Gloria!

Can it be?  I am alone with the computer for the first time in weeks...AND it's working!  It's still dark outside, but I'm assuming the passing snow plow has something to do other than simply tootle around the countryside.  The Christmas lights on our tree are providing a sense of additional warmth, and the wood stove is doing it's part to herald this day as a perfect continuation of the Christmas season.  Cold, dark and white on the outside...warm, colorful and peaceful on the inside.
    At some point in this blog, I'd like to try and write during the "throes" of an episode with depression.  Not to depress would-be readers...but to create a sense of solidarity with those who struggle in this way, and a sense of progress despite this illness.  The first weeks of December were a black time for me...almost to Christmas.  So I have been silent.  Watching myself, frustrated by my seeming inability to rise above the hurt, to control my tongue, to live out the life I know Christ wants me to be living.  Depression is a real disease.  When I am battling, from within the arena I am only aware of how little control I have over ANYTHING, but especially my words and reactions.  There is no place within me that I can "pull over and rest".  Every slight, every injustice takes me to the bitter end of the road, and it's all I can do to acknowledge that this is not the intention of the person hurting me.  They have the ability to "walk away", shrug their shoulders, not take it so hard.  It seems an unfairness not only to me, but also to my family, that I lack this ability when I am in the middle of "an episode".  But that is the plain case of it.  I understand women who simply choose to stay in bed for several weeks.  ...but that brings me to my second point about Depression.  While it is organically real for us, it is also an emotional crutch that can so easily become an excuse to live in bitterness and resentment and laziness.  When the least physical movement costs us so much...how can we find the strength to move forward emotionally and spiritually? 
  The strength comes from Jesus.  I love that the Psalmist says "the joy of the Lord is my strength".  We don't have to muster it up.  It is there for us to crawl into, and rest.  It is real...more real than our pain, more real than our feelings of rejection and hopelessness.  It is a fact that stands from before time and is woven throughout eternity.  Joy.  Not thumping adrenalin, not pasted smiles, not hallmark sentiments.  Real Joy.  I do not have to feel it, but as a Christian, I have to acknowledge the truth of it, and if I'm doing that, I might as well allow it to inform my way of life.  I am not encouraging anyone to be disingenuous.  When we are sad, we are sad.  But is it disingenuous to live out the fullness of truth, whether we feel it or not?
     Mother Teresa of Calcutta encouraged her nuns to smile.  In the midst of death, poverty, vile smells and sights, starvation, ingratitude...in the midst of all of it, she encouraged them to smile.  That smile brought relief to others.  It was the face of Jesus in the darkest of the night.  During this season when we celebrate the historical fact of God taking on flesh, it is not fanciful or wishful thinking to imagine his face lighting up with a smile as he looks upon his children.  There is a Gloria to be sung because of his presence in this dark world.  My niece recently posted the familiar line "A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices!"  In the pain of depression we MUST remember that no darkness is impenatrable.  If we simply cannot see him, let us smile so that others can. 
   Yesterday I read in Isaiah, "...all who see them shall acknowledge them, that they are a people whom the LORD has blessed."  By virtue of my salvation brought about because of the Incarnation, my choice to smile is a testimony of the Lord's blessing.  Not a fake smile because of me, but a true smile because of Christ whose love extends to every person ever created. 
   Words are powerful.  My challenge today...to speak aloud the word "Gloria!" when I am tempted by self-pity or laziness.  To smile.

An Important Note to those who may read this blog

   I am NOT computer savvy.  There are a million and one ways people could easily figure out who I am.  I have asked people to review this blog who, of course are aware of my identity.  I have also asked my husband for permission to write this, with the understanding that our difficulties are not going to always reflect so positively on him.  He has given his permission...and will probably never read an entry.  This makes it possible for me to be completely honest.  It is my hope that by keeping somewhat anonymous, I will not dishonor my husband by what I write.  It certainly is not my intent.  However, because I am specifically writing about the challenges in marriage, there is no way for him to continually appear as a knight on a white horse whose every breath is taken out of love for me. 
   My goal, as already stated, (but I cannot state it enough), is to pursue with a whole heart what we as wives can do to strengthen our marriages.  It goes without saying that our husbands need to be working on our marriages as well and that they need to attend to their own relationship with God and with God's people.  However, while we pray continually for them, the only people we have the power to change is ourselves.   If I write something that clearly sheds light on a negative encounter with my husband...please forgive him, and forgive me for any hint of discontent I may try to justify. 
The goal is Jesus.  Always.

Clinging to the Rock

As I sit staring at this screen, I'm keenly aware that it has already been a week since I last posted...and that I have little desire to write!  How's that for an opening line!  There's a very stiff breeze blowing outside, this first day of December, and I feel like Snoopy wondering if the leaves will ever make it back to the ground, or if they'll be swirling in the air all day.  

  My hesitancy in writing has to do with the very reason for starting this blog.  It has been a difficult couple of weeks.  Where I feel the need for love and understanding, I've been misunderstood and "watched" as though anything I say or do could be used against me.  I know I'm not alone in this sensation...be it a correct or incorrect interpretation of the world I live in.  And so I will write through the feeling, perhaps arriving at an answer...perhaps not.  

   Given:  I am committed to my marriage, to doing all I can to bring both myself and my husband before God's throne on Judgment day, with confidence in the Grace and Mercy of God, and the knowledge that I have lived in the shelter of those gifts as He has given me the ability to do so.  

   Given:  Both my husband and myself are very human, at different places in our respective Spiritual Journeys, and equally gifted at usurping God's place as Judge and Jury in the many trials that come our way as a couple.

   Given:  ...and this is the hard part.  Regardless of how things SHOULD be, I am, and may always be, the partner that emotionally, (and probably spiritually), cares the most about our married relationship.  That puts me in a position of responsibility that I cannot shrug off or angrily shake off as not belonging to me.  I am first and foremost a child of the Living God.  While man may not afford me this dignity...it is still mine.  What God has granted is so.  I am the only person that has the ability to remove myself from the place He has for me.  No one else can do that.  

  So...If I feel shaken, I am the person to cling to the Rock.  If I feel wounded, I am the one that must seek healing.  If I have sinned, I am the one to seek repentance.  HOWEVER...regardless of how those words look on the screen...these movements I make are always with the end goal that WE will be stronger for it...WE will be healed...WE will be forgiven.  It is not personal survival that is the goal...it is Salvation for two who have become one.

   "Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives..." 1 Peter 3:1  For some of us, submission means simply keeping our mouths shut in the face of difficulty.  ...and therein lies my challenge for today!

       Love is the defining force of my marriage.  I had hoped that it would be our love for each other...romance and happiness.  What I have received and continually seek is something far more...Divine Love and Eternal Joy.  These are guaranteed in the shadow of His wing. What matters is that Love is happening, healing and drawing us.  The pain inflicted in marriage is a gift that sends us running to the Father...and hopefully running back to our spouses with our hearts full of His love and our arms ready to share it. Peace.