Monday, February 11, 2008

Letting Go

Sitting at home, really sick. Thinking about some things, like depression. I have plenty of family history of depression and anxiety in my family, and sadly, I too have my own issues and struggles with it. I was driving and talking to my wife yesterday as we were making our way to see me daughter for her 11th birthday, about the funk I had been in that lasted a year or so. Half of last year and most of 2006, I was like a walking zombie at times, lonely, depressed, and sad for no reason. It was weird, I felt so badly for no visible reason at all. Getting old made me sad, thinking about the past made me sad, I was lonely all of the time, and yet I could not live my life without the loneliness. It was like a weird friend of mine that hated my guts, yet I needed him around just so I could feel something. I went to a psychologist a few times during this period and all he could do was keep telling me how important it was to go back to college and finish. I don't and didn't really get the significance or relevance in his advice, so I stopped going. Turns out, a psychologist was not what I needed, I needed to let go of my life. The Bible says, Luke 17:33 Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. This passages' meanings are much more than what I am talking about now, but for me this passage speaks, not just of salvation form hell or admittance into eternal life, it speaks to me now, it speaks to my desire to be who I am my way, which really isn't me at all. I tried and tried to live my life with some sort of control over how I felt, what was going on, and what happened was more misery. So I let go. I could not even imagine my life without the loneliness, but I let go. And what happened next was nothing short of a miracle. I realize that God was holding on. He wasn't letting go. God says enough is enough of me wrecking myself and He changes me. The transformation is similar to the transformation that took place when I first gave my life to God in that I realized my folly, and realized that God was hanging on the whole time, not willing to let go, knowing what He was going to do way before He did it. Now I cannot go back, literally, I cannot, I am different. I am happy, I get sad sometimes, but I am full.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousFebruary 14, 2008 at 4:13 PM

    Ah, the plight of getting older. I found an old journal entry I wrote when I was 19. I lived with a roommate in a great townhouse, had an awesome job, and life just couldn't be better.

    But in my journal entry I wrote about how depressed I was. How much I wanted to go back to the days where I didn't have to pay bills, and I could play, have fun, and enjoy summers without working all day. I wanted to go back into my past, or dive into the future, and be married, have kids, find purpose.

    Then, at the end of the entry I said, "Watch, a few years from now I'll read this and wish I could be 19 again."

    Low and behold, I did.

    Being married, having kids, unpaid bills ... oh, it's wonderful, but it's HARD. Marriage is hard, kids are hard word, bills, ugh, I need a break sometimes. And oh how many times I wish I could be 19 again.

    I know how you feel. Depression is like that. It grabs you from behind and makes you feel like you're missing something, lacking something, or failing at something. It makes you feel like you need to jump into the past, or future, anywhere but here.

    It makes you feel like crap. Plainly. And it sucks.

    But, like you've said in these last 2 posts, there is freedom from this way of thinking, and it's not always easy.

    For emotion-driven people, the hardest thing is to follow truth when you don't feel it. I'm working on it. Every day.

    Good luck to ya brotha. I think you'll like the novel I'm writing. My protagonist is a lot like that.

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