Stepping Into The Minefield (To Those Who Love A Depressed Person)
Life with depression is precarious business.
It’s like living full-time in a minefield.
You never quite get comfortable with your surroundings, even when things seem quiet. You always move gingerly, knowing full well that any step could blow it all up and send you reeling again; a bit of bad news, a difficult moment, or worse seemingly nothing at all. And every single time something triggers the sadness and that inner detonation occurs, parts of you get ripped up and shredded—and losing a bit of yourself in this way never gets easier.
One of the things most people don’t understand is the way mental illness isolates you, how it forces you to the periphery of all of your relationships because you know how unstable the ground you walk on each day is and how quickly everything can get ugly. You desperately want to avoid the collateral damage to people you love, so you learn to keep them…
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Before you knew God, God knew you
Just discovered this book, Run with the Horses (Eugene H. Peterson). Wow. You’re going to be reading some selections from it these next few posts. If you’re someone who battles with a bad father image. Here’s some ammunition.
Before Jeremiah knew God, God knew Jeremiah: “Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.” This turns everything we ever thought about God around. We think that God is an object about which we have questions. We are curious about God. We make inquiries about God. We read books about God. We get into late-night bull sessions about God. We drop into church from time to time to see what is going on with God. We indulge in an occasional sunset or symphony to cultivate a feeling of reverence about God.
But that is not the reality of our lives with God. Long before we ever got around to asking questions about God, God had been questioning us. Long before we got interested in the subject of God, God subjected us to the most intensive and searching knowledge. Before it ever crossed our minds that God might be important, God singled us out as important. Before we were formed in the womb, God knew us. We are known before we know.
This realization has a practical result: no longer do we run here and there, panicked and anxious, searching for the answers to life. Our lives are not puzzles to be figured out. Rather, we come to God, who knows us and reveals to us the truth of our lives. The fundamental mistake is to begin with ourselves and not God. God is the center from which all life develops.
Hidden grace & dark places
“Anxiety and depression have been God’s way of reminding me that I don’t have to be awesome.”
If that strikes some kind of chord with you, then you should read this: “When you find hidden graces in the dark places”. Made my day anyway.
The valley of trouble
Hope is Not Optional
God loves us always
At first we say . . .
“Spun-gold”
A Sunday-poem . . .
A Sunday-poem by Amy Carmichael:
Spun-gold
We cannot bring Thee praise like golden noon-light
Shining on earth's green floor;
Our song is more like silver of the moon-light,
But we adore.
We cannot bring Thee, O Belovèd, ever,
Pure song of woodland bird;
And yet we know the song of Thy least lover
In love is heard.
O blessèd be the love that nothing spurneth;
We sing, Love doth enfold
Our little song in love; our silver turneth
To fine spun-gold.
My creaturehood
For the days and times when we so experience our woundedness and faults and wonder how God can still love us:
God likes me covered with my creaturehood
and with my limits spread across His face.
He likes to see me lifting to His eyes
even the wretchedness that dropped His grace.
~Jessica Powers (from “Creature of God”)
Witnesses to Hope 