prodigious and supplied endless family entertainment.  He sang bass in a barbershop quartet and played a homegrown honky tonk on our piano.   He patiently taught me simple melodies so we could play mean duets of a sort--me plunking with one finger and him with at least twenty five fingers banging on the other eighty seven keys.  


But my fondest memory is of the ballroom dances my folks learned and happily practiced with us at home.  

As much as I later loved to do the twist and the bump, bopping to the Beach Boys never held a candle to waltzing with my father.

Friday, July 22, 2011

What does it say about God when cancer comes back?


What does it say about God?

This question was posted on a breast cancer Web site and it stopped me in my tracks. This dear, young woman had testified in church of God’s healing her of leukemia, but worried what people will think of God if her remission ends. Here is my response to one part of her post, “Being a Christian is a lot harder than not being one.”

Dear Jane
The world says it is a crutch, while many believers would say, “Wait a minute! Jesus said His burden is light!” Whatever Jesus means by “light” it does not mean painless or effortless. One of the reasons being a Christian is harder is that we know that God is love, and so we struggle to reconcile that fact with the temptation to feel unloved when we suffer. The world does not know that God is love, and so uses human suffering as proof that God doesn’t exist. Believers know that God is sovereign, yet disease is everywhere, and so we blame Satan, ourselves, or God. It must be someone’s fault, right? Otherwise how can we make sense of it? And round and round we go …  Trying to make sense of it makes my head feel like exploding.
Here is what I know—I had breast cancer eighteen years ago and testified in church of my healing.
Thirteen years later I got a new cancer in the same breast, and testified in church of my healing. Both times the cancer exposed emotional wounds that required treatment. During the second bout I wailed at God, “Did I really need to have cancer TWICE to ‘get in touch with’ these feelings???” I didn’t wait for God’s answer then, but now that I see the amazing emotional healing that emerged from the second journey through cancer, I say, “Yes, I had to have cancer twice.”
What it says about God is that He always has something bigger in mind, and that He always has something up His sleeve. 


Sunday, April 24, 2011

Faith and Breast Cancer

     When I had breast cancer my confidence in God did not give me immunity from the  normal emotions most people suffer, it gave me freedom to feel them without censure.  I truly panicked at times, I truly dreaded the possibility of dying, and the certainty of gross medical procedures.  I even feared that my fear would help the cancer grow faster, but I could not stop fearing by will power.  I let myself be God's fully human daughter, and let Him hold and caress me while I felt bad. 
     My devotional practices took on an urgency as I faced life or death decisions that only I could make.  My loose habit of reading a chapter a day in the Old and New Testament, and the daily reading in Chambers, was my lifeline to God.  I doubled my efforts by reading each entry morning and evening, not because I hoped to enjoin God to show mercy.  I knew He would have mercy because He wants to.  I read things twice because I had little time to make terrible choices.  Every day He showed Himself to me clearly and personally, but two instances will best illustrate my point. 
     First, He told me to be gentle with myself.  There is nothing gentle about cancer, but there were gentler options among many bad ones.  That word for me still guides my decisions,  even if I need to rise up and conquer something, I don't choose martyrdom just to prove my strength.
     Second, in the normal course of my devotions, while I prayed specifically about dying young, I came to Gen.15:15 where the Lord  told Abram, "But you will die in peace, at a ripe old age."(LB)  I accepted that as an answer to a specific prayer, which helped me make a decision about surgery.  I also remember that promise when I hear myself worrying about being in a plane crash. 
     I want to live a really human life, fully pleasing to Him. I want to be more dependent on God next year than I am now.  I want to laugh even more.  Amen.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

My Third Blog And The Meaning Of Life.

The reason I have created this, my third blog, is that I am a deeply spiritual person, a seminary graduate who is not ashamed to fly the flag of Christ, and who enjoys thinking and writing about the mysterious human soul..  However, I do recognize that many people are offended by religious, especially Christian, discourse, so out of respect for my readers in the breast cancer and mental health worlds, I intentionally refrain from spouting off in those arenas.

Cancer does not discriminate, nor does mental illness; they are very democratic in that way. They don't care about gender, religion, race, or sexual orientation.  Knowing this, the dumbest thing for me would be to risk alienating the very ones I want to help, just for a moment of self-indulgent navel star gazing.

So here is where I will spout off about the whys and wherefores and the meaning of life, because I believe that it is in wrestling with such questions that we can find Soul Survival.
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