Im Going Back Inside That Church Again
I sabbatum at a stoplight, trembling with anxiety's rattle and hum. The sky was bleak with charcoal clouds seemed to mirror my soul. The familiar fog of depression had rolled in and I was weary of the struggle.
It was exhausting: wrestling to be whole, never shaking the bone-deep loneliness. The fog formed a dense wall, hedging me into isolation. Most days, it seemed nobody, non even God, tin can break through.
There's an excruciating physicality to mental illness that's rarely acknowledged. But this pain was goose egg new. I couldn't remember a time before depression's waves rolled through me. I'd grown accepted to smiling, saying I was but tired, doing my best to bear witness up for my commitments while my breast burned and my body felt similar lead.
Nonetheless, the worst part was the style secret questions carved out my insides. God, are y'all in that location? Why can't I be different? Why won't you fix me? I know y'all can.
Information technology wasn't simply the questions, but the story I believed underneath them: God doesn't want this mess and neither does anyone else. I knew that if I didn't grinning and human activity okay, I would lose my people…and even God.
"Just cull joy."
When I tried to share glimpses of the darkness, well-meaning Christians said things they didn't understand. You lot have command over your emotions. This is a choice. Choose joy, they told me, as though it were a switch to flip.
Low is so self-focused. How tin can you exist sorry with all God has done for you? You just need to serve others.
God answers prayers given in faith. Just speak life. If you don't accept anything overnice to say, don't say anything at all, even most yourself.
Those words left my skin flushed hot and nausea rising in my throat. I'd tried, then hard, to make myself better. I but kept declining.
Endless begging prayers with all the faith I could muster hadn't changed the ache inside. Years of spending every free moment in ministry, serving and caring without rest, hadn't filled the gaping void. Instead, I felt even more strangled by the unforgiving pace .
And, in my mind, choose joy sounded an awful lot like snap out of it . I couldn't force that, no matter what I did. So I kept the ache to myself, hiding questions and unkempt prayers until I could allow out the mess.
I constitute that place in my former Taurus, a messy sanctuary in all my hither-to-theres. Empty newspaper cups rolled on the floorboards. Clothes were strewn over boxes of books and trinkets – I was always moving in those days. Despite the clutter, that old car was my rubber identify. There was no need to smiling, no testify to put on. Nobody to hear or judge.
I was running ministry errands that twenty-four hours, grateful for a reprieve from interaction in the offices. My heart raced with a sinking question: What if I never become better? Shame seared my flushed skin. Nobody wants this. How do I live like this forever?
In that location at the stoplight, my body trembled as the gray and weight and cloud pressed in. My thoughts spiraled and buzzed. The bony hand of feet started to close around my pharynx.
Then articulate, sweet words whispered in my middle,
"The darkness may always be in that location, but I will ever be there in the darkness."
My mouth gaped open, optics broad with suddenly welling tears. But it wasn't sorrow. It was promise, bittersweet, shocking promise.
To some, it might have sounded like a death penalty. Simply not to me. It was a start-fourth dimension promise of life. That whisper in my middle, "The darkness may e'er exist in that location," told me to stop fighting to prepare myself.
Stop burying the pain.
Stop hiding.
The darkness exists. It's okay that it's there and it's okay that information technology's so hard. It's okay to face bravely into it, to let go of deprival and learn to live with information technology.
The second one-half of that whisper was sweeter still. "I will always be there in the darkness." Information technology shook my soul like tectonic plates shifting, foundations rearranged. I reeled from the shock of realization.
God isn't disappointed in me.
He'south not borer his pes and looking at his watch, impatient for me to become it together. He sits with me in the darkness. The rattle & hum quieted, vibrations and tension slowly fading. I remembered a favorite verse from Psalm 139: if I brand my bed in hell, you're in that location. The heaviness in my chest lifted as I drew a deep breath.
Those words released then much guilt and fright. They pledged that I'm non so profoundly screwed upwardly that the God of the universe would ever dorsum away. He isn't afraid of my low. He doesn't shrink from the darkness.
God doesn't lose patience with my pain.
He isn't uncomfortable when I share nighttime thoughts, telling me to snap out of information technology. Cypher I can do, nowhere I can go will always push Him to abandon me. Instead, God welcomes honesty. He runs toward my pain and questions.
In a messy, quondam Taurus, my tearful voice shook in hopeful response. "Okay. If you hope to never go out, I tin walk through annihilation with y'all."
Sometimes God doesn't heal, and information technology's not anyone'due south error. Sometimes sickness is just the ugly reality of living in a broken world. My hope tin't rest solely on the actions of God, on the miraculous or a mystery I can't comprehend. I don't have to be healed to trust Him. My hope rests on His character, who He's proven Himself to be fourth dimension and again.
Information technology takes more faith to believe he'due south adept and kind and present when he walks through darkness with us instead of plucking u.s.a. from it.
I've learned to cling to the Lord come up hell or high water, and they both surely will rush in. I know to press my face into His clothes and breathe in deep. When I'm terrified or my chest is filled with the burn of depression, I lean into Him and listen.
"It'due south okay. I'm still hither, even in the darkness."
And, much equally I would love Him to wave His magic wand and put my soul back together without cracks and scars, I am grateful. I know the Comforter considering I accept been comforted. I know a God who sees me and is present with me. He'south proven information technology by showing up in my car when I needed Him most.
Maybe today, you're wondering if God is present in your pain. It may not exist depression or anxiety. Information technology could be loss, failure, illness, or injustice; at one point or another, we all come up contiguous with these large questions. Are you lot here? Are y'all with me?
In the midst of ache and ache, God doesn't condemn y'all . He is non disappointed or impatient with you lot. And, though he oft doesn't bring a sudden change of circumstance, he's sitting with yous in your hurting.
God is with us. He isn't leaving. He isn't giving up.
If the darkness will always be here, and so volition God. He'll sit in its midst with u.s.a., holding our sometimes-desperate, flailing hearts. We won't be alone. Maybe that'southward all we demand to know to get through.
Source: https://www.beautifulbetween.com/where-is-god-when-im-depressed/
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