I’ve described depressive episodes as falling into a deep dark hole and getting so far inside that it feels like I could never find my way out from the dark. The wonderful part of faith is knowing that no matter how deep and dark that hole is, God will always be there to light the way and help me find my way again.
That’s a depressive episode, but there’s something I am experiencing now that feels worse. It’s chronic pain. The thing about chronic pain is the amount of pain isn’t the bad part; it is the duration of the pain that is the bad part. If someone told you that you were going to experience the pain of smashing your thumb with a hammer, you’d think you could handle that pain after all it just lasts a few seconds and then the pain dissipates. After a couple of minutes, you are back to normal. But what if I told you that pain was going to stay in your thumb indefinitely? Would you really be able to handle it? That’s the problem of chronic pain.
In the last few weeks, I have felt like my head is being slowly crushed. It is painful and I am living with it, but every once in a while, I just melt. I start crying and feeling really down. It almost feels like I don’t even know why, and it is because I have gotten so used to the feeling of the pain of my head being crushed. I have started to feel lost in the pain. Pain doesn’t feel like a deep dark hole. It feels like a free fall from a height where I don’t have control over anything, and I can’t grab hold of anything to keep from falling and I don’t have a parachute. I feel like screaming because it is so damned scary.
And I have to ask myself: How does faith work here? Well, I have to trust that God is going to catch me and keep from hitting the ground and going splat. I have to hope that before I get to the bottom of the drop, God will stop my fall. I have to pray that while I fall, my hope doesn’t give out and I don’t lose my mind.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
