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If I am only looking inward at my own black hole, or downward at where my feet are stuck at, I am only going to go further and further back into that dark, dark room of my soul, never forward.  I can say these things to you because I have lived in a state of depression.  I remember SO well the feeling of helplessness, of utter despair.  The feeling of being in a hole so black and deep, that there seemed absolutely NO WAY OUT. 

Depression did things to my vision.  I mean,  the way I saw things in the real world.  It made things look fuzzy and distorted, like I was on some kind of mind altering drug.  Depression can make a sunny day seem like it is dark, murky and cloudy.  Depression can take away whole blocks of time.

One of the other symptoms of depression, even "slight", or the beginning of depression, can be crying.  A doctor I went to when I first started thinking something was wrong, gave me a list of 10 things or "symptoms" of depression.  If I checked at least 4 of them, chances were likely that I was in some form of depression. 

How ironic that many of these symptoms are listed under many other illnesses such as PMS, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia and even Desert Storm Syndrome.  But is there a blood test or other type of test to VERIFY CONCLUSIVELY that depression is the illness you are struggling with? NO.  They simply observe how you respond to the medication and if you respond well, you must have depression and are being helped by it.  What if you have one of the other illnesses listed?  I wonder how many people are being lulled into catatonic states by medication they really don’t need?

One of the aforementioned symptoms was "crying for any reason", at the drop of a hat, crying all the time and not knowing why you’re crying and/or intense feelings of sadness, which lead to crying.

Ladies, I can tell you that I cried a lot on the outside, but I also cried on the inside almost constantly.  And in what seems to be a dichotomy, when I was on the meds, even when I WAS sad about something, I could NOT cry.  It was like the medication was a shield to tears, or FEELING.  So I literally went from crying all the time to not crying at all, even over things I SHOULD have been crying over, in less than a month.

I thought this meant I had "beat" the problem, but in essence, I had created another more deadly one, and that was lack of feeling, lack of remorse or LACK OF CONVICTION over anything.  I guess the pendulum had swung back way too far the other way.

All of a sudden, when a corner of the blackness lifted, I found myself not being able to remember how I got where I was.  I didn’t remember Christmases, my birthday, my daughter’s birthday or my son’s archery shoots.  The only way even knew I had been at these events was because I was in photos people showed me.  It was like watching a movie of myself and being there, but not really knowing I was there at the time. 

Our lives are supposed to be lived with the JOY of the Lord.  How on earth could I be a witness to someone and tell them they want what I have, if I am so tied up in fear of every day living? I lived in fear of others finding out how much I hated my life.  Why would God give me this life, if I was going to be so miserable and not do anything for him???  Then, a verse I heard multiple times while growing up kept popping my head.  James 1:22, "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves."  That is a powerful verse, unfortunately, we only hear it in the negative sense of , "you are not doing enough for the cause of Christ". Many times when I heard this verse, I would curl up tighter inside myself and just shake when I thought of how sad I was making Jesus by not being the light, salt and witness I knew He wanted me to be.

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