Tag Archives: depression

The Benefits of Looking Religious

Posted on June 3, 2013 | 7 comments

https://emilysmucker.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/235a3-old2bbearded2bman.jpg

I was entering the learning center when the old man stopped me.

“Do I know you from the store?” he asked.

I knew he meant Grocery Depot, the Mennonite-owned store in town that mostly employs other Mennonites.

“I don’t work there anymore, but I used to,” I said. “I have friends that work there.”

“But do you guys pray?” he asked me.

“Yes,” I said.

“My son Jeremiah lives in Arazona, and he just tried to commit suicide,” said the man. “Can you pray for him?”

Suicide. The horrible, horible thing that stole my cousin Lenny from my own family. “Yes, I’ll pray,” I promised. “Would you like me to pray for you right now?”

“Yes,” said the man.

So in the crowded hall at LBCC I prayed for this man, and his son Jeremiah, pleading with God to spare Jeremiah’s life, and help him find the help he needed to cure his depression.

When I was done, the man was crying.

“Thank you,” he said.

And then we went our separate ways.

Sometimes I get frustrated by the fact that I look very religious. I don’t like being defined by the fact that I am a Mennonite instead of the fact that I am a Christian.

But that day, since I looked religious, God used me to bless this man.

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It will rain

Posted on May 22, 2012 | 9 comments

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12:30 am. I’ve had verying levels of insomnia recently, though tomorrow I will finally be able to sleep in. I reached over, picked up my bottle of prosaic, and removed the second to last pill.

Second to last. And after the bottle is empty it will not get refilled.

At least, we will try this.

Depression is a funny thing. Except it’s not funny at all, so perhaps interesting would be a better term to use. People who have never gone through will put it on a list of sins which hamper our spiritual life, up there with greed and pride, while the ones who have gone through it often don’t volunteer the information very readily.

Depression is, of course, an illness.

As embarrassed as I initially was about my abnormally depressed moods, I eventually came to the place where, in order to survive, I had to call up people I didn’t know, or barely knew, and say, “i need help.”

Eventually I also learned that if you tell someone that you are on depression medication, there is a surprisingly high chance that they will say, “me too.”

A side effect of prosaic, it turns out, is sleepiness. I am trying to end my dependence on depression meds and become less sleepy at the same time.

I’m ready for some sunshine in my life.

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Oops. I tried to put in a picture of sunshine and got my dad instead. Well please cut me some slack, this is my first time posting from my droid.

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ta da!

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March Moodiness

Posted on March 15, 2012 | 4 comments

Oh, the pressure of realizing that you are publishing you’re 500’th blog post. What can I say that is witty enough, and monumental enough, and enough enough?

I haven’t been posting, and I’ve blamed it on the fact that my next post was going to be THE 500’th post. Of my life.

In reality, I wasn’t posting because of March Moodiness.

This time, last year, I was frantically battling depression. A year before that, I hardly got out of bed, I was so depressed. And a year before that I was sliding into my first bout of depression, ever.

What it is about the end of February, beginning of March?

I always want to get in my car, and drive away, away from it all. To California, or to the beach, or to the beach in California. Or to the eastern part of Oregon, past all the desert and sagebrush, to the rugged desolate hills that always make me think of “Wuthering Heights” or “Jamaica Inn”

I never do though. I think about gas money, and about how sleeping in my car might be dangerous. And then I just go to bed and escape from the world via sleep.

It’s funny, because except for a few days of summer blues, I haven’t struggled with depression in a year. I have been so on top of it this winter, finding beauty in everything, learning to play an instrument for the first time in my life, writing and breathing and making time for friends.

And then, it hit me.

I didn’t get depressed, but suddenly I had to work hard not to be depressed. Why such a struggle all of the sudden?

Spring is, to me, a metaphor of the slow climb out of depression. The winter lasts, and lasts, and then Spring comes for a few days before it rains again.

But Spring is coming.

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