God Doesn’t Make Junk

Posted by LauraD | 0 comments

Depression runs in my family.  I don’t want to out specific family members and their particular struggles, but suffice it to say that more than half of my immediate family has experienced a profound struggle with depression.  I grew up with a very melancholic personality.  I felt things deeply, took things personally, and sometimes spent hours in an empty bathtub, fully clothed, crying.  I remember my mother sitting on the edge of that tub trying to talk me down off the ledge (or out of the tub, as it were).

My teenage depression peaked my senior year of high school, which was one of the lowest points in my life.  My three years younger brother was heavily into drugs and alcohol, and his mental problems absorbed the majority of my parents’ time and emotional resources.  My older sister, my best friend and worst enemy, had just left for college, and my boyfriend of three years had just left for the Navy.  My tiny support system had crumbled.  I still resisted telling anyone how much I was hurting.  Even to this day, there are only a couple of people who know how very hard that year was for me, and how dark my thoughts were.  The worst part was that I was starting to head down a path, morally, in which I did not believe, and which could have seriously derailed my future goals.

It was right as I started college that God revealed Himself to me in the most direct way He had up to that point, or since.  Through a series of coincidences, I met my husband the week before I started college.  Given that he was six years older than I, that he had already graduated from the college that I was about to attend, and that had I not been away from home, I never would have been allowed to date him given the age difference, it truly was the hand of God that put this amazing man in my life at just the right time.  Because of him, my life righted itself before it ever really got off track.  I was happier than I had ever been in my life.

As many people who tend to suffer lifelong battles with depression know, however, happiness can be ephemeral and elusive.  By the time I started graduate school, I had been married for almost two years, and my old demons were returning to haunt me.  Never ending doubts about my self-worth, about my competency, and about God’s ability to love me were returning in force.  It became harder for me to handle life’s little bumps in the road.

By the time I received my Ph.D., I had two toddlers and was pregnant with twins.  By the time my twins were born, I had four children under the age of 3 ½.  Truly, if it were not for my oldest daughter, I don’t know if I could have made it through that time in my life.  She was then and still is (at 9) my rock.  Up to this point, I had scorned the ideas of both talk therapy and medication.  Those fallbacks were for my siblings with their love of drama and all of the baggage they thought they carried from our less-than-ideal upbringing.  I could handle my issues on my own.  I didn’t need any crutches.

I truly think that it is nothing less than my own stubbornness that enabled me to come as far as I did with that attitude.  I had staked out a position years before, and I would not be moved from it.  I had an amazing husband, four beautiful and ridiculously healthy children, a doctorate from a highly respected school, and a nascent freelance writing career: what on earth did I have to be sad about? It turns out, of course, that the answer doesn’t matter.  The more I tried to tell myself that I had no reason to be depressed, the guiltier and sadder I felt.  Moreover, I felt so terribly lonely and ashamed.

I don’t want to plumb the depths of my depression, nor do I want to admit to some of the thoughts that I not only had, but entertained.  Suffice it to say that as I escaped to my room many times every day so that my children would not see me sob, I thought things which deeply sadden me to remember.  Of course my husband knew that something was very wrong, and he told me repeatedly to get whatever help I needed, but it really is true that no one can get you to that place where you are willing to get help until you are ready.

I don’t know what the turning point was.  Perhaps it was finding out that so many of the women I encountered on a regular basis through my children’s activities took medication, or perhaps it was realizing that I was damaging my marriage and my children by allowing myself to suffer when relief was available.  Perhaps having my thyroid problem adjusted allowed me to be able to focus more clearly on the other things that were causing me to feel wretched.  More likely, it was realizing that my son has many of my brother’s personality traits, and that in order best to help him, I really had to get my own act together.  Regardless, over a year ago, I finally succumbed to medication.

It hasn’t been a magic bullet.  My basic personality is, as I said, melancholic and reflective.  It has made a world of difference, though.  I feel more like myself than I have in years.  I am able better to put things in perspective.  I am able to admit how depressed I was.  I tried talk therapy, but that one is still problematic for me.  Contrary to the impression I probably give here, I am just not that comfortable talking about myself.  I am a very private person.

Have I forgotten God in this equation? Of course not.  I’ve never stopped praying.  I’ve never stopped knowing on a very deep level (even if I sometimes find it hard to believe on a more conscious level) that I am created in His image and, as my father always told me, “God doesn’t make junk.” Taking medication doesn’t mean that I lack a fundamental faith in God.  It means that I am cooperating with God in my own healing.

I don’t admit to having a problem with depression to just anyone, but when a harried mom asks me how I do it (the four kids so close in age, the homeschooling, the growing writing career), I assure her that it’s truly not as easy as it appears.  Anyone who tells you it is easy is likely not being entirely honest.  As mothers, we really do owe it to each other to be honest.  We are all in this together.  Being a full time homeschooling mom is the hardest job on the planet.  There are no coffee breaks, no bathroom breaks, no lunches out with your friends, no external validations of your intrinsic worth.  I don’t need to go into the dividends that we reap; we all know what those are.  Just don’t ever sell yourself short on the tremendous sacrifices, both financial and emotional, that you make every day.

If you’re suffering from depression as you read this, please know that I have been there, and that I know what you’re going through.  You are in my prayers.  There is a light at the end.  You will come through this.  You are a person of extreme worth, both in the eyes of God and in the eyes of those who love you.  What you feel today is not what you will feel for the rest of your life. Even realizing just this one fact can help on a very bad day.

Laura Delgado has been married to her husband, Henry, for 14 years. She gave birth to four children in exactly 40 months, but cheated since the last two were twins. She now happily homeschools her 8,6, and two 4 year-olds. She earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Rice University, but finds that she uses her undergraduate Great Books education far more in her homeschooling pursuits. In addition to writing for various homeschooling publications, she creates educational materials for edHelper. For homeschooling helps and curriculum reviews, please visit her blogs at Living as Martha and Salve Regina Homeschool.