This Weird Feeling of "Not Depressed"

The other day I read a verse in Psalm 30:

I will exalt you, Lord,

for you lifted me out of the depths

and did not let my enemies gloat over me

Lord my God, I called to you for help,

and you healed me.

It struck me that this verse was actually true. Of course it was true before, when I had read it with a kind of longing and reassurance that David understood being in the depths. I had read it with desperate hope that one day I would feel this way.  Now I realized I actually did feel this way.

I can remember clearly two years ago being lost in the middle of those depths. I could not see anything other than a fog of depression, and I could not believe it would actually get better. I was calling for help but the healing was not happening. Last year I told our member care specialist, “I have come out of the pit just enough to realize how deep it is, and how far I have to go to get to the top. I am still really far from okay, but I can almost see what 'okay' looks like.”

When we came back from China at the beginning of the year, I though I was mostly better. I just needed to deal with the after-effects of these years of depression and surviving and burnout. We attended a three week intensive debriefing retreat – three weeks because we were that bad off. It was so helpful, but at the end of three weeks I found out that I was still depressed. “High moderate depression," my counselor and her little inventory described it. That was pretty discouraging because I had just had three weeks of daily individual and group counseling and I was still depressed! When I thought I was doing better!

I came to realize that now and in the past what I thought of as depression was actually severe depression. If I could function and didn’t want to die, I figured I wasn't really depressed anymore. Apparently "better" looks like something higher than that.

This past month, after continued counseling and a new medication, I have remembered what not being depressed feels like. There are times when I feel what I presume is normal baseline – is this what people really feel like? - like I can handle life and I think that good things might actually happen in the future. I feel stable. It’s a weird feeling. I have been able to enjoy my kids, even to enjoy this stage and not wish they would please just grow up more and not need such constant help and attention.

Obviously there are still times when I don’t enjoy them – when Nadia is clinging and screaming, when Juliana is whining and stomping around, when Adalyn has to be prodded every single step of the way to do every single task. But this is the normal counting-down-to-bedtime stuff of parenting. These days, I rarely feel like my head will explode. When no one is screaming, I can actually enjoy this stage with these little people.

Of course there are still emotional times, frustrations and disappointments, the discouragement of sickness and poor sleep. But the amazing thing is, I can feel grieved or discouraged and then I can get over it. The next day I may feel pretty good again. I am not dragged down into an endless downward spiral.

When my psychiatrist first suggested a mood-stabilizing drug, I was a bit skeptical. “I’m not sure my moods are unstable. Everyone has ups and downs. By the way, what do stable moods look like?” Apparently they look like ups and downs but the ups are above the level of depression and the downs are something you can recover from. Apparently it is not feeling like you are crazy all the time. How interesting.

I do feel more stable now. I can see yellow paint or 80’s décor and not feel like everything is really weird and the world is an unsafe place. I can be in a strange or unpleasant situation but when I am out of that situation, I can shake it off without it tainting my whole day or week. One night I was talking with my family about a possible suicide/murder in our town and about a childhood friend with a terrible disease. You know, pleasant bedtime conversation. I felt sad and disturbed but I didn’t even have any terrible dreams that night. And I have had a lot of terrible dreams in these past months.

In fact, dreams have come up several time in my counseling because I have had so many disturbing ones. One of my less disturbing but frequently reoccurring dreams, second to stressful travel dreams, are out of control elevators. I’ve had these dreams for years. I get on an elevator and it never goes where I want it to. It shoots up to dizzying heights or drops deep into the ground or veers sideways into different buildings. I can never get where I want to go.

A few weeks ago I had another elevator dream. I got in an elevator and realized there were no buttons. All it had was a big lever you had to pull at just the right time to stop on the right floors. In my dream I was able to pull the lever and stop at just the right floor - twice! I was excited by this dream because it was the first time I had ever been able to control the elevator. Even though it wasn’t easy and didn’t function like I expected, I was able to make it work! I think this must be what it is like to not feel like your life is out of control.

Even though so much of our lives are out of our control. We cannot control if we will be able to stay in the city to which we have grown attached or in the country where we have lived for 13 years. We don’t control what apartment we will live in or who we can have over to our home. We don’t control when our heat comes on and turns off and we have no thermostat to adjust. The other day Juliana, so cutely and innocently said, “Wouldn’t it be great if they invented something where you could make the temperature anything you wanted – hotter or colder if you needed?” My sister said, “Um...they actually already have that.”

We don’t know how long the local public schools will continue to accept foreign kids or how long our area will continue to accept foreigners. Who will be the next among our friends to have to leave? Sometimes we know months in advance with time to say goodbye. Sometimes it happens suddenly, even overnight, and our global circle means friends we may never see again.

We can influence but not control our health. We can prioritize but not control mental health. We know that all manner of situations might force us to change our country, our homes, our jobs, our friends, our schools, our way of life – all in one fell swoop.

But I digress. There are so many circumstances of life we cannot control, maybe more than ever before, but somehow life doesn’t feel like it is spiraling out of control. A sickness feels like a regular event that we will recover from. A change of plans is inconvenient, even stressful, but it is manageable. I can see that it will probably not throw our life into utter chaos and alter the entire course of our lives.

I have this weird thought that life may actually work out. I have moments when I am downright optimistic. (No fear though, I don’t really thing lasting optimism is in my nature, whereas my witty sarcasm clearly is.) I have these moments when I realize I feel happy, just effortlessly happy in the midst everyday life. Is this what normal feels like? Is this what it means to be truly okay?

I forgot what this feeling was like, and it might take a while to get used to, to believe it is not just a fleeting phase. It will definitely take a while to work through the habits and thought patterns carved out by years of depression and anxiety. I realize there were many times in life when I thought I was all better but depression and anxiety were still having a profound impact on my life. I am trying to look back and sort out what was depression and what was me. I am seeing the ways that God has brought healing through counseling and medication and a lot of time.

I am climbing out of that deep, dark pit, and the view is looking pretty good up here at ground level.

Joy Belongs to Us

We were healthy the entire first week of December. Adalyn and I had just recovered from the stomach bug that wiped us out after Thanksgiving, and we made it all the way until the evening of December 7th before Adalyn came down with a fever.

That first week of December, we put up our Christmas decorations. We had a magically calm cookie decorating experience. We lit our first advent candle, the candle of Hope, and I felt hope that our life could actually be manageable. I sorted through the girls clothes, and our jumbled medicine stash, and eliminated unneeded kitchen items. We couldn’t really pack anything yet, but I did what I could to get rid of anything we didn’t really need. Purging brings me inner peace.

A surprisingly peaceful cookie decorating experience

But the feeling of peace did not last for long. The day we lit the second advent candle, the Peace candle, Nadia was already down with a fever. “It shouldn’t be too bad,” I thought. Adalyn only had a few days of cough and congestion, so I expected something similarly mild.

Instead Nadia’s fever continued, and she lay listlessly in our arms, half asleep. On Wednesday, I was worried enough to call the pediatrician. After Nadia submitted to her examination without any resistance, the doctor said she had pneumonia and a double ear infection. Her fever, heart rate, and breathing rate were all high, and her oxygen levels were low. The doctor had us start her on a high dose of antibiotics and keep a close eye on her. “If she gets any worse, she needs to go to the hospital for oxygen.”

Sad, listless baby

It was appropriate that this was the week of Peace, because I felt anything but peace. I was so anxious I couldn’t think straight. I tried to count simple numbers to figure out her breathing rate, but I could not make sense of them. I kept reminding myself to breathe. My head was pounding from headache and fear. Over the course of one hour, I sent 20 emails back and forth with my mom and doctor-sister trying to figure out what to do. I have never been so worried about one of my children before, as I listened to her struggle to breathe, as I watched her oxygenation numbers, as she lay listlessly across my chest.

At the hospital the next morning, the children’s waiting area was overflowing with sick children: babies crying, children coughing, some sounding even worse than Nadia. Dozens of parents and grandparents watched us curiously, ever the spectacle, but we were all in this together, worried and waiting.

The children's injection room at the hospital

We were happy to return home after a few hours, but we almost headed straight back when her oxygen levels dropped dangerously low that afternoon. What relief to see the difference albuterol made! After an exhausting morning, carrying Nadia all around the hospital, the rest of the day and night were still stressful, monitoring her breathing, trying to decide if she needed to go back to the hospital. Late that night her oxygen level dropped disturbingly low, and we were already out the door to the hospital when her breathing improved dramatically.

She finally got an inhaler like her sisters

We lost sleep over worry about her breathing, over waking up frequently to give her medicine during the night, and over the effects of the medicine – Nadia was so hyped up she was running around crazy at midnight. Instead of napping, she has been climbing out of her crib. But finally she was breathing. Her fever dropped, she started eating some, she played and danced and climbed on the washing machine to explore the medicine cabinet and grabbed a cleaver in the kitchen. Back to the normal worries about keeping her alive.

Yesterday we started the week of Joy. I struggle with joy more than the others. I am grateful for the promise of hope, I easily recognize the need for peace in the midst of my panic, but joy feels like a pressure. I should feel joy.

Joy belongs to those other people – the ones with the matching Christmas trees and prettily wrapped presents and smiling children. The ones who like the happy carols instead of the wistful ones, who run around doing fun Christmas activities, who are full of optimism.

Not the ones ready to sweep all the clutter straight into the trash, or the ones who whisper-yell at their children, “Go. To. SLEEP. Don’t you dare wake up your little sister!!” with angry eyes in the dark. Not the ones still scrambling to get presents ordered, or the ones with lights burned out two-thirds of the Christmas tree. Joy doesn’t belong to us.

Last week I thought, “You know, this December has still been better than last year.” Which just goes to shows how terrible the last one was. This time last year, as I sat covered by the blackness of winter and sickness and depression, I wrote about waiting for the light. I certainly wasn't feeling the joy; I was just hoping to survive a few more weeks.

Adalyn Lucia leading our St. Lucia Day procession last week. Lucia means "bringer of light."

And I remembered again: we aren’t the ones who have to make the joy happen. Anymore than we are ones creating peace or hope. A star bore witness to generations of hope finally fulfilled. Peace was not a silent night and an anglo-saxon baby who didn’t cry; He himself is our peace. The angel didn’t say, “Hey shepherds, get your joy on!” No, he came to tell them that joy had already arrived - joy in the most ordinary form of a newborn baby.

Next week is the week of Love. And for you and for me it may be a week of whining and snapping and arguments and comparison and imperfection. We can be pretty bad at loving one another. What relief to realize Christmas is not about our love, it is how great the love the Father has lavished upon us.

Sometimes we feel the joy and warmth and love. Sometimes we wait for it. At Christmastime, as nights reach their longest, the darkness seems to be winning, and some years the darkness steals straight into our hearts. But there is a Light that shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.

We are the ones who wait. Expectantly, imperfectly, empty.

Joy belongs to us.


He did not wait till the world was ready,
til men and nation were at peace.
He came when the Heavens were unsteady
and prisoners cried out for release...

We cannot wait till the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
He came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!

~ Madeleine L'Engle, Miracle on 10th Street