This morning I woke after a needed full night’s sleep, and lay in bed as the rain outside my open window began to quicken. As minutes passed speedily by and the thunder rolled I turned on the lamp above my bed, and thanked God for the song of storms. Since getting up I’ve tried to continue thanking Him for the things I’ve been given eyes to see as good, knowing that it might be otherwise, that I could be blind to much that is lovely, and that my taking notice at all is a gift in itself.
I am thankful for my body, and that in its weakness and need, when things go too far, it will give up even if I wish to keep going. This week just such a thing happened, and I was sent home from work midway through my shift because I simply couldn’t keep from weeping when I tried to answer the simple and often unfelt greeting of, “How are you?”
I don’t know what caused this breakdown. I’ve never had a depressive episode in such a public setting, and while I suspect that that in itself made things worse for me, what prompted the fit from the start is still something of a mystery. Yet I know that it’s okay. Sitting in my chair this morning and talking to God, I recognized that I don’t need to understand what happened, I don’t need to be able to explain it to anyone, even to myself, so long as I am able to rest in the fact that my Lord knows, He understands, and He remains the same, just as His thoughts and feelings toward me remain unchanged.
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
but you are the same, and your years have no end.
— Psalm 102:25-27
I am thankful that though I still experience these episodes from time to time, I live now as someone who can feel his body and heart give way and collapse under him on Tuesday, and yet stand in hope and determination on Friday. Such was not always the case, as my periods of depression in the past often lasted weeks before I could begin opening myself to beauty again. When I consider that man I am today, and who I have been in days past, I recognize that I have indeed grown, if not in such a way as to leave behind all of my weaknesses.
In the few days since Tuesday, many people have looked me in the eye and asked me how I’m doing, and uttered the simple yet profound words, “I’ve been praying for you.” To say such a thing, to let me know that they in their humanity, knowing what it is to feel pain, to feel alone, confused and broken, went before their God, the Almighty One, and pleaded with Him on my behalf, that I might be helped by His strength… such a thing is worth more than I can know, and it has reminded me of an important truth.
We need each other.
In my weakest moments I wish that I could leave it all behind, and yet am reminded of all those to whom I would be saying goodbye, and the rent in their lives that I would leave. None of us is really aware of how great an impact we have on the lives of those around us, how many we have touched and how profoundly. In the providential wisdom of the Creator, the roots of our lives run deep and tangle and twine around our neighbors’ in unknowable ways, unable to be untied from those nearest us, and leaving all that we encounter forever changed. What a responsibility we bear, and what a beauty, to be so entwined with the whole of humanity.
“How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist.”
— Ryan O'Neal; Sleeping At Last
To all those who pray, know that I am grateful. And to those who feel the weight of life bearing down upon them, please, don’t go it alone. You are more valuable than you know.