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.