Rejection
I can remember my mother talking to a doctor about giving me “nerve pills” when I was a pre teen. As a teenager, I experienced the repeated rejection of a close friend and soon began to experience the torment that depression can bring.
As a young mother, I fell into a deep post-partum depression. This experience was the most painful. Attacks of depression continued over the next seven years. They would vary in length with the longest period lasting for nine months. I lived in a very isolated area of north-central British Columbia and rarely visited a doctor or talked with other people. One thing I continued to do though, was talk to God and cry out in my despair.
Need for God
You see, I am a Christian. I had recognized at a very early age my need for God and His deep love for me. Now, years later, I was in the pit of despair, crying out to a God that I felt had abandoned me. I thought Christians shouldn’t be depressed and my husband and friends couldn’t understand what was wrong with me. Their comments pushed me to a place of deeper despair. Again, I called out to God for help. Where was He? Had I so disappointed Him that He would not hear me? When I felt most tormented I would read my Bible looking for relief and comfort.
In the following passages of the Bible God spoke to me:“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30).
“But now, this is what the Lord says – he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you, 0 Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze. For I am the Lord, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead” (Isaiah 43:1-3).
“Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted” (Isaiah 53:4).
“Oh Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O Lord.
You hem me in – behind and before;
you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me;
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, ‘‘Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is a light to you.
