I haven't been posting alot lately as I have been very busy both with work and with preparation for the character hearing that I have been discussing in past posts. However today I returned again to the Lawyers with Depression website and there was an article in respect to the place of faith in recovery from depression and it got me thinking.
You may recall from past posts in high school I became involved in what was called then, the Jesus People movement, again not the glassy eyed version but the more conservative Baptist movement of the seventies. While I was as described certainly being a hypocrite in respect to my professed beliefs versus my actions, some of what I learned during that period did stick or remain with me. One thing I remember from that period was having a discussion with a charismatic evangelical missionary at a retreat that I had attended.
I had asked him about hell, saying that I really couldn't buy the medieval concept of fire and pitch forks. He told me that he believed hell to simply be an eternal separation from God. Not just a turning away but a separation. He told me that whether or not you believe in something bigger than yourself it is always around you, the possibility of faith or a turning to God is always there, however in his version of hell, he is not around you and you cannot turn to him even if you want to. Its kind of like sunlight, you can decide to go outside or not, it does not change the fact that it is there, by analogy, in his version of hell, there is no sun to go to.
In hindsight when I think about these statements in terms of the depression there seems to be a strange analogous truth to them. I was never really religious after my high school days, perhaps I at least accepted my past hypocrisy, but I did believe and I did occasionally attend church and had my children baptised in the Church of my youth, I guess to use terms of the 21st century I was spiritual rather than religious. I prayed in low times, thanked God in good times, however in thinking back during the depression that option was gone, not ignored, not avoided, not rejected, just gone.
Now when I say gone, I am not implying or trying to suggest that in some delusion of grandeur that the universe turned its back on me personally but rather that in the depression I turned my back on it, the separation was self imposed, in other words rather than deciding not to go out, I painted the windows black, locked the door and threw away the key, I chose hell. Sounds dramatic but in hindsight, I don't remember praying during this period, I didn't ask God or anyone else for that matter for help, I was alone and I accepted that fact, and quite frankly I think I preferred that position, I didn't want anyone to know what I was going through, even God. So I chose the separation from God and the world and entered into a personally constructed hell.
Sounds a bit grand but I think that when you have faith in something larger than yourself you can have hope but when you cannot have faith you cannot have hope and I like others that have suffered from depression know that without hope there is despair. I have spoken about the pain of depression before, and it is almost impossible to describe, except to say that it is severe enough that you will view death as a reasonable alternative to it, and look forward to the relief that oblivion will bring, this pain I believe comes directly from the despair. A feeling of such hopelessness that even God does not exist in the world you have entered, so not only are you separated from your friends and family but from the everything that could ever lift you from the despair.
So the upshot of what I am trying to say is that if you are suffering from depression you must find hope and hope lies in faith in something bigger than yourself, so you must find someone to help you whatever faith you had or may want, go, and ask for help, tell that someone that you need faith, you may not want it, you may never before believed that you wanted it, but now you need it, and with that help you will hopefully be able to ask for the other help you need to beat the depression and once more have hope.
I didn't do this and suffered for it, and while I am still not a religious person I can say that I do have faith and know that there is something bigger than me in the universe, so I am not alone and there is always hope.
I have re-read this post and while I have not changed it I wanted to add some further thoughts, not in terms of faith so much as the need at least I had and have to be part of something bigger than myself.
When I was young, well like all teens and young adults I wanted to be accepted, to have friends and be part of a family. As I got older I think this need was met, at least during law school and after my call when I went west by the fraternity of lawyers, I believe that is the term although I am not quite sure if there is a more politically correct one. Anyway this sense of belonging to something larger than myself was a comfort and satisfied that need in me, however when the depression set in with its attendant shame I became separated from this fraternity and lost that comfort and confidence. Now I would like to say that as discussed to some extent in previous posts that I was ostracized and lost this sense of belonging through no fault of my own but that wouldn't be true or in the least bit accurate. Yes I have previously discussed the reactions of some of my colleagues when I jumped into the pit and the Society began to take action and I have discussed some of the problems experienced to date with various local counsel however it is important to note that there is no question of the chicken or the egg. I dug the hole and I jumped into it. In other words as I became more depressed it was my decision, no matter how delusional or misguided to retreat from those that not only loved me but also those in the profession that could have helped or at least understood the pressures and problems that were driving me. So I guess to be be honest it was I that disengaged not the fraternity or my colleagues initially.
I discuss this here following my discussions of faith not only because I disengaged from faith in the same way that I did from God or the Universe but because I want those that may not have had any type of spiritual faith before they began the descent into depression that faith is not the sole property of the church and to try to illustrate that the faith I am discussing does not have to be spiritual, it simply has to be a faith or trust in something bigger than you although the two are not mutually exclusive.
I am not suggesting dear reader that this trust is easy either during or after suffering from depression, but you must believe and trust in something, you must specifically decide to trust in things outside yourself, family and friends when you can but generally the long term overall justice of the world. The trust may not always be justified but you must trust anyway and with that I believe you will have faith after all even God sometimes says no to prayers.
In my case I believe that things will work out somehow, I believe that there are inherent truths in the world that despite signs to the contrary will eventually win out, I believe that justice may not always be done in the short term but will succeed in the end. I keep this faith even when the facts may indicate the opposite and when my fear of something I cannot control tries to overwhelm me.
A good example of this is the licensing hearings I am now facing, despite the fear that sometimes sneaks up on me, despite my concerns in respect to agendas and institutional policy I have faith that the truth will be accepted and everything will work out in the end, and this as I spoke about earlier is hope and despair cannot stand against hope.
