:Fascinating:

I've got to be at least a little bit crazy, it think.

As a child, I used to wonder sometimes if my parents were hiding from me the fact that I had some sort of mental deficiency...I'd just feel like there HAD to be something wrong with me...

Even though, (apparently) there isn't.

Now, here I am, twenty-five, made it though elementary and high school, and three years of college ( with Dean's List-level grades), married, with two children, and I'm fairly positive that there's no mental deficiency here... So take that, six-year-old Sam...

You were wrong.

But that doesn't mean that life doesn't mess with my head. In fact, if anything, I think it messes with my head more now than it ever did in the past.

The strange thing is, if I try and disconnect myself from that mind-scramble and look at it objectively, I find it fascinating.

So maybe, six-year-old Sam, you were right.

It is, after all, crazy to say that you're fascinated by your depression, isn't it?

But that's exactly what this has been for me, even in its deepest, darkest, I-never-want-to-ever (ever, ever)-feel-like-this again-est moments.

Fascinating.

I have always been able to empathize to some degree with people, even if I haven't experienced the things that they are going through. I've been told that, to some degree, it is one of my gifts (though I would argue it's not one of my foremost gifts). So the concept of depression was not NEW to me when I discovered myself in the midst of it... I've never been one of those "just get over it" kind of people... But what I've seen is that this is definitely something that has to be lived through in order to truly understand it.

You can sympathize (and many people do, quite effectively), comfort, and walk alongside people in depression... Heck, you may even be able to conceptually understand what's going on, and it may make perfect sense to you.

But until you've been there, you don't know it.

I know it sounds cliché... But clichés are rooted in realities, aren't they? I strikes me that these things would never have become cliches if they weren't actually true over and over and over and over (ad nauseum) again.

And what I've found, now that I HAVE been there, is that it's incredibly fascinating the power that our mind has over our bodies, and indeed, over every aspect of our lives.

It's been intriguing to see how seemingly little things (things that, looking back, are really not a big deal at all, but in the moment seemed monumental) can flip a switch and drag you to what I can only assume would qualify as the "valley of the shadow of death", or "the darkest valley" that the Psalmist describes in Psalm 23...

...and yet...

Something a simple as remembering the fact that He IS with you, can flip that switch back the other way. It doesn't always happen quickly like that... Often, it's a few days or weeks to get back to the place of feeling like your feet are under you again, and like you understand how to think your way out of the paper bag you're in (after all, it's dangerous to put plastic bags on your head, right?)...but the light DOES come, always.

It ALWAYS comes.

So, six-year-old Sam...

I think you WERE wrong... There's nothing "wrong" with me... I'm just broken.

Broken, and learning to understand how to walk each day in the shadow of His love... Which sometimes seems to be more difficult than I'd like... But it's there, and it's ALWAYS enough...

Perhaps especially when I feel like everything's upside down and there's no way out.

Make that DEFINITELY when everything is upside down and there's no way out.

Except that there is a way out. And I know where it is.

I just need to keep sight of that and continue to walk towards it, even when I can't see.