A little light reading ;-)
It's been more than a year now: more than a year since I plunged back into the deep, dark hole of depression. It crept up on me: just a lack of motivation, you could say, a difficulty in disciplining myself; a growing despondency. There were external factors: the daunting task of finding a job in a foreign country where I realized my qualifications didn't get me very far at all; A's increasing frustration with my inaction turning into hostility and contempt; pain, humiliation, my pride being crushed and the very foundation on which I built my life crumbling under my feet.
What A was confronting me with was the fact that people judge character by actions. I had always seen character as something inate, something you are born with. Because I used to be a certain way, I thought that defined my essence. If my actions deviated from that or contradicted that it was always a temporary glitch, and aberration. What I was confronted with, to my horror, was that A was applying labels to me that were very much at odds with my view of myself: lazy, selfish, irresponsible, negligent, careless, indifferent. Some were justified: I do tend to be headstrong, for instance - that has always been a feature, alas - but the rest felt grossly cruel and unjust. Didn't he know that I was kind, and loving, and that I wanted his good? Why was he accusing me of sabotaging his life?
Since accepting that I have been suffering from depression last May through the diagnosis of a psychologist, I have found myself tugged between two very conflicting views of what has been happening over the last two years. On the one hand, I have had A telling me that I am lazy, undisciplined, etc., with no allowances made whatsoever, and on the other I've heard from the psychologist that the fact that I have been suffering from depression exempts me from all responsibility for my actions/inaction. While I felt A's assesment of me to be a terrible injustice and devastatingly unfair attack on my self-worth, the psychologist's assessment - as welcome as it was - didn't quite sit right with me either.
I had been complacent; I had used the idea that I had 3 years to find a job as an excuse to put off doing something I was scared of; I had responded angrily and defensively when A asked me how the job hunt was going; I did take too long to find something. Besides, I know that I am a sinner, and that I have monumentous pride issues. In the Bible we are told that the heart is deceitful above all things, and I had deceived myself into believing that my external actions didn't matter. True, my external actions as a depression sufferer weren't an accurate reflection of my desires and intentions - this is the agony of depression, that there is a disconnect between what we will and the extent to which we can actually translate that into action - but it wasn't enough to just feel love for A: I needed to also demonstrate it in my actions (as far as this was possible for me).
The thing is this: actions can be judged as sinful apart from our justifications for them. If my action (or inaction) is in my interest to the detriment of someone else, it remains selfish. As depression sufferers, we need to be careful to walk the fine line between using our depression to justify our action/inaction and falling into the trap of judging our worth by what we are (in)capable of doing in our impaired state. At the same time, we cannot disregard the ethical implications of how we live, not least of which is the effect on those closest to us. The idea here is not to stoke guilt feelings (because, after all, guilt is one of the markers of depression!), but to say: as Christians who love Jesus and want to serve Jesus, we need to rest in Him and the knowledge that we receive grace from Him, even when we aren't receiving it from those close to us, and draw strength in Him to act in love and give of ourselves at a time when this act of self-sacrifice costs us the most.
This is the product of months of thinking and praying and wrestling this down. I'm still struggling, in the thick of the haze of depression, but I have this hope and this joy inside me that just will not die!
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