illuminating my darkness

(thanks to my friend, who loaned me the book that has inspired this post.)

without going into a lot of detail, i have struggled for the past several years, on and off, with depression--whether diagnosed as such or not. along with that goes a poor self-image and even feelings of self-hatred at times, partly due to my seeming inability to break free from feeling down so much of the time.

i have been reading a book today that has put voice to things so relevant to these feelings i have struggled with for so long, in ways that i have never heard before. i found the author's words thought-provoking, speaking understanding and hope deep into my soul, helping to make sense of things that i had almost resigned myself to never make sense of. here is just a piece of what spoke to me today.

"Depression demands that we reject simplistic answers, both "religious" and "scientific", and learn to embrace mystery, something our culture resists. Mystery surrounds 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 seems 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."

-Parker J. Palmer, "Let Your Life Speak"

i was also intrigued later as the author described how he came to view his depression not as an attack from the enemy, but more as a gift from a friend, because of how it really grounded him and showed him things about himself and his life (which i won't go into now). i think this really spoke to me because so often we tend to view our weaknesses or hardships as things to overcome or be delivered from, instead of just being willing to embrace and walk through them.