My spiritual journey: moments of clarity, ponderings, and vast irritations

Monday, June 16, 2008

I don't want to fight

Make no bones about it, I'm depressed... utterly miserable, downward spiraling depression. This is nothing new to me, as I've been in an out of depression since I was a teenager, had pre-natal and post-partum depression, been in counseling and even been medically treated for it. But this is not supposed to happen now. Not this. I'm trying, really trying to grow spiritually... and this is so... I don't know... a battle that I thought I didn't have to fight any more? "Here Jesus, here's my life, so now why are these old problems coming back to the surface? I thought you had it handled. Can't you take care of it? Just blink it away? Because I sure don't want to deal with it. I didn't want to deal with it then, and I don't want to deal with it now." But apparently I have to deal with it in order to move forward, just like I had to seek restoration with that person a couple of weeks ago (which I did and I feel immensely better, by the way!!). Again the question comes to me, "Are you as surrendered to Jesus as you think you are?" Jesus wants me to face this problem head on... I want to sink back into denial. Jesus wants me to gain the victory through him. I want to wallow in self-pity. Jesus wants me to be all that I can be in Him. I want to be a little coward and run away from everything the only way I know how to. And the devil laughs at me... he laughs knowing that he has me right where he wants me as long as I believe each of the lies that he and his minions whisper in my ear... and I do believe them every night as I lie on my pillow. But in the morning I wake only to feelings of guilt for my failure to fight, for my failure to listen to Jesus. He is there in the morning ready to talk about it, and sometimes we do. Sometimes I reach for my Bible and I weep and ask forgiveness and we fellowship together. But never do we make a game plan for victory against that which plagues me most. (My own fear, denial, and stubbornness prevents this perhaps?) Once as I read my Bible I found a passage that told who I am in Christ... How He sees me. For that moment all else faded away. I forgot the lies of Satan. I forgot the words of others. I forgot the way I treat my own self. I wept as I saw in that instance who God saw. Who I really am. I'm a beautiful person. Why can't I always see that? In listening to the other voices, I push farther and farther away from that image until it's faded to barely a memory.... I don't want to fight this battle, nor do I want to helplessly give into it and watch it tear my family apart. I'm supposed to be a conqueror. I'm supposed to be a soldier. Why don't I feel like one? The issues have become bigger to me than life itself... they have become my life. Life is worth fighting for, but the issues that I have been fighting for perhaps (even now I am not willing to admit this) are not. The battle is for the mind, and I am losing hopelessly...
And yet I am encouraged... there is hope, even if I can not feel it. There is victory, even if I can not taste it. There is an end, even if I can not see it. I have been here before and come out on the other side. Perhaps not having dealt with the issues properly, but looking over the past 7 years I have grown, I have changed, and I have healed. There are things in my life that I am ready to face now that I would have never faced even 2 years ago. So, now I look at something that I've never looked at. It's gotten so big that it can't be ignored... I can't do this alone... I'm so glad I don't have to.

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