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Ironically, taking antidepressants is making me more aware of my depression. Or perhaps making it worse, I don’t know yet. Travis is keeping close tabs on me and will make me go to the doctor if I get any worse, don’t worry. Meanwhile I’ve found my thoughts turning to a favorite book of mine. It’s called Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer. In it is one of the best descriptions of depression I have ever read. So I am going to share a brief passage from the book here for you, because right now I have no words of my own.
“…depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both ‘religious’ and ‘scientific,’ and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. Mystery surround every deep experience of the human heart: the deeper we go into the heart’s darkness or its light, the closer we get to the ultimate mystery of God. But our culture wants to turn mysteries into puzzles to be explained or problems to be solved, because maintaining the illusion that we can ‘straighten things out’ makes us feel powerful. Yet mysteries never yield to solutions or fixes–and when we pretend that they do, life becomes not only more banal but also more hopeless, because the fixes never work.
Embracing the mystery of depression does not mean passivity or resignation. It means moving into a field of forces that seem alien but is in fact one’s deepest self. It means waiting, watching, listening, suffering, and gathering whatever self-knowledge one can–and then making choices based on that knowledge, no matter how difficult. One begins the slow walk back to health by choosing each day things that enliven one’s selfhood and resisting things that do not.”
There is much more in the book that digs into depression, but to pull out just samples would be too little, and I think sharing the entire chapter is too much. So if you come across the book, please pick up a copy and spend some time in it. There is a great deal of wisdom in the pages, not just about depression but about life.
Blooming Joy! 
That is powerful!
Hmmm, sounds like a very Lutheran view of depression. 🙂
Oooh! Parker Palmer! He is BEYOND Lutheran view, he is profoundly Christian insight at an almost pure theologian level, and boy, are you right about depression. The fact that you realize what you now know means you are overcoming depression which, I have come to learn, you will always have, you just are now able to handle and, for the most part, tuck it away in a little sidecar so that it doesn’t bother you all of the time.
Mine jumped out the other day. Scared me for a couple of days. Then I managed to put it away again.
Jim
Wow. Succinct, but powerful.
Hmm, I have had this book on my shelf for years since grad school. I never did read it all the way through. Many things have changed in the last 5 years, maybe now is a good time to finally sit down with it and learn.
Let Your Life Speak has been instrumental for me in not on my vocational discernment but my self discernment, too. I work with Parker Palmer now at the Center for Courage & Renewal and want to point folks to his new book, Healing the Heart of Democracy, that sprang from another period of his own depression. Here, he connects his personal heartbreak with the heartbreak of our country during the last decade and offers more insight on life’s mystery and holding our tensions creatively.
Realizing that you are depressed is half the battle. There is nothing wrong in taking an anti-depressant, it is perfectly alright. Our scociety tends to look down on people who take pills. Maybe if they took a pill they wouldn’t tend to judge those of us that do take pills. I plain and simple would not function without mine. Yes, it does take some time for your system to adjust and not all of them work the same way. Going back to the Doctor might be a good thing. That being said, everyone with depression has had an event that triggered the depressin and we all have days that will set us back alittle. Everyone has the right to take their ugly off of the shelf and mourn over it and then we have to put it back on the shelf and try to get on with life. You have more of a reason to be depressed than most of us. Loosing your children holds ts own ugliness. You probably aren’t ready to put that event away yet. I don’t have any solutions to what you have been thru. I do know that the Good Lord has put this trial on your shoulders and He will give you the strength to bear it but even He expects us to help ourselves. He doesn’t have a problem with you taking a pill so don’t beat yourself up thinking that you are betraying Him buy taking something to help you feel better. I would give it 2 weeks and if it isn’t doing you some good then it is time to go back to the doctor and try something else. Believe me the end result will be worth it. No one can look at the whole picture and deal with it. Try to look at just a small amount of time, a day or half a day or even an hour at a time if that is all you can deal with. Get thru that specific time and then go on. Don’t look at days or weeks or months, that is to hard for anyone to deal with. Once again give yourself a break! You would give me or any other person the benefit of the doubt. You deserve it just as much if not more. You are alright, God doesn’t make junk! Also try to realize that the devil doesn”t have to work on those without Faith, but those of us that do have Faith he has to work very hard to pull away from that Faith. God is watching you and the devil is trying his hardest to pull you away from God! Now that I have once again written a book I will apologize for that. Just hang on to the fact that you are Loved and Cared for and the Good Lord is holding you in the palm of your hand. Love to All!!