2012 - Carried

Towards the end of the spring semester last year, I started feeling depressed.  However, I've struggled with depression before during the past 4 years with this illness, and depression unfortunately tends to be a chronic illness's side kick a lot of the time.  I figured that I was just super exhausted from getting through another year of school and that I'd feel better once I was home and could rest.  Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and this summer ended up being a really, really difficult time for me, which is why I took a break from blogging.  Basically, it became impossible to focus on anything because my brain was always busy freaking out about people getting old and dying, or feeling guilty for enjoying anything when other people in the world were suffering, or being depressed about how depressing life would be if I was always depressed and thinking about other people dying (that would probably only make sense to depressed people, because depression makes your brain think really weird/sad thoughts!).  I was even depressed about life after death, because I thought I'd be depressed then, too.  One day, my friend and I were planning on going out to ice cream, and I almost didn't go because I spent the half hour prior to leaving having a mental breakdown because I felt so guilty for doing something fun.  It was nuts.  And sad.

Depression is a whole bunch of lies, but it's cleverly mixed in with truth that make the lies seem believable.  I was right that I didn't deserve to have fun... I also don't deserve to spend eternity with Jesus.  But God is awesome like that.  He loves us with a love that I can't even grasp.  

This fall, I met once a week with a counselor at school who was very, very helpful.  First, we worked on being thankful.  Whenever I started feeling guilty (which was basically all of the time at that point), I started thanking God for his blessings.  God did some awesome things through that, and after a long, long time, I'm pretty sure I spent a week acting like a crazy person who was convinced that flowers and grass and bunnies and friends were worth jumping up and down in joy about.  Unfortunately, depression doesn't just disappear, so I still struggled a lot, but I was learning to replace lies with truth.  I was also learning more and more about God's unchanging love and faithfulness.

All of those struggles left me with a pretty epic prayer journal.  It's kind of repetitive, because there were always prayers for healing, both physically and mentally, but it is really, really cool to see what I was learning about God and His love throughout all of it.  Physically, He hasn't healed me.  I still have fevers, fatigue, and headaches everyday, and I still spend ridiculous amounts of time at the doctors trying to figure things out.  Mentally, I'm doing better, but I still have some very hard days. But, I've never been more certain that we have a God who will carry us through everything we'll ever face.

God's love for us doesn't change.  We can't make Him love us more or less than He does now.  As the year came to an end, it was obvious to me that God never left me.  2012 was hard, but it wasn't impossible... at least not with God.  Instead, it was a very real experience of His love and patience... even when we don't deserve it.