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Project RESTORE: The Perfect Storm

Who all remembers the movie, "The Perfect Storm"? I'm a self-described weather junkie...love all kinds of weather...but that movie? HATED it! Oh, that awful ending! 

Even so, I've found myself comparing my emotional well-being with that exact movie the past month. An emotional storm from here, there and everywhere, and I found myself being thrown under by a wave of depression. 

Like current radar systems can closely monitor a storm, I could sense the approaching storm. But I had no idea the viciousness of impact the storm would bring.

I've had other experiences like this one...and if you've never experienced depression, it's hard to understand the nature of the attacks. I've described it as a wave hitting...and then I am stuck treading water for days...sometimes weeks...this time a month. I can keep myself alive by treading hard enough to keep my chin above water, but what I really need is for someone to throw me a lifeline.

A beautiful friend of mine...one who also walks this often misunderstood road...passed these excerpts on from a book she was reading: "Good News for Anxious Christians" by Phillip Cary: "Depression is an affliction akin to grief, except with the awful added feature that it does not appear to be about anything."  ....  "To struggle with depression is often to fight a battle where the only thing you can do is pray and wait."  ..... "your own experience consists simply of waiting and hoping that somehow the depression will lift." ..... "To battle against depression is to fight to wait."  ..... "Depression therefore demands especially patient comforters, people who have the strength to wait, who are able to sit in silence with one who suffers, knowing they have nothing to give but their presence. It looks like a waste of time, because it appears to make no difference. Yet it is needed, and it is a work of love."

I've not read the book, but this description is pretty accurate. It IS a fight to wait. 

However, I have not been without hope. Perhaps that sounds strange. Even in the pit, God is there. I don't LIKE being there...but God is there too...still comforting and sitting beside me. He is my most patient of comforters. 

My fight to wait ended three days ago. I feel good again. I'm praise-filled. I want to be around others. I'm thankful that I'm far enough along on this restoration process that I know the difference between depression and real living. 

Over the summer, I captured a beautiful sunset at the farm. Sun rays always remind me of God. And in the last few days, his rays are breaking through my storm. That always happens, doesn't it? Even in the storm, we have confidence the sun is still there...and when the clouds pass, the brilliance will again come through.

Even while treading water in hurricane strength forces, my SUN is still there.

Comments

  1. Praising with you that the storm has passed! What a beautiful testimony!

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