rivers in the desert...

The gene pool I swim in contains many different kinds of water. There is the bubbling spring of creativity... the swift flowing river water of passionate convictions and equally passionate language... the Scotch-Irish-German rivers of long ago homelands... and the underground river of depression. I am still learning how to keep my boat afloat on those sometimes calm, sometimes stormy waters.
One of the gifts of family knowledge is the identification of pieces of who you are in those who have gone before. Maybe that is why the Bible has so many long passages of "begats". When I remember my granddaddy, I remember his sweetness... his kindness... his love for animals and the outdoors. I can see some of those same traits in my mother and then in me and my children. On both sides of my family tree are people who farmed... loved the land... raised their families by growing crops and animals. And now, I live on a farm... a repeating pattern.
My family, like yours, is an amazing polyglot of deacons and Ku Klux Klan members, teachers and the barely literate, city dwellers and those who never left the farm, alcoholics and suicides, gamblers and traveling men, happiness and great sorrows, those who had good lives and those who struggled all their lives... a wonderful river of family history much like the French Broad River near our farm... rocky in places with falls, quiet pools where fish swim, exposed rocks with blue herons standing as sentinels, turtles dozing in the sun on a warm, flat rock, dangerous rocks we can see and some that are hidden, muddy after rains, and always in motion... going somewhere and carrying me along with it. Like a river pilot, the understanding of my particular family river informs my living. I am a part of the down river where I came from, and I am flowing upriver to my future.
The eddy of depression (to flow in a circular current) has been both a curse and a gift all my life. My father called his "the black night of the soul". Evidence of this family depression is washed up on the riverbanks of our history. It wasn’t until my second or third episode with my depressions that I began to dive under and search for the history that could help me understand and use these strong feelings.
When my depression comes, it can be triggered by stress, outside me events (deaths), inside me events (failure of some kind) or just appear sometimes for no good reason I can find. It varies in intensity... length of presence... can be creative or destructive. I am beginning to learn how to give thanks for these seasons of sadness. While I increase my dose of anti-depressant, I also look for the lesson, the gift that is available for me while I rest in the flowing circle. For years I have viewed my depressions as lost time... unproductive time ( a sin in our achievement oriented society)... a glaring example of all that was wrong with me as a person... if I could only not be depressed, I could really be somebody... accomplish something... float easily down a lazy river with grace and joy. It has taken me sixty years to see this "curse" from my family gene pool as a gift.
The motionlessness that comes with my depressions forces me to stop... to listen... to dive under and see where I have been... pay attention to what has been going on in my life. I cannot keep on running, being busy, noisy, active and inattentive when depression comes calling. It is a psychic time out... a spiritual opportunity... a gift of grace. Like eddies of water, I circle slowly through my sadness until my way out is clear.
These times have also grown my ability to feel the sadness of others. Since I really do know what it feels like, I have a sense, an intuitive aha that recognizes a fellow sufferer. The kinship possible for those of us who live with depression is a saving grace. A little black humor... a little wine... sitting in front of a fire and giving voice to your hurts to a friend... one who wears the same kind of inner tube you do while floating down the river... helps bind me closely to my larger family... the family of God.
The Bible is full of people who lived with depression creatively ( look at David writing the Psalms full of "Woe is me’s)... tenderly and faithfully waiting for the Light to come... waiting for the gift of self knowledge... the gift of knowing and feeling God’s sustaining presence in all of life. How can I keep from singing? Even when I sing in the strange land of depression, there is joy and hope and peace and contentment. Thanks be to God for this most amazing gift, this river that has taught me so much and given me so much. "Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert." Isaiah 43:19