What to Do under the Conditions

It's hard to imagine that the timeliness of today's devotional is coincidence. Of course, it's been sitting there on April 13 for the past 75 years, but still, I choose to believe that God brought me to this place on this day and gave me these words.

I had my first suicidal thoughts in high school. I wrote a story about them.

I went to see my first counselor for depression after my miscarriage in 1987.

I took my first psychotropic drug -- Prozac -- after my mom died in 1991.

I was hospitalized for severe depression in 1998, just before my youngest child turned 1. The psychiatrist told me I would need to be on anti-depressants for the rest of my life, and I resigned myself to that idea. I was pretty sure that to function as a mother of four children with my particular temperament, I needed help. I did not want to risk their welfare in a drug-free experiment with my life.

Last fall, as my second child prepared to go off to college and my book group was reading Acedia & Me by Kathleen Norris, I decided it might be safe to venture into the experiment. It seemed possible -- perhaps even likely -- that at least part of my problem was spiritual. And so . . . I went off the drugs, and a few months later, I started this blog. Several months have gone by almost miraculously well. I have not felt hopeless. I have been energized by this pursuit of a relationship with the God I have claimed to know all these years. My mood swings have been well within the normal range, and while there have been days when staying in bed was tempting, I have managed my life fairly well. Until now.

My sister-in-law saw it first and gently questioned me about the wisdom of this no-drugs path I had chosen. While I appreciated her observations, I didn't see the signs myself. BAM! Ever walk full force into a glass door? I didn't see it coming, but it knocked me on my fanny. Looking back, I can see it started with the increasing difficulty I have had in putting words on paper. As I have rather philosophically mentioned before, my worth is tied up in my ability to write, as is my livelihood, but this past weekend -- with a deadline not just staring me in the face but boring holes through my skull -- I could not write. Hours of fretting, brainstorming, trying and trying again did nothing. The words would not come. Forget philosophy. I seriously started to worry that I might have brain damage from drinking too much coffee and not enough water -- that or early onset Alzheimer's.

And if I could not write . . . Well, I'm not good at very many things. I am a very bad housekeeper and an even worse organizer. I have trouble keeping dates straight. I care about people, but I hate talking on the phone, so I don't stay in touch very well. I tend to speak my mind a bit too directly to have very many friends, and I'm seldom politically correct. I love my children, but I cannot remember the last time I tried to discipline them and they have inherited a fair share of my weaknesses. I want to be a good wife, but I'm often just too tired. I love to garden, but weeding gets away from me, and I tend to like things a bit more out of control than other people find attractive. No matter -- I've always been able to fall back on this one thing that I could do well, and pathetic as it may sound, it has almost been enough.

But if I cannot write, I am not special. I am nothing.

Enter Oswald: "If we undertake work for God and get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility will be overwhelmingly crushing; but if we roll back on God that which He has put upon us, He takes away the sense of responsibility by bringing in the realization of Himself."

I have been asking and asking over the past few days: What does it mean to have Christ alive in me? Well, partly, I think it looks like this: me collapsing and finding him there.