Darkness

I have really been battling with depression again these last few weeks and I don’t know how much of it is related to the end of the year exhaustion or turning 30 and being single or unknown reasons. But the thing about depression that I hate is that you desperately want to feel better and want to fight off the lies yet it requires effort and work and these are not things that you desire to do when you don’t care about much. So the depression cycles and the darkness looms and you long just to burrow away and have no contact with others because you can’t seem to do it well and you inadvertently sound harsh and cranky. So rather than cry out for help…you burrow deeper. The darkness clouds your view and you begin to live contently discontent with the lies that swirl about in your head. You feel bad about yourself, but you continue to perpetuate the behavior that makes you feel bad about yourself. Then you’re caught in the chains of self-loathing when you desperately know that the LIGHT is within your grasp if you will just open your eyes and make yourself gaze in the LIGHT and the TRUTH. You make small steps towards escaping the pit only to slide back into the dark hole. You feel worse for failing yet again to pull yourself up by your boot-straps and get it together. You feel like a failure as a friend, and a hypocrite who asks for help yet resists the steps necessary to break free. Why do I torment myself so? The vicious cycle continues and you spiral deeper and the LIGHT seems farther from your reach. Yet the LIGHT continues to conquer the darkness and you feel as if maybe just maybe there is hope for you once again to bask in the LIGHT free from the chains that you have wrapped around yourself. The LIGHT sends messengers of LIGHT to poke through your darkness to reveal the freedom that can be. Dear friends, you may not even be aware that you have done this thing.

I recently have been reading the Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love. In reading this daily, there are things that I believe I have known but not grasped in a way that makes my heart move on an emotional level. Now if you really know me you know I don’t typically tear up at movies or books. But as I was reading this passage, tears streamed down my face at the very thought of God’s heart towards me. Allow it to sink in. The reality of this is heart-melting allowing me to feel things I haven’t felt for a while. A glimmer of LIGHT.

“God now has only love, compassion, and deep affection for me, and this love is without any mixture of wrath whatsoever. God always looks upon me and treats me with gracious favor, always working all things for my ultimate and eternal good. God’s grace abounds to me even through trials. Because I am a justified one, He subjugates every trial and forces it to do good unto me. When I sin, God’s grace abounds to me all the more as He graciously maintains my justified status as described above.

When I sin, God feels no wrath in His heart against me.

His heart is filled with nothing but love for me, and He longs for me to repent and confess my sins to Him, so that He might show me the gracious and forgiving love that has been in His heart all along. God does not require my confession before He desires to forgive me.

In His heart, He already has forgiven me; and when I come to Him to confess my sins to Him, He runs to me (as it were) and is repeatedly embracing and kissing me even before I get the words of my confession out of my mouth. God does see my sin and He is grieved by my sins. His grief comes partly from the fact that in my moments of sin, I am not receiving the fullness of his love for me…I don’t deserve any of this , even on my best day; but this is my salvation, and herein I stand. Thank you, Jesus.”