Men get depressed

She's never called it depression before. I know it's taken me years to say it.

Last week she said he's depressed and I nodded because my soul gets stretched like that too. Depressed husbands make themselves push through. They twist their heart darkness into any other possible shape. They call it frustration or they label themselves "the melancholy type" or they just constrict to the necessary, hiding in bed but barely sleeping. They don't say "I'm depressed" very often.

Some have such rigorous self standards that they face a mountain of daily disappointment. Some wrestle with inadequacy bred into their bones and they doubt every urge or idea. Doubt paralyses them, and risking new notions fills them with terror. Fear that they cannot admit or perhaps cannot see.

Grace is the only solution. But depression conceals grace because it is born of self-criticism and failure. Failure to be what we long for, failure to see another's love for us.

So we talk about counselling and 'strategies' for self-care and the last thing he needs is strategies. He's all strategied up and he's worn out because it's another way to 'do the right thing' and be a good husband or father or person. His fear is of giving his all to God and finding nothing left for himself. That God would steal his soul if he offered it.

Someone else fears that God has nothing good to do through him. The fear robs him of passion and motivation. It leaves him misunderstood, dissatisfied and frustrated with himself. Another friend thinks others don't really like him and that man's wife reflects that she's 'a bit of an annoying person'.

It maddens me, this blindness. That we measure ourselves along such human scales, and our inadequacies become an obsession. Arrogance and pride can be about our achievements. But self- criticism is a type of pride too.

I see us all carrying self-critical burdens and they sap the life from us. God wants us to be free of this. Maybe freedom would come from seeing them more clearly and being willing to give them up. Willing to stop defining ourselves with them. To stop letting our imperfections be the barrier to God using us.

Let's turn the measuring around. Stop applying it to ourselves. Put it up against God, measure the life of Jesus. Start looking for achievement and adequacy where we're guaranteed to find it. Give up the flurry to be good enough. Accept ourselves, not to excuse failures but to stop the distracting internal war.

God is not stealing our souls, he's renewing them. We'll never find ourselves empty or soul-bereft trusting him. He's doing more than we can imagine in us (and through us), if we'll let him.

*NB. I write this, not knowing your particular experience of depression or self-criticism. Please forgive me if this does not ring true for you. I'm just reflecting on some things I've been thinking lately. This is not an exhaustive treatise on depression.

A secret revealed

I lay down on the bed beside him and his tiny hands grip my neck and pull. We laugh, noses touching and he asks me "Why?" when I say that he's little.

"Well, your legs are shorter than mine, your arms are shorter, your head is smaller..."

He's little, but he's big and we tell him he's big so he'll want to stop wearing nappies. How does he not get confused?

I know him, I absorb him, I enjoy him as we compare limb length and kiss goodnight. And tomorrow there'll be new glints of him in our touch and talk.

I started reading Matthew last year, winding through to twenty-eight and back to one again. Finding familiar and new, striking and puzzling side by side. I searched for the deeper meaning, struggled to hold the whole piece in my mind to grasp its uniqueness. Perhaps I strived to be a gnostic and find the hidden secret.

It wasn't till I read Redemption that it crept on me. The secret was not hidden, in fact it was more about revealing, about meeting and seeing. About listening and touching.

The purpose of life is not to be a better person, or to find more theological secrets. The purpose of life is to spend it with God. The purpose of faith is not me transcending myself, it is about me finding myself in the presence of God.

The purpose of reading Matthew, is not mining for nuggets. 

Reading Matthew is sitting on a hillside and eating a feast with five thousand people, or waking in a storm to see the waves suddenly calmed. It's sitting and listening as Jesus forgives, or heals or even rebukes. It is being in the presence of God, the Son.

God is with us, and reading his story is not just an intellectual exercise. It's a little like lying on the bed saying goodnight. It's that time when you meet someone face to face and give them your full attention. You get to know them by seeing them live, by stopping and listening to them.

Anything we gain in pursuing God is hollow without God himself. The fact that he is with us, within us by his Spirit and present before us in the person of Jesus, is miraculous and life-giving.

"we don't just get peace from God; God is our peace - he gives us himself.

We don't just get joy from God; he is our joy - he gives us himself."

p161 Redemption by Mike Wilkerson.

I'm linking with Emily for the last Imperfect Prose for a while. I'm excited that the break's because she's writing a book.

This week's interesting verse

Not one person whose life is twisted by sin will ever recover.

Ezekiel 7:13c

Sin twists the life of the sinner and the sinned against. We cannot recover. Our only hope is the love and redemption of Jesus.

Experimental Theology: George MacDonald: The Real Emerald City

Take a look at this...

Experimental Theology: George MacDonald: The Real Emerald City

Sometimes metaphors to describe our experience of God and our relationship with God fall short. At some point they will break down. They are a pale reflection of knowing the true and living God, author of the universe.

The idea of God seeing us 'through rose-coloured glasses' does not stand up to scrutiny from the perspective of inner transformation rather than a cosmetic cover-up of sin.

This made me think (plus I do love a good 'Wizard of Oz" illustration).

Book obsessed

I spent Australia Day reading a book. That may sound mundane, but it isn't very often that I get to read a book right through in a short time. This (Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert) was an easy read because of the conversational style and flowing stories.

Gilbert's search was founded in despair but lead to some interesting self-discovery. She seemed to learn a lot about grace through religious ritual. The God she talks about seems either distant or a part of herself, at different times in the book. Her guru and the guru's teacher have gained more of her affection, than God.

The book is definitely more about the author, than about God (understandably) and it is not a journey which will focus people on the God who made everything and loves each one of us. It helps make the point that there is more to life than Western materialism, but I don't think it inspires awe of God.

Although she obviously felt that the culmination of her journey was in Bali (the `love' part of the title) I found the book began to drift into self-indulgence, then. I started to want her to go home and stop being so self-satisfied.

I am still trying to encapsulate what I wished was in the book. I found that instead of relationship with God being an end in itself, it was a means to having a more fulfilled human life. Finding a connection with God and learning to meditate allowed Gilbert to `move on' from previous losses or failed relationships to a more fulfilling human partnership. Somehow that is not enough of a reason to see her journey as an example to follow.

Being with God

We had a discussion last night about what it means to know God intimately. So often we know about God, but it can be harder to enjoy being with God.

I struggle with this as it always seems to be more important to be doing something rather than 'nothing'. It's interesting that we refer to being still and resting as doing nothing. I actually think that God wants us to 'waste' time with him rather than rush off to our next urgent task. Even when I think about my time with God, I focus on the practicalities of what I'm going to read or what I want to say/pray about. I'm not suggesting that those things aren't good, but I don't want to forget to listen and be still, enjoying the time that the God of the Universe has for me.

There is space for different sorts of times in relationships. Sometimes there needs to be agendas, progress, working things out. Sometimes it is time to laugh, have fun, welcome others and enjoy community. Sometimes it is pleasant to sit and be and enjoy the presence of those we love. I love to look out the window and drink in the sight of my family playing or talking. I cherish those moments and am glad that I am here experiencing them. I want to feel like that about my times with God. There have been times when that has been true, but there have also been times when I treat God like another chore I need to get done, in order to get on with the next one.

“Be still, and know that I am God!
I will be honored by every nation.
I will be honored throughout the world.” Psalm 46:10

Intersubjectivity

My rudimentary understanding of the concept is that it refers to the space between 2 people, the relationship or the interraction between them. 

Learning about therapy has been pretty challenging as I sit with my client/patient (depending on what your particular discipline calls her). On one level I am remaining attentive, listening to the content of what she is saying. On another level, I am listening to the themes which arise and linking patterns for future reference. Then my eye must keep attentive to time (note to self - suggest wall clocks for MH centre at LH! Serruptitious watch glances take too much effort!). Then I am also trying to weigh responses to what I say - was that a disjunction or an elaboration? How can I stop and talk about that - bring attention to the intersubjectivity?

At this stage, my brain is overloaded and amidst it all I'm trying to behave naturally and comfortably. Thankfully, the person I sit with and practice all these skills with is also someone who has allowed me to know her and her life intimately. For 4 years we have sat weekly and talked together about life's struggles, stresses and surprising strengths. What we have is friendship and understanding - they lie within a strict frame and boundary - we do not interract outside our weekly sessions, we are not buddies.

The mind is an amazing instrument. So precise and able to multi-task in a complex way. Personal, individual, trainable and focussed. Open to the vagaries of relationship, with marvellous plasticity. Sometimes the language is complex but the reality is simple.

People are made for relationship, made in the image of a complex and relational god. Made to listen and to be together, to grow together and to move through life, hopefully maturing and strengthening. We both learn and grow in this 'therapy' and I hope I begin to get my 'intersubjectivity antennae' working.