Post Depression Life: Feeling Good Will Make Life So Easy... NOT!

There was this myth that rolled around in my formerly depression-riddled mind.  It went something like this... once I am no longer depressed, am healthy, and feel good again, everything will be easy.  In some ways this is very true.  Days come and go without much a of a fuss relatively.  They are a million times more pleasant, and I do mean a million times.

However, it turns out that feeling pain is not the only thing thing that makes life hard.  There is something else that makes life hard that I did not see coming.  It is that feeling awesome can make life hard!  

What, Nicholas?  How is this possible?  Feeling good is always good! 

Is it?  Because, if so, then we need to be making drugs legal and get on that ASAP.

Nicholas, you have to understand that, yes, that feels good NOW, but will destroy you later!

(Funny how smart you sound whenever you are having a conversation with yourself via print.  You always win.)

Exactly!  And this principle applies to everyone.  A person's desire to have sex outside of marriage will collide with their desire to not get someone or themselves pregnant, or get an STD, or hurt someone else's feelings, or sin.  A person's desire to be a good friend will collide with their desire to be first, be right, get the last piece of cake, be lazy, not go the extra mile, be entitled.  A person's desire to eat the whole cake collides with the desire to not get diabetes, fat, a sugar rush followed by a massive crash ending with them drooling on their keyboard at work.  A person's yearning for truth will collide with other people's same desire.  

In the end, desire is not a singular track.  It is not do I do what I want or not do what I want, but what do I want the most?  Our desires are not only conflicting with what we hate, but with our OTHER DESIRES.  That conflict of desire has been one of the biggest surprises of being healthy again.  I had forgotten how many times I wished I didn't feel a certain good feeling because it took me away from another desire.  I forgot what it felt like to have those many desires all tugging on you and you want them all at once, and you have to choose which one you want most.  I want to be a good friend and serve others.  I also want to do whatever I want whenever I want.  I want to eat all of the sugar and meat on planet Earth.  I also want to be in shape, not have colon cancer, and keep my teeth.  I want to be obedient to God and remain sexually pure, yet I also don't.  I want to serve God above all else, and yet I want to serve my self above all else.  Everyone struggled with this, no matter who you are. 

Moral being, prepare yourself for the fact that having desires again, while completely wonderful, and being the way it should be, and being a million times better than being in depression, isn't the end of your struggles.  It is just a different battle altogether.  

ROMANS 7:15

15 For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 

This verse is Paul, toward the end of his life, talking about his struggle with this concept.  Paul, one of the greatest men who ever lived, still struggled to with the conflicting desires in his heart.  At least we can take comfort in knowing we are in good company.

Life Without Love

1 Corinthians 13

English Standard Version (ESV)

The Way of Love

13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,^[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵ or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;^{[b] 6} it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

There is something transcendent about this passage.  You don't have to believe in Jesus to be moved by it.  The idea that life without love is nothing is universal.  It speaks to everyone.  Love is our greatest motivator.  Some might say happiness, but love is greater than happiness.  Happiness is whimsy, it comes and goes.  It has no purpose.  Love is eternal.  It informs us of who we are.  We define our selves by what we love.  

 

This is the greatest unspoken pain of depression.  If you can, imagine not being able to feel love.  You can act it out, your love, but not feel it.  Some people would argue love is an action, and not a feeling.  Now, I understand the desire behind that statement.  Most healthy people struggle with their emotions greatly.  They are desperate for some measure of control, as emotions are scary.  Sorry to say it is still a lie.  The depressed person knows this all too well.  They are forced to live everyday acting opposite of what they feel.  Everything screams for an end, yet they keep on.  They act love they do not feel, and it a special kind of hell.  To not be able to truly affect is the greatest pain there is.  It is worse than losing a loved one, worse than being left by a loved one.  

 

To those on the outside, remember this when you look at the depressed person.  Imagine waking up and looking at those you know you love, but you cannot feel the love you know is in there.  Imagine trying to get out of bed with that.  Without love, life is so pointless.  You wake up and think, "Who cares."  You just want to make another day.  You push on because you remember a time when you once felt love, and deep down, buried beneath the mountain of pain, you hope you will feel it once again.   Keep that perspective when you speak to them.  This isn't to say you should coddle.  Sometimes depressed people need a good nudge, and they don't have a free pass to act poorly.  However, it should give your heart an enormous amount of grace for them.  It should break your heart for them.  It should give you, as one who does feel love, and feels it for them, the desire to encourage often.  It should give you the ability to understand them a little better what they are experiencing, that you might act wisely.

 

To those in the thick of it, all you need to know is that love will come back if you have the courage to persist.  It will.  I lived without being able to feel love for over ten years.  It was a certain type of living hell.  Like you, I thought it would never end.  I was stuck, broken, not fixable.  The power of the darkness was too strong, unbeatable.  I am living proof that is not true.  My heart beats, it bleeds love, and it does so for you.  My affection for you, though you are a stranger, is what drives me to write these articles, as there is surely no glory nor benefit to be had otherwise.  This heart that once felt so dead I used to think, "If they only knew how dead I was, they would have a funeral for me right now.  Nicholas Laning died years ago, and they don't even know it.  All that is left is this brain sitting atop this body.  My soul is somewhere else."  That same heart now beats with love.  It weeps.  I am moved to tears even as I write this thinking about you.  If I feel love after what I went through, you can too.  You can love again.  You can.  Hear it.  You can love again.  Your heart can love again.  Beauty can return.  You will one day again look up at the stars and be moved, see your mother's face and remember her presence, even see yourself in the mirror and like your own life again.  You will.  Just keep on fighting.  Keep having hope beyond hope.  Don't quit.  I am proud of you for your fight.  So proud.  Just keep fighting.  I am praying for you right now. 

Love (Or the Lack Thereof) & Depression

The Shipps by Nicholas L. Laning

1 Corinthians 13 (English Standard Version)

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  

3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.  

4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant  

5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  

6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  

7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  

8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it     will pass away.  

9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part,  

10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  

12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.  

13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Nicholas L. Laning

 "Love is a decision."  I cannot count the times I have heard this adage, a half thought out response, wrought from fear of losing a battle against the constant bombardment from movies, television, and music that, "Love is a feeling."  As with most fearfully wrought responses, the pendulum is not swung to find balance.  It is swung fully and completely, never bothering to ask if swinging completely in the opposite direction is any better? There is a decisive, devotional quality to love, and there is also a mysterious, emotional quality to love.  

To say that only one of those qualities of love is like being asked what an apple looks like, and responding, "Apples are round."  Okay, are they not also red, (or yellow or green, depending on the apple)?  Picking one quality to define the whole leads to a warped vision of the truth.  

Another analogy would be to say that a hand is a human.  No, the hand is a PART of the human body.  Without it, the body is not whole.  Yet, you cannot define the whole of the body by one part and come out with a real vision of the human body. 


The words found in the text above were not understood until my depression.  It is easy to say, "Love is a decision," in an attempt cut out or dampen the emotive qualities of love when you feel those emotions freely and easily.  When your struggle is to control your emotions, reign them in, it seems beneficial to grasp for the opposite, perhaps hoping to reach the middle, as it cannot be imagined to not emote.  


WELL YOU CAN!  Your ability to emote is not inevitable.  It can be stripped from you, and then you will see just how ridiculous the idea of love being solely a decision really is.  Without the emotions, without genuine affection, there is no reason to decide to love in the first place.  


This verse above completely blows up the notion of love being a decision.  If we were to look at the text before this one, we would see Paul talking about the different gifts, and their importance, then he says in 12:31 "But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way."  Then he starts above.  Love is essential, and it is not just a decision.   

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

To give all you have away, or to deliver your body up to be burned both take the utmost devotion!  Do they not?  Think about how intense those acts are!  Then Paul tells us that we can do those amazing things, and if we have not love, that we gain nothing!  In that one sentence alone we see that the love he is talking about goes beyond mere devotion.  

This scares me too.  It also gets me excited!  

It scares me because I cannot simply do love.  I cannot simply obey commands and think that enough to be considered loving God, loving others.  My heart must affect.  It must flourish.  Nothing else will do.  I am going to be honest, and say that depression has left me scarred subconsciously.  It has been a battle to encourage my battered and tattered heart to ever be open to feeling ever again, for one cannot hurt if one does not love.  My affection for God and for others is lacking.  This has been the greatest target of my prayers, that the Holy Spirit would do what only He can... soften my stone of a heart.   


It gets me excited because, after seeing the truth, I don't want love to just be a decision!  I understand the devotional quality full well.  When there was not a mote of affection in my heart for anything, not my parents, wife, nature, my self, nor life, I decided to go on loving those I remember loving.  I devoted myself to a God my heart screamed had abandoned me.  Without devotion, my love would have been lost.  Yet, it was not full at all!  I now want my heart to soar again!  I want it to burn!  I want it to flourish in the beauty of God's creation!  I want it full!  I want to love others, yearning to serve them, encourage them!  I want my heart to again beat red and tender within my chest, and that is exactly what God wants!  He wants, no, commands my affection!  He tells us we are to soar!  Our hearts were made for beating!  


So, let us no longer be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal!  Let us have faith, hope, and of course... love!

Living in Spite of Your Feelings

Nicholas L. Laning

What do you do when all your feelings are terrible?

We love to think that we are rational beings.  Atheism has flourished, somewhat, not upon its actual strengths, but upon the lie that it is devoid of faith.  So many Christians have fallen for the lie that they have figured out how to remove faith from Christianity, despite the fact that this is what is counted to us as righteousness, and have convinced themselves that they it is solely reason that pushes them.  I have been amongst struggled with both of those lies myself.  We love to feel that we make our decisions based upon nothing but rational ideas, but no ones makes their decisions based upon thought alone.  If we are willing to be honest with ourselves, and were to search our thoughts, we would surely find that emotion plays a huge part in why we decide things.  So many times I have talked with people who have claimed to make a decision based upon thought alone.  Yet, after asking the tough questions, they have come to offer up that they decided to... whatever... because they just... insert an emotional response to whatever the issue is.  I have had this happen to me many times, especially in my youth.

Christians surely do this.  How often do we make a decision, not based on any rational thought, but because, "We FEEL called to... change jobs, do missions in a foreign land, whatever?"  If we are honest, then the answer is... very often.  We get a good feeling about something, and we take that be the blessing of the Holy Spirit.  We feel bad about something, and we feel the spirit telling us to avoid it.

Well, what do you do when all your feelings are terrible?

One of the most terrifying elements of depression is that our emotions no longer follow a normal path.  They no longer follow life.  In a normal heart, you go see your friends, you feel something good.  Someone dies, and you feel sad.  Well, in depression, you just feel pain, no matter what, and it drives you crazy.  Part of our decision making process has been stripped.

So, how do we move forward?

We move forward by doing something that takes courage, and is not natural.  We have to make decisions based upon faith and hope.  We have to believe that goodness is real, despite the fact that we don't feel that to be true.  We hope that love will return to our hearts, though we haven't felt its glow in years.  We move forward in faith and hope of things to come.  We keep breathing, and one day, God willing, we will, in this life, be restored.

Have hope.  Believe in good.  Believe in love.  Believe that this current pain is true, but only a momentary aberration.  The ultimate reality is that goodness and love and joy and happiness are real.  Keep fighting.  You are in my prayers.  My heart goes out to you.  Write me if you want.  Always remember that God loved you enough to allow His only Son to suffer worse than you have on your behalf.  He does love you.  He really does.

Somewhere Else

Just play the song, and either close your eyes or look at the picture or whatever you'd like, and imagine yourself somewhere else for just a moment.

Mark 4:39 ESV

And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Somewhere Else by Nicholas L. Laning