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."

What It Means to Be Strong

Nicholas L. Laning

Being strong is tough.  I know.  Duh.  The hardest part of the depression for those on the outside, is the same on the inside.  It isn't the intensity of the pain.  People handle so much for short bursts.  No.  For everybody involved, the hardest part is the relentlessness of the pain.  It does... not... stop.  For those suffering, the problem is obvious.  They hurt constantly.  For the loved ones trying to encourage, the problem is tricky, so tricky.

Ever since I came out of my depression, I have dealt with quite a few depressed people, and I have learned much about being on the other side.  What kills is that there is no equality in the relationship for that season.  What I mean by that is, when healthy, we expect our tone to be at least somewhat matched.  If someone acts off, says something awful, acts poorly, we get rightfully upset, and are hurt and let them know it.  However, with a depressed person you cannot do that.  You are not on equal footing.  It isn't fair that they get to be weak, to need you to be so strong for so long, to put up with so much.  Yet, it isn't fair that they are depressed and your not.  The shoe could have been, and may one day in fact be, on the other foot.  For this season, you will have to endure a lopsided relationship.  Not that you must let them be mean, but that in EVERY way you must be strong.  As frustrated and angry as you feel , you cannot lash out, or you will push them away.  If you must challenge, or rebuke, you must do this always with gentleness.  There is no leaning on this person.  No trade off moment where they carry you for a bit.  You'll have to let someone else who's healthy do that until the one depressed is redeemed.

I remember how my mother reacted at first to my depression.  Every time I talked about it she would cry and get angry.  She would be overwhelmed by my words, by my despair.  It drove me into seclusion for some time.  It was so dangerous to fight alone.  Over time, she learned the truth, that she had to be the strong one.  As unfair as it was, I was struggling too much for us to be equal.  She could either love me and be strong, or I would leave.  I had no strength to return.  It was not normal.  Even in the face of horrifying words from her beloved son, she was a rock.  Her and my father would put on the brave face, and find a way to encourage me, even when I lashed out in my pain.

Know that I am praying for you right now, both you whom are depressed, and those trying to encourage someone who is depressed.  

For the depressed, fight.  No one can carry you out.  You must fight, and fight hard!!!  Don't take advantage of those trying to help you.  Lean on them, but realize that your struggle, while it may give understanding to your actions, does NOT excuse them.  What you do in the midst of your struggle counts.  Relationships burned now will probably still be burned.  The consequences of life have not ceased for you.  I carry many scars from my actions in depression.  What I did mattered, and still is in effect.  




For all you loved ones, be strong.  As hard as it is, and it is hard, having been on both sides, it is not harder than what they are going through.  You have your whits about you.  You have your mind whole.  Use it, and be something transcendent in their lives.  Ultimately, none of this can be done apart from the grace of God.  He changes hearts and minds.


I am praying right now that God would grant us the wisdom to discern what is true, and the courage to fight for it once we see it, that we would never relent.  When we do, I pray that God would carry us.  He is the reason we live.  He is good.  To God be all glory.  In Jesus' name, amen.

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.