The Sadness: Guest Post by Courtney

Meet Courtney. She’s a fellow For the Love book launch team member and new friend.

You can see more of the work she’s doing at https://courtneythrash.wordpress.com/.

Enjoy her post!

About nine months ago, I began taking medication for anxiety and depression. That’s scary to say. If I squint, I can almost see the stereotypes and the assumptions and the judgments lurking, salivating, waiting to pounce.

But I’ve said it. I take medication. There it is.

One day this summer I missed a day of it. And for days afterward I fought the slow, terrifying sink into the sadness.

I alternated between drenching tears and distant apathy. I rallied and pulled myself up by my metaphorical bootstraps, only to sink into the couch in painful defeat moments later–a sequence of events that was once all too familiar.

My internal dialogue was on a loop. It moved hastily from sadness to despair to determination to anger to, finally, sadness, where it began again.

It’s a losing battle, a fight I cannot win.

Becca wrote recently,

“My own fear wraps tight around me, and I push against the Savior who holds me close, even as I cry out for Him. I kick and flail and forget that I am already safe. The world I’ve imagined feels more real than what is true.

…And so I remain in the mystery. I try to work out how to relax into the arms of a Savior and trust His plans for me….”

And somewhere deep inside of me, I yelled, “Yes!”

That’s what this is.

Screaming, kicking, begging for the very Help who holds me.

I’ve known this before. I’ve learned it so many times. But, today, I need to learn it again. So, He teaches me.

Someone once said that there is power in the naming–naming the thing, the sadness, the fear, the hurt, the _____. Bringing the darkness out into the light rids the darkness of its power. (1 John 1:5)

So, as I say it out loud to myself, to my husband, to a friend, as I cry out to my Savior, I begin to see that I’m already resting in his arms. My high priest who sympathizes and gives grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).

“Please remind your self, your friend, your daughter- whoever has the sadness tonight…remind them that it’s not new. It’s not personal, just not at all. It’s ancient- the sadness. It visited Rilke two centuries ago and it’s visiting millions tonight and it’s the same, same same for all of us.

The sadness does not mean that life has forgotten you. Life might be visiting, in fact. Rest. Surrender to the forced stillness and let it pass. Wait. You will remain when it goes.”

Glennon Doyle Melton,

Momastery

Surrender to the forced stillness and let it pass.

Surrender. Wait. Remain. Rest.

I don’t have to fight a losing battle.

I can rest in the arms of the One who has already won.

Dear reader, are you in the sadness? There is hope. There is help.

Here are some great places to start:

http://treatment.adaa.org/

http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/spiritual-depression-in-the-psalms

EMBEDDED LINKS

Becca: http://www.thestanleyclan.com/2015/07/night-terrors.html