Stuck for a Reason

     

This excerpt is taken
from my book,
  Don't Let Go Before Dawn.

Jacob was at a crossing-over time in his life.  He was on his way to see his long-estranged brother, Esau.  He had reached the banks of the Jabbok River and wanted to cross over to the other side.  He sent the people he loved and the possessions he had acquired through hard work and trickery across the river, but he couldn’t continue the journey with them.  We’re not sure whether he sent his family and possessions across the river without him or if he took them across then returned by himself.  In either case, Jacob was stuck on the wrong side of the river. 

“Stuck” is a word many people have used to describe depression, the inability and, at times, the lack of desire to cross the next river, to move forward  into the next chapter of their life’s story. 

I was stuck in depression and I didn’t like it.  I complained to my counselor that I was so weary of feeling bad and was frustrated and angry that my doctor hadn’t found a medicine or combination of medicines that would lessen my symptoms.  Upon hearing this, Charlie’s face took on its own look of disgust as he challenged me to understand my breakdown on the wrong side of life’s river in a different way.  He told me, very emphatically, “This is not just about finding the right medicine to treat your symptoms.  This is about how you’re living your life!”

The day I heard those words was the day I began to understand that I might be stuck for a reason.  Beyond the genetic predisposition for depression I was certain I had inherited and could not change, I started so see that the way I was living my life, something I can work to understand, evaluate, and change, was a factor in my illness too; perhaps a greater factor than I had ever thought possible.  Even more amazingly, I pondered the possibility that I might leave this place where I’d been stuck a better person than when I arrived.  The challenge to understand the way I was living my life and change it for the better was the first glimmer of hope and the first feeling of empowerment I had felt in a very long time. 

If you are stuck in a season of depression right now, I want to challenge you to think about what my counselor told me.  You are stuck on what feels like the wrong side of life’s river, separated from people, from joy, from motivation, even from God, not just to find the right medicine to alleviate your symptoms and allow you to continue your life where you left off.  You may be stuck for a reason.  You may be depressed, in part, because of the way you’re living your life.  I don’t challenge you with that thought to blame or condemn you for your illness.  If you are like I was, you’re probably doing a very good job of that already.  I invite you to see being stuck on the wrong side of the river as an opportunity to understand yourself with new insight and an invitation to grow.  After a long night of being stuck, you can, like Jacob, cross the river more healthy and whole than you’ve ever been before.