The Deep, Dark Wilderness of Depression

Disclaimer: Please note that this blog is in no way meant to minimize the despair of someone suffering from a mental illness or to maximize the darkness and pain of the caregiver. It expresses my reality.

Sometimes, we get pulled along into the wilderness of someone we love; clinical depression works this way. My first experience, my first step into this wilderness came when, after more than a decade of marriage to a strong, productive, competent, and talented man, he became clinically depressed. The memory of this unexpected, extremely difficult, and frightening journey has only been somewhat tempered by the passage of time, but we finally stumbled on the exit; God, therapy, and meds lead the way out. My husband recovered and life returned to normal…until it wasn’t. Two more episodes of depression over the intervening years were equally as difficult, dark, and disorienting, though our experience had taught us that this too shall pass, even if we couldn’t see it.

Then, decades later, as if the previous three wilderness experiences had just been practice runs, we entered what I think the Valley of the Shadow of Death must be like. The medications that had been effective for so many years inexplicably stopped working; we were plunged once again into a wilderness, familiar, yet so much darker, more frightening, seemingly endless, and without hope. This time, there wasn’t a road, a path, or even bread crumbs, no E.T.A. (if one even existed), no rest areas, no map. We were lost, the blind leading the blind, the weak leading the weaker; it was the darkest of times for both of us. We went from one devastating roadblock to another.

The realization that going to work was no longer possible, the sense of failure, his difficult (and humbling) call to his employer- and the drawn-out struggle to get a medical leave. The loss of income shortly before retirement, taking entry-level delivery and manufacturing jobs when he was finally able to function on some level.

The weeks of trying different medications and dosages, aware that most psychotropic meds take weeks to work. And, the trip to the emergency room, the admission to the locked psych ward, where the staff kept asking about his suicidal state (thankfully, he never was, but perhaps that’s a requirement for admission?). The required group sessions, where he wasn’t even able to process what was being presented. The arts and crafts. And the day, shortly after admission, we were given a DVD to watch (and consider) on electroshock therapy (“it was now so much better than decades ago, and might only mean a loss of memory”). The suicide of his roommate shortly after discharge. A four-day hospital admission, helpful only in that it gave me a break from caretaking.

The guilt I felt when I looked forward to going to work, to getting away, to getting out of the house. The gnawing concern that he would be OK when I wasn’t there. The times I stayed at work late or ran errands- or looked for any excuse not to go home. The fear I felt deep, deep in my being that there would never be a recovery, that my future would be forever centered around depression, that I would never get my husband back.

Where was God in this darkness? The Israelites wandered in their wilderness for 40 years because they despised God and refused to believe in Him, disobeyed and tested Him; but even so, God was with them. But my husband is one of the most committed Christians I know, his faith is rock solid… it felt like God had long ago abandoned us. The Great Physician? Why not then? I remembered stumbling on a song by Crowder, “I Am”, copying it and playing it over and over in the car. But I was only holding on by a thread.
“I am
Holding on to You
I am
Holding on to You
In the middle of the storm
I am holding on
I am!”

Our wilderness experience lasted 1 ½ years. This was 7 years ago, and I can’t say that I’m grateful for this wilderness journey, I can’t say that it made me feel stronger, that it increased my faith; I physically felt the trauma and relived the emotional pain, darkness, and hopelessness as I wrote this. I don’t know why God allowed this. I can only cling to this truth from Isaiah 55: “I don’t think the way you think. The way you work isn’t the way I work. For as the sky soars high above earth,so the way I work surpasses the way you work, and the way I think is beyond the way you think.”

— cmshingle