Why Robin? Why?

Once in a while a complete stranger dies, and something shocking occurs within me.  I feel loss.  Not just the sadness of human life being lost, but indeed personal loss.  I will miss this stranger.  I felt it when Phillip Seymour Hoffman died, and now again today I feel it as the news rings of Robin Williams taking his own life.  I feel small bits of what those who actually knew him must feel times a million.  I feel loss.  Part of me wants to count it as silly.  I can hear other, more cynical voices making fun of me.  My mind produces made up comments from this mysterious “them” about how stupid it is, or celebrity worship blah blah blah.  Only, anyone who knows me knows that I am not one to worship celebrity.  And so it is that I find myself, with age, letting my heart just feel what it feels, and not letting the stupidity of cynicism quash my feelings.  After a decade and a half of depression crushing my heart I’ll take whatever feelings I can get.  So, again, I feel loss.  I feel angry too, angry that Robin Williams quit.  I know the pain of severe depression.  It soaked my life, and stole my heart and soul, and tortured me every second of every day.  I have been well now for a couple of years, and yet I still battle the aftershocks, the thoughts, lies that a mind twisted by pain have come to believe.  Often, God reaches for me with love and tenderness but I recoil as a dog who was beaten one too many times to even stop and think that the outreaching could be anything other than more pain.  I know the pain, but I am still here.  

 

Why, Robin?  Why?  People love you.  Depression, statistically, ends.  It is almost certain to cease.  Just keep going.  Now it is too late.  We cannot reach you anymore.  If only you could see the world’s reaction, their sadness.  

How many follow the same pattern and yet have no one or very few to lament them? Robin Williams death has brought back to my heart the desire to reach out to my brothers and sisters who are hurting.  I have believed too many lies.  Lies that no one cares, or that such a thing means I should I stop trying.  So what if no one cares.  You don’t fight the fights you can win.  You fight the fights that need fighting, and this is a fight for the ages, for you see depression is not rare.  It will touch every life, whether they know it or not.  Unless you don’t love anyone, and you never struggle, it WILL touch your life, knowingly or not. 

The thought I keep having when I think about Robin Williams is, “Do people STILL think depression is NOT real?  Do they now get the reality of depression?  Do they think Robin violently choked the life out of himself for no good reason?  For something he just made up?  Can they still think it?”  

I hope not.  If anything good can come out of this pile of crap news, this darkness, I hope it is that more hearts will change, that people who once held the belief that those who were depressed were just weak or needed to just get over it and think happy thoughts will be stopped dead in their tracks and finally see that this darkness is real and is not a decision.  Taking of life is a decision.  The darkness is not.  

I think of how there is this trick to parenting when it comes to how much you shelter your children.  Some parents take every measure to hide their children’s eyes and minds to the world.  They think they are doing them a favor.  The problem is that sheltering one day cracks, for you cannot hide the reality of the other side of life forever.  That perfect childhood becomes the very weapon of destruction as an adult, for that mind is not prepared.  The world changes, cracks, as to where the mind of a child who was raised with measures of reality adapts to the realities of life slowly, incrementally, and healthily.  Their understanding of reality develops as they do, as opposed to bashing them over the head one day.  The sheltered mind must one day be wrecked and start over, and painfully.  Some simply refuse to accept this new world.  They opt out.  

So it is with depression.  I get it.  It is not something we want to be believe.  How can it be that so many people bear the burden of this inner darkness?  How can it be that the human race struggles so?  That at any moment any of us can fall into it?  It is terrifying, and much easier to just not believe it or not think about it.  Yet, it is only easier until reality comes crashing.  The darkness of depression hits us, our parents, our children, siblings, friends, someone, and our world shatters.  If only we had believed, developed as we went, we would be so much stronger, prepared for the darkness.  Still, most choose to plug their ears and chime, “La la la la,” until depression yanks their fingers out of their ears, slaps them in the face, and yanks their heart of their chest.  Sometimes it is too late, and we lose people.  It is their fault, yes.  They take their own lives, but could we as individuals or a society be more open and prepared?  Yes.  We can start with the simple admission to ourselves that the darkness of depression is real, and it is not simply wished away.  We can steady our hearts for the possibility of battling that darkness for ourselves or someone we love, and pray like mad that such hell passes us by.  No, foolish or not, we swing for the moon and pray that darkness goes straight where it came from, hell. 

My Mind: From Prison to Playground

My mind has always had wanderlust.  No matter where I was… I wasn’t.  My report cards all read the same thing.  They all spoke of how I was respectful, obedient, a great kid, yet one that could not stop daydreaming.  My poor teachers just couldn’t compete with the playground in my mind.  My narrative and visual capabilities have always been off the charts.  That vividness of imagination gave me so much freedom.  I would fly like Peter Pan, score the winning touchdown, save the day, create fantastic worlds all at my whim.  Every night I would love going to sleep, as it gave me the freedom to visit that playground in my mind unabated.  It was bliss.  My mind was my constant escape, my favorite place to go…

…until it wasn’t.

In the blink of an eye that playground got turned into a torture chamber.  Depression ravaged my mind, heart, and soul.  If you haven’t experienced it, I’d like you to try to imagine your thoughts not really being your own, nor your emotions.  Imagine the sensation that someone else is picking your thoughts and feelings, and they are choosing only the worst ones you could have imagined.  That mind that gave you freedom now was a prison you could not escape.  You took your torment with you everywhere you went.  Everywhere you were… you weren’t.  You were never able to feel the emotion of the moment.  The best thing in the world could happen to you, but all you don’t care.  You are screaming inside the prison in your mind.  No one sees it.  Most don’t care.  Worst yet is that you come to believe the prison is inescapable, that it is your fault, that you built it, only adding to your torment.  If you built it then you should be able to tear it down, right?  I hated my mind, for it had believed it had betrayed me in the worst of ways.  How I wished to be able to go anywhere else.  It was my least favorite place in the world…

…until it wasn’t.

Some years ago things changed.  The slow slog back to health began.  To this day I am still unlearning things taught to me in my pain.  This last year has seen the resurgence of myself in a way I once thought completely impossible. My mind is once again a playground, and I am struggling to even know how to use it.  I feel like I had my legs cut off, and they’ve been reattached.  It is hard to fathom that this mind of mine was once a place of torture.  The pain is not forgotten.  I have to sometimes remind myself that it is safe to go, that I no longer have to fear my mind, have to try and constantly distract myself.  The bonus is that, unlike before, I cannot take for granted what I have.  The scar inside me will never let me forget.  If memories are wrinkles in the brain then that memory is a canyon.  It is my belief that pain is necessary for the highest good, for it is in the face of true pain that true joy is felt, and do I ever feel it.  Oh how I feel it.  My mind is once again a place of awe and wonder, love and life.  Praise be to God.

God is a God of redemption.  He has brought me out of the abyss.  He has restored my mind when I thought that it was impossible.  May you find some hope and peace in my story, and may God show you the joy felt on the other side of tragedy. 

A Beautiful Mind by: Laning Photography

Nicholas L. Laning

Depression and Decision Making Do Not Mix Well

From the title alone there are issues...

"Nicholas" you may be thinking, "What if you're depressed for years... akindalike you were.  Can you really live and not make decisions?"  

No.  No you can't.  As a matter of fact, depression is filled with choices that have to made.  Let me say that again.  Depression will present you with some of the hardest choices you will ever face.  Do I take meds?  Go to counseling?  Do I keep on believing there is a God, or abandon my faith?  Do I keep on believing there isn't one, that we are just an accident, or do I abandon my faith?  Do I keep living?

Decisions are everywhere, and they have to be met... but there should be special considerations for special times such as this.  

For one, decisions in depression should not be made alone.  Depression is a MENTAL illness.  It is an illness that affects your mind.  What happens when people's thinking is impaired?  When someone is drunk, should they be making decisions alone?  What about high?  They shouldn't, and neither should someone who is depressed.  If you have a depressed loved one, do everything in your power to gently be involved.  You can't force someone, but you can be there, be available, pour in wisdom when possible, provide a safe place for them to share and allow you to be involved.  

Depressed folks, I pray you'll have just enough of yourself left, enough of your will, your decision making power to recognize how much help you need.  Seek help.  Ask people you trust.  I'm not saying do everything others say, or relinquish yourself.  I am simply saying to take in good advice.  Have the wherewithal to recognize your state of mind and emotions, and let others help.  It could save your life, your marriage, your friendships, your job, your faith.  

It is wise to not make life altering decisions while depressed.  It just makes sense.  I would advise against deciding to marry someone while depressed.  You can't feel what you should, then don't put that onus on another person.  If married, don't decide to not be.  You aren't yourself.  That's okay.  Just keep breathing.  Others may not know just how hard deciding to keep breathing can be, but I do, and many others do too.  You are not alone.  Sometimes, just breathing and choosing not to leave can make you a heroic spouse.  Same goes with having children.  You should wait to pursue marriage and kids when you are not sick.  You don't sign up for a marathon when your leg is broken.   

There is no going back.  Sure you can quit on your marriage, but you can't unmarry someone.  You become divorced, not unmarried.  There's a difference.  Your decision will affect yourself and countless more for the rest of your lives.  You'll leave a wake of broken hearts, only to have your depression end, as it will, and you'll realize just how stupid what you did really was.  You can't unhave a kid.  You can't become unpregnant.  You can kill your unborn child, but not undo what you did.  

If you decide to get married or have kids you are still expected to be a spouse, be a parent.  I say it all the time, and I'll say it again.  Suffering from Depression does not give you a right to sin.  You are given some latitude in understanding from others, but not a free pass.  Depression, if anything, is an opportunity to rise, to overcome, to do what is right in the face of what feels to be insurmountable evil and torment.  You ARE capable of doing the right thing.  It is just way way way harder, but you can do it.  I believe in your victory.  

I was once depressed and tormented, nagged by the abyss, incessant, involuntary negativity that stole my life, and emotional paralysis.  I was amongst the dead, connected emotionally with zombie movies, and yet now live.  I hurt like a healthy heart does, love like a healthy heart does, and it is beautiful.  Fight on.  

HEBREWS 4:15-16

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.   Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

It's Time to Have Frank Talk about Mental Illness

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Nicholas L. Laning

I used to be a big fan of the show ”24”.  Like many, I watched to see just how far Jack Bauer would go to save the day, again, again, and again, all without leaving the city limits of Los Angeles.  The writers of the show knew exactly what they were doing.  An episode would end with Jack apprehending the guy that we all thought was the mastermind behind the terrorist attack at the beginning of the show.  Bloodied, bruised, and aching from not eating, sleeping, nor peeing for the last twelve hours, Jack finally has a look of reprieve on his face.  The famous clock ticking sound would start, letting us know the episode was almost over.  In those final five seconds, without fail, you’d find out that the guy Jack just apprehended wasn’t the actual mastermind. 

We’d see a shot of Jack’s grandmother talking on the phone.  “Everything’s set in motion,” she’d say, lisping through her dentures.  “Yes.  No.  Yes.  They took the bait.  They have no idea it was me, Grandma Bauer, who planned this whole thing.  Yes.  Jack will pay for not eating all of his vegetables when he was a kid, little ingrate! Bwahahaha!” 

Ding.  The screen goes black, and all of us watching yell, “Nooooooo!  Not Grandma Bauer!  I knew it! (No, we didn’t)” Then, over the next ten episodes, we cringe in frustration as Jack can’t piece it together.  At one point Jack comes to Grandma Bauer’s house to hide from the cops, who are looking for Jack now, as he has of course been framed for the attack.  They found his fingerprints on a piece of the bomb.  Jack knows that it had to be someone close to him who lifted his fingerprint to put it on the bomb.  But who could possibly betray him?  He bursts through Grandma Bauer’s screen door bleeding and bruised, still hasn’t peed, and scours the kitchen for a flashlight and a butter knife, all he needs to fend off the machine-gun toting terrorists.  Jack looks over at her table and thinks aloud, “Why are all of the ingredients for napalm strewn across Grandma Bauer’s kitchen table.”  We see him thinking for a second.  We hold our breath.  Surely he will finally get it!  “She must be cleaning the bathroom,” he concludes and goes on. 

Whap!  We slap ourselves in frustration and scream at the screen, “Come on!  He’s fluent in twenty languages, can disarm a bomb with a toothbrush, a fried egg, and the latest issue of GQ, can tell if everyone else on the planet is lying simply by smelling them, but he can’t seem to piece this one together?  Stupid show!  They’ve gone too far.  I can’t watch anymore.  When’s the next episode?” 

We’ve seen this concept play out hundreds of times throughout TV shows, movies, books, Comic Books, all of it.  No matter how many times we’ve seen this scenario play out, it still irks us.  We’re still talking to the screen.  Okay, maybe I’m the only one actually talking to the screen, though I doubt it.  Still, it frustrates us to no end.  Why?  Because we can’t seem to understand how someone can’t see what is right in front of his or her face. 

Why can’t Jack allow the information to reveal the obvious truth?  Why? 

The answer is because sometimes the truth is so awful that it is easier for us to choose to not believe it… until it hits us in the face.

We see it in real life all the time.  Teachers deal with this on a very frequent basis.  As a subtitute teacher for years, I can’t tell you how many times I have seen parents simply not accept the testimony of not just one, but several grown teachers that testify to the hideous acts of their child.  Instead of getting frustrated at the child, they get mad at the teacher.  Even if they believe the kid did the awful things the teacher's said the kid did, which they usually don’t, then by golly, somehow it’s the teacher’s fault they did it.  The truth that their kid isn’t perfect, that perhaps, though not necessarily, they are bad parents, is not acceptable.  It is easier it seems, to believe a lie instead.

Not only do we reject unpleasant truths as individuals, but we do it as a collective too. 

You probably don’t know the story of Witold Pitecki.  You should.  Absolutely incredible, true story.  In order to gather intelligence, he volunteered to enter the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz.  For almost three years he gathered intelligence and helped lead the underground resistance inside the camp.  He would send out reports of the horrors he discovered, that the Nazis were not simply interning, but exterminating the Jews by the hundreds of thousands in that camp alone.  Frustrated by a lack of appropriate response from the Allied forces, he escaped.  He went back to his superiors in London to try to convince them in person of their need to intervene.  He shared in great detail the devastating news, and gave some very simple solutions.  Bombing runs were already going on far past Auschwitz.  Just bombing a section of the wall, and it would give many a chance to escape.  Or better yet, bomb the crematorium, or the gas chamber.  It would have taken many months to rebuild them.  Yet, they rejected Witold’s testimony.  Why?  For the simple fact that it was too horrible to believe, evidence be damned.  Witold had to be exaggerating.  As a result, nothing was done to help, and hundreds of thousands of people, maybe more, were exterminated.

None of us is good at accepting the truth when it isn’t likeable, nevertheless full on detestable.  I know this first hand.

I don’t remember the exact date.  It was some time during the fall of my junior year in high school, in 1997.  The final bell rang.  I jogged my way out the side door of New Braunfels High School, waving and high-fiving (fist bumping hadn’t been invented yet) friends as I made my way to the parking lot.  It was one of those days where the air was cold, but the sun was bright and hot.  Whichever side of you faced the sun would eventually begin to roast, and whichever side of you faced away from the sun would freeze.  The leafless trees cast intricate, hauntingly beautiful shadows.  It was a beautiful, crisp, fall afternoon.  I hopped in my car, turned on a movie soundtrack, and headed home. 

Everything in the world was absolutely fine.  My life was good.

Not but a couple months earlier, I had spent the majority of the summer living one of the greatest adventures of my life helping my missionary uncle in Moscow, Russia.  I got to take in the immense beauty of Red Square.  I ate all sorts of new foods, both delectable and disgusting.  I got to ride the midnight train to St. Petersburg.  I got to experience “white nights,” where the sun never fully sets.  It was one of the best times of my life.  To cap it off, on the way back, I got to spend two weeks with my parents in Switzerland. 

The first night in Switzerland, I stared out of my hotel room across Lake Geneva.  The sight was so beautiful, and my heart was so full, I can remember thinking, “I could die right now, even though I am only sixteen years old, and I would have lived a full life.  Thank you, God, for the life you have given me.”

Yes, life was surely good.

Back to the day things changed.  When I got home form school that crisp, autumn day, the house was empty.  I had beaten everyone else home.  Swiftly, I walked to my room and slung my backpack onto my bed.  A little downtime was in order before everyone came home and the house got loud again.  Wanting to listen to some music, I began to walk around my bed to my stereo.  I never made it.

In a single instant, everything changed.  Something hit me.  This feeling.  It was like an invisible wire from hell had shot through space, latched onto my heart and brain, sucked out everything good, and swapped it out with pure, unadulterated emotional agony.  I dropped to the floor, and I stayed there for the next several hours, completely unable to move.  The only movements I could muster were to blink my eyes and breathe.

It wasn’t that my body wouldn’t physically respond.  It was that the emotional pain was so full, so evil, and so complete, that I couldn’t find a reason to ever do anything ever again. 

This is the part in the story where I would tell you that I discovered that something was indeed wrong, went to my parents, they told me I was depressed, and starting the process of healing.  I would tell you that… if that were true.  It isn’t.  Truth is I didn’t say a thing.  Truth is I spent the next year and a half telling myself nothing was wrong, despite the fact that all I could think about was how much I wished I were dead, that I'd never existed.

“How is that possible?” you ask? 

Easy.  Like most people, I didn’t believe depression was real. 

I couldn’t understand how a person could be fine one day, then for no apparent reason, not fine the next.  I couldn’t accept the reality of the Abyss’ persistence that you couldn’t pull yourself out of it like any other feeling.  Also, depression is a mental illness.  Mental illnesses are what crazy people have, and I wasn’t crazy.  I was completely sane.  I just couldn’t stop feeling like everything was awful. 

Just like Jack and his grandmother (wink), or the Allied commanders regarding Auschwitz, I made things worse because I couldn’t accept the awful truth.  These battles begin with acceptance.  You can’t fight a battle you don’t believe exists.  The longer you spend rejecting the truth, the more time you give you or your loved one free reign for the depression to wreak havoc on your or their brain.   

Here’s what did happen…

For the next year and a half after that terrible day, I looked for any other cause for my pain that wasn’t depression.  I was aware of depression, though vaguely.  I didn’t even research depression, because I just “knew” that it had an external, easy to explain cause.  Once the cause was found, I could deal with it and be ok.  Every inch of my memory was combed over again and again, to the point of obsession.  Each detail of life was dissected to the nth degree.  There had to be some outside cause.  Somewhere. 

Perhaps my faith was just too weak.  Maybe I was being punished for some great sin.  Maybe something really tragic happened to me as a child, and I had subconsciously forgotten it.  Only thing I could recall was that I got picked on as a kid, but that is pretty common. 

The confusion and mystery behind the pain drove me to the brink of my sanity.  No good reason for the pain’s existence could be found.  As so many people would later shove in my face… my life, on the outside, was pretty wonderful. 

My family isn’t perfect.  Yet, for humans, they are as good as they get.  I didn’t have to deal with the pain of divorce or abuse.  The only major death I had to deal with was that of my grandfather when I was ten.  That was very difficult for me, but I feel like everything felt and thought then was normal and healthy.  I missed him and was sad.  Pretty simple.  I wasn’t particularly popular or anything, but I had plenty of good friends.  I am tall, reasonably athletic, and have many talents.  On top of all that, I had the affection of the girl I loved.  I was, by all accounts, including my own, blessed.  And yet, the pain not only stayed, it grew in power.

I blamed and dismembered every piece of my life that could be blamed until only one thing was left.  The girl I loved was the last thing.  Up until that point, I wouldn’t allow her to be touched by it.  I knew she was a good thing.  She was everything I had wanted.  Having exhausted all other avenues of blame, I reluctantly concluded that it had to be my relationship with her that had caused it.  I broke up with her.  Not only did my pain not cease, it grew ten fold.  That decision haunted me for years. 

Only after that did I finally start to recognize that perhaps there was something unique at work; that maybe there was something wrong on the inside, something "uncommon".  Desperate, my mother took me to a psychiatrist who pretty much just looked at me and said, “Yep.  You’re depressed.”  It was nothing but obvious to a trained eye. 

I tell you all this because I want you to know that I understand the difficulty in accepting the awful truth of depression.  So forcefully did I reject it’s existence that I prolonged my stay in it.  There can be no condescension in me toward those who struggle to grasp the reality of depression, for that would be the pot calling the kettle black. 

I tell you all of this because I don’t want you to make the mistakes that I made, that those around me made.  I was so ignorant, so prejudiced, that I spent a year and half wasting my time in absolute hell.  All I had to do was recognize that depression was real.  That’s it.  Or, had my parents not been so ignorant as well, they could have started the process of healing too.  Heck, it took my brother years before he finally felt like what was going on was more than me just being weak, seeking attention.

Think of those Allied commanders.  Their inability to accept the hard truth kept them inert.  Here’s a scary thought.  Had Hitler not invaded other countries and started the war, it is entirely possible that he could have carried out his “Final Solution” to completion.  The war was fought to stop Hitler from trying to take over the world.  Stopping the exterminations was merely a side outcome of the war, not its objective. 

In that same vein, too many people have been lost to depression when it is possible to overcome, as I have, and so many others have.  So many people do as I did, and just keep on living in misery, because they are unable to accept the reality of depression. So many people miss out on getting to be the difference maker in what will likely be the greatest battle of their depressed loved one's life. 

Some don’t keep on living in misery.  Tens of thousand decide it is too much, and kill themselves.  Some of the mentally ill go a step further.  It's not enough to stop living.  They must make a statement, perhaps a last desperate cry, or a middle finger to a world of disappointment and pain.  Perhaps in this final act of absurdity something will change.  They rip away not only their own lives, but the lives of others in the process.  

Hear me now, in both cases of suicide and homicide, ultimately, only the one who does the act is responsible.  Over a hundred million people in the world today live with depression, and do neither of those sickeningly selfish acts.  We don't take the blame for other people's hideous acts.  What we do take the blame for is our own actions.  Did our pride get in the way of receiving the truth?  Our fear?  

Being an Ostrich doesn't work.  You may not see the lion chasing you down, but that doesn't mean the Lion is not there.  Depression is real whether you like it or not, believe it or not.  The difference will only be in your ability to respond, to love, to encourage yourself if you are depressed, or the loved one in your life who is depressed.  You can be the difference maker.  

Step one is the hardest, just believe.

Depression, Emotion, and Reason

There's much to talk about when talking about depression.  Sometimes it feels overwhelming.  I get to thinking that I might forget something.  Something important.  Something that'll make a difference.

Yet, in the end, though there's quite a bit to cover, most of it is just extra.  There are some things that are the core of the fight.  They're the things that make or break you.

Hear me now.  I'm going to share with you one thing that really can change the battle, and not just for depression.  The truth works for anyone any time.

Your feelings DO NOT always tell the truth.

That's it.  Sounds simple enough, but with that in mind I think you will start to see just how often it is you let your feelings, how often I let my feelings, dictate how we think.  That's why I don't even like to say the adage, "Well, you can't control other people, but you can only control yourself."

Nope.  I can even do that, at least not a hundred percent.  If so, I'd be the happiest man alive.  Truth is, feelings are bigger than we think in rational process.  Start talking to someone with an opposing worldview.  If you know your stuff well enough to decently defend your view, there will come a point where that other person will throw out the "I just" clause.  It's where all actual reasoning has played itself out, and taken you or them so far, but not to the end.  Faith is inevitable.  And that point, when reached, is when we all say, "Well, that may be so but I JUST cant believe that... or I just have to believe that... and the following is filled in with what was wrought from emotion, not pure reason.

Everybody struggles with this.  I do all the time.  Only, most of the time, feelings follow enough of a pattern that corresponds with the circumstances of life, that it is easier to trust them (and also to be deceived by them).

This is why depression is so dangerous.  Thing is, in depression, your feelings stop corresponding with life.  Your feelings don't corresponding, seemingly, with anything.  Feels like satan himself has your brain in his hands and he's squeezing the living daylights out of it.

It is here where we are really challenged to ask ourselves... just what are we to do with our emotions?  Because, it feels like all hope is lost, and not just for now, but forever.  It feels like happiness is a lie.  It's not that it will not come back.  It can't come back.  Your every emotion screams for your life to end, or at the least for you to curl up in a ball and cease to move, for what's the point of moving?

I'll tell you how I first responded to this challenge.  Like an idiot, that's how.  I took on the problem of my emotions of death and utter hopelessness clashing with the memories of life before depression , of joy and wonder and happiness, and the need to survive for those around me, by trying to simply deny the importance of emotions in general.

"Feelings don't matter," I'd say.  So many times did I say it that my soul started to change.  A numbness came that I am still trying to fend off these couple years removed from the brunt of it.  My heart still tries to shut down at every turn.  All pain causes the walls to go up, and to my own detriment.  Walls keep out good things as well as bad.

Healthy people do it too.  This is where we get sayings like, "Love is a decision."  Takes out those pesky, unpredictable feelings and gives us a sense of control.  Only, it's a lie.  Love has a decisive quality to it, but it is much more than just a decision, and everyone knows it.  Love is scary because it is somewhat out of our control.  That's just the way it is.

On the other hand, as I said, most people feel something and take it as book.  If something feels true, we are almost helpless to believe otherwise.  The compulsion to comply with our feelings is huge.  I think this is because of the good feelings, the ones we cling to.  When we feel them, we want them to be true so badly that we feel we need to believe all our feelings.  If this feeling led me to this wonderful place, then my feelings must be true, because I want this feeling to be real, not just a fluke.

Why can't feelings be like people?  Yes, this is a metaphor.  People are real.  Some lie, and some tell the truth.  Part of life is discerning between them.  To feel the need to trust all people, at the risk of denying the reality that some people do tell the truth, is just foolish.  You'll believe any lie that comes your way.  Well, feelings are the same way.  They are all real.  But some of them lie.

In depression, your feelings are very real.  Your feelings are valid.  I am not taking away the validity of your pain.  I am simply saying that what they pain is telling you, "that you'll never be happy again, that you're lost forever, so just end it," is not true.  It just isn't.  And if you really want to fight well, you need to start internalizing this and acting on it.

One of the biggest, if not the biggest turning point in my fight against depression was when I stopped denying the existence of my emotions, started validating the reality of my pain's existence, but then rejected the message it was sending me.  It's when i realized that admitting that a feeling is real does not mean that what it is saying to me is true, that things changed.  I just said, "Okay, you're there.  The pain is real.  I'm just not going to believe what it has to say any longer.  Life is good, no matter what my feelings say.  It will be good again.  It will."  And things did change, slowly.  For a long time I felt that sense of hopelessness and had to daily reject the message.  It was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and also one of the greatest.  Hope became real, because I didn't have to wait to feel something to be true for it to actually be true to me. My feelings no longer dictated reality.  They influenced, but no longer dictated.

And here I am, and I am no longer depressed.  I was right.  My hope was well founded.  What would have happend had I believed my feelings?  I'd be dead, that's what.

This is true for everyone.  Always know that what you feel is real, and is validated.  Then, have the wherewithal to discern whether or not your feelings are lying or telling you the truth.  Rejecting the lie of depression didn't make all other feelings lies.  That's impossible.  In order for love to be real, the feelings of depression had to be a lie.  Praise God they are.  Truth is you or your loved one can feel whole again.  Love is real.  Happiness is real.  Life is good.  People love you.  You are not a burden.  This will pass.  Whether you feel it or not, God is real, and He loves you, so much so that He didn't just stay above it all, but sent His only son to be a part of it.  He saved you and me.  That's the truth, feel it or not.

May God give you the strength to accept then rise above the emotions telling you that life isn't worth living.  May you press on toward the prize, and claim it.  Amen.

Hitting the Play Button in My Heart

Nicholas L. Laning

If you were to ask me when my depression ended, I would say a couple of years ago.  It is hard to give an exact moment, as there wasn't one.  My ascent out of depression was a long one.  It took years.

That said, I am still not untouched by my time in depression.  I find that I am still in this very long recovery process.  Slowly but surely I am becoming whole again.  By whole, I mean healthy.  I still have problems, and I still hurt, but there is healthy, normal hurting, then there is depression.

Something that has happened lately has been a reconnection with my past.  For those of you on the outside, I don't know if this will make sense.  To those of you who have or are battling depression, I think this will resonate.  It is as if my life got put on hold when my depression started.  The Nicholas that once existed almost stopped to be.  Perhaps a sliver remained, but only a sliver.  All in all I was gone.  I'd look in the mirror and see and feel nothing.  Just within the last couple of months I have been feeling the play button being hit on my heart again.  I look in pictures of me as a child and it finally hits me that really is me.  It is the same person.  Those pictures, sensations in my head weren't planted there, they were lived, experienced.  Again, to those of you who think this psychobabble, I am sorry.  It is not.  It is how my mind has dealt with such enormous pain.

It is something I never thought would happen ever again.  I never thought I'd ever connect with that kid in those pictures.  My childhood was lost.  Yes, we change in some ways.  However, I now see that I really am the same person as that kid.  I am not more me now than I was then, nor the other way around.  That was me then, and this is me now.  I am so excited to have those memories come back.  It is like a treasure chest that held me away during the storm is slowly opening up.  I wish it'd hurry up and just open, but it is taking time.  Slowly but surely.

I wanted to write this to encourage those who don't feel themselves, those of you who are staring in the mirror and feel and see nothing.  You feel dead inside.  You don't feel the warmth of your mother's touch, or the strength in your father's words, nor the kindness of a friend, nor beauty.  All are there, just not for you.  They can and will return.  I fought it for ten years straight, and thought I'd never come out the entire time.  I thought I was lost forever.  Yet, here I am writing you this.  It is coming back after a decade of hell and years of recovery.  So take heart!  Fight on!  Be brave, and remember that God is not lofty, far away.  He is here next to us, and came down and took part in all our pain that we might be saved.

John 3:16-20

16 "For God so loved the world,that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.  

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  

18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  

19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.  

20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.  

21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

Break Over

Nicholas L. Laning

I apologize for my absence from this blog.  It is not that I have forgotten this blog, and those I have been writing to, or intending to encourage.  My struggle is a human one, and I have needed to rest from the attack a bit.  Bit off more than I could chew for while, and got bitten in return. 

Not but a couple of months ago I set out to write book on encouraging people in depression.  My parents welcomed me at their house, a get away to focus on writing.  The plan was to hammer out the outline and a couple of chapters, enough to send out to a literary agent.  After one day, the truth hit me.  This is not a novel.  It is my life.  Talking about the concepts of depression is easy and painless enough.  For the most part, I can discuss it at great length with little or no relapse.  However, writing the book called upon me to do something I never do… not just recall and discuss the concepts, the ideas of depression and how to apply them, how to fight depression, but to recall my personal, actual, struggle with it.  Since I never do this, I was taken by surprise when, after just one day of inundating myself with recollection of the horrors of my stint in depression, I relapsed terribly. 

In the month or so since, a great many thoughts have arisen.  Can I do this?  Can I keep trying to fight this publicly?  There is surely a reason almost no one ever writes first hand stories of depression.  The battle has been left largely to outsiders, which is sadly, part of the reason why so many people struggle as I did to believe they are depressed.  I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly, but there is a certain language that only depressed people speak.  It isn’t our words, but the ideas behind them.  It is in the sharing of those ideas that the first trap of depression, that what we feel is completely unique, and thus to be fought alone, and without hope of recovery, continues on so strongly.  I read tons of books describing depression.  And while the words had some vague nearness to them, they rang hollow to me.  The person writing the description was writing because they had a PhD in psychology or counseling or bio-chemistry, or theology, or whatever.  What they couldn’t convey was that another person, chiefly themselves, had ever experienced, had shared my pain.  And so I went on, falling into that classic depression trap of thinking that my pain was SOOOOOO unique.  No one else had ever felt how I did.  It justified so many things.  I could mope, whine, be angry at God, whatever I wanted, because I had been given a burden no one else had.  Every person I have ever talked to who is depressed has thought this, and had to overcome it.  The number one way they were able to do so was through someone else connecting with them, revealing their shared bond through a pain that is not only not unique to one person, but shared by hundreds of millions across the globe.  The irony is that almost all of them are doing so in the shadows, trying to duke it out with the biggest foe they have ever faced, blindfolded, legs and arms tied, mouth covered, ears plugged.  They have nothing.

So, it is my desire to do what I can to return to the fight.  Pushing myself so hard in it that I relapse does no one good, as that doesn’t comfort anyone to know that I am not all that much better off than they are.  I am better off.  My depression subsided very quickly with a couple days of patient hope.  This is in stark contrast to the incessant hell millions face every day. 

Let us continue on in the fight.  We may not fight perfectly.  We may fall.  We may stumble.  Yet, we continue on in the fight.  We have hope in our redemption.  To God be all glory.  Amen.

Does God Hate Me?

Nicholas L. Laning

Does God hate me?  Most of us, if not all of us, have wondered this, usually when things are going rough, when things aren't going our way.  We see the signs of difficulty in our life as a form of rejection.  It is as if we are being smote for our lack of whatever it is we think we lack.  

Depression surely magnifies this.  When I was depressed, I struggled mightily with this notion, and those whom I have counseled most definitely did as well.  "So great is the pain, so vast is the torment, that either there is no God, or surely that God despises me wholly," is the thinking.  Unfortunately, outsiders reiterate this sentiment often.  "You're struggling because... (fill in with some sort of deficiency on your part to please God)."  

The question is... is this true?  Does God really hate me?  Is that why I am depressed?  

If we want to know the answer, we cannot answer it by simply checking our feelings.  If I want to know what Abraham Lincoln thought, I don't ask myself, "What do I feel like Lincoln would have said?"  I go read what Lincoln actually said.  So, let's not trust in our feelings overly much.  They are incredibly important, your feelings are, but they are also not always to be trusted.  Importance and trustworthiness are two different things.  Let is look to what God has told us, that we might find the truth about what God says.

Don't skip these!  Read them!

James 1:13-15

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.  

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Okay, let's see what God just said.  He says he isn't the one tempting, not EVER.  It says he CANNOT, not that He is physically weak, but that it is against His nature to do so.  

If you are unfamiliar with the story, you can read Job to this work out.  Job was considered blameless in God's sight when Satan asked God for permission to tempt Job.  God allowed it.  This may anger you.  Why would God allow a blameless man to be put through so much pain?  

I don't know, not fully.  I have theories, but they are just that.  What I know is that God is not some mean distant God who is up on high laughing and toying with us.  God became man, became a part of the pain, and lived a perfect life, then was tortured beyond what we can imagine.  Not only was Christ tortured by the whip and by crucifixion, but also by the outpouring of God's wrath.  So, you may hate that God allows pain, but you can't call Him distant.  You cannot think him a snob.  He went through hell (literally, not metaphorically) to show you how much he loves you.


One more piece of scripture.  

Romans 8:1 

1 There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Read it!  There is what?  NOW no condemnation...  not then, not later, now.  If you are saved, then you are no longer condemned.  Your depression is not a punishment.  You are not being smote by God.  It has nothing to do with Him being angry at you.  For, if you are saved, then God, when asked about your sin, looks and sees Christ in your stead... right now.  

The hope of the gospel is for those who are depressed as well.  You are not being pushed away.  You are not being hated.  You are being tried, tested, yes, but not hated.  There is a difference.  When you want someone to grow, there is always trial to growth.  God wants you to be strong, for you to grow, and depression can sharpen you.  I am sure you hate hearing this.  You may want to feel you have an excuse to be mad at God, a right to be upset at Him, but you don't.  Sorry.  Being angry at God will accomplish nothing.  Instead, know the truth and don't trust your feelings all the time.  

God loves you NOW, right in the middle of your depression.  Know that the gospel of Christ is still yours.  God's saving grace doesn't stop at the feet of depression.  It gives your pain purpose and gives hope for healing in the future.  Cling to that hope.  That is my prayer for you this day.