There are a lot of times in our lives when we think, ‘this is the right thing to do.’  But then do we do it?  Do we kind of forget about it?  Do we kind of maybe do the right thing some of the time?  We don’t always do the right thing because we are fallen human beings.  And there’s no way to become unfallen.  Sorry.  I wish there were.

But the good news is that by this fruit of the Holy Spirit we can, actualy, conrol ourselves.  Many times as our actions are not what we intend to do in principle.  But with the help of the Holy Spirit we can become stronger inside, more spiritually tough, and can fight our bad habits.

By exerting discipline on ourselves in little things we can build up strength bit by bit and be able to discipline ourselves in big situations.

Sometimes this ability to obey ourselves become really twisted.  Like, we can obey all these dumb things we tell ourselves to do, but when it comes to important things we’re as wimpy as wet rags.  We can obey ourselves when we tell ourselves to take a shower in no more than 6 minutes or eat no more than 1/8 cup of ice cream or something trivial like that.  But then when it comes to not being lazy and cleaning our side of the room or not overeating or overpurging, when real temptations come up and not just games with ourselves, then we collapse. 

So, we need to build up our strength in small, reasonable ways, bit by bit.  For example, sacrificing time to clean for 10 minutes because we know our messiness drives other people crazy.  Or limiting how much ice cream we have because our bodies are gifts from God and so they should be treated well.  And then when temptations arise, with the help of God, they can be beaten back.  Amen.

Dedicated to Elise and to Paul

with much love

Once upon a time there was a broken dove.  His right wing was lame so that he could not fly, and when he did fly, he could only fly for short distances and always in circles.   So he could not make a nest for himself or hardly get anything to eat. He lived alone in a willow tree in his shabby excuse for a nest. And he felt great shame.

In summer he sat under the trees’ flowing boughs in the stifling heat,  bit by mosquitoes and laughed at by bees.  But he found some joy in watching the butterflies and the fireflies.  Yet watching them reminded him he could not fly, and this shamed him.

In fall the leaves of the willow drifted slowly to the ground and became dust, and he felt all his hopes dry to dust with them.  He found no reason to hope, and the cold air was no comfort.

In winter the bitter freezing air drained his life.  Day by day, second by second, he struggled to breath, to live.  And he wondered why he struggled.  The cold always seemed like it would be comforting, if he would give in.  And he felt shame that he considered giving in.  And he felt shame that he could not be brave enough to let go of his breath and let it pass from him.

But in spring he remembered why he struggled.  For in the spring, the willow awoke.  For a few paradise weeks in the fresh green of spring, the willow could speak.  And the willow would tell the dove stories.

The willow told him tragedies that he could learn form yet not be too saddened by, for they had never happened.  And the willow told him happy tales that were all the brighter because of their reality.

Year past and year past, and the stories grew shorter and shorter.  One spring the willow did not wake.  The willow’s leaves were not so numerous, and they fell more swiftly in the autumn.  The following spring the willow did not wake.  The dove began to forget the stories,  and he was shamed that he had ever imagined a tree could talk.  But the aching hollowness in the dove’s heart reminded him the willow had been awake, if only for a little while.  The willow’s branches began to shrivel, and hardly a leaf sprouted that spring, only to fall to the earth in the early hot weeks of July. A third year past, and in the spring the dove lay half conscious, listening.   The dove lay listening for nothing, yet the ache in his heart did not betray him: the willow tree spoke at last.

“Once upon a time there was a willow tree.  The willow tree had one friend and one last story.  Only this story isn’t a story to tell.  This is a story to live.  And it begins when the willow tree gives one last gift.”

And as the willow tree breathed its last in a sigh among empty, cracking branches, it breathed upon the dove.  And the dove was made whole.

Thus begins the story of the dove.

~The End~

Patience is a virtue, and will is one of the faculties of the mind.

Will is that decision making part of the human brain.  It is the part that, after thought, kicks in and acts. Last fall my depression got pretty regular, every Saturday or so.  One weekend I was like, ‘I’m sick of this.’  So I supposedly fought it.  But I actually just postponed it till Wednesday, so I had it while at school.  It was one thing to be depressed in the safety of my house where I could go into my room.  It was quite another to be depressed in that depressing school, and to be so emotionally unstable when I needed so much to shove my emotions out of the way and concentrate on economics and biology.  The next weekend, since I knew what not to do, I was better able to fight.  The next weekend after that, my Grandpa died.  That was when I realized that while sadness looks to the source and comforts other people, depression looks at oneself and ignores others.

Click to see it larger. This is an awesome painting

Sometimes while walking home from work, the battle against depression would get so intense that I would have to stop and lean against one of the buildings and just think and breathe and fight.  I would refuse to move till depression was defeated.  That kind of determination scared the depression and it usually ran away pretty quickly.

Patience keeps us calm in our treatment of ourselves.  It keeps us from thinking we are failures just because we don’t succeed 100% right away or ever. Because it isn’t exactly a yellow brick road that takes us from depression to stability and hope.  Patience keeps us fighting even after we wonder why the heck we decided to fight depression. And we should always be patient with ourselves, because then it is easier to be patient with others.

There is a passage int he Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien, in which some elf named Beor is talking about some dealings his ancestors had with men.  He’s not talking about depression, but the instant I read it I thought of the will and patience necessary to fight depression,  so I’d like to share what he says with you:

“A darkness lies behind us, and we have turned our backs upon it, and we do not desire to return thither even in thought.  Westward our hearts have turned, and we believe that there we shall find Light.”

I don’t know how it happens.  But it seems to me like maybe there is something hurting all along, something raw and sore and unsolved, and the stupid thing brought  it out. One time I was walking to work, and I didn’t see a car coming so the driver had to slam on the breaks and she honked her horn and yelled at me.  I was so shook up I couldn’t think.

Why are there parts of us that are so raw and sore that they make us fall into ourselves and lose hold?  Why do we get so used to it that we say, ‘this is just a natural part of me?’

I don’t know the answer to those questions or how to heal yourself. All I can say is that with myself I just had to like harden myself, almost cruelly.  It’s taken a toll because I’ve had to harden most of all the melancholic sensitive artist in me, and that means I’ve had some pretty bad writer’s block.

But slowly, between being sick of not writing and ‘falling in love’, I’m reaching my sensitivity out again and I’ve been writing a little bit so maybe we can dare to find a good balance?

When I was a little girl of eight, my Dad and I used to take walks together in the evening.  I remember one block was all beautiful front yards.  Fireflies sparkled magically and the flowers glowed in the twilight.

But now I’m eighteen, and we don’t live in so good a neighborhood, so Dad’s always kind of worried about me.  So the easiest way to go on a walk is to go in the early morning before he’s awake.

So much has changed in the past ten years.  So much has changed in the past ten weeks.  I’m growing so that I don’t rely on him so much.  I ask for his advice, but I make my own decisions.  Sometimes this is really good.  He kind of wanted me to be a high school English teacher.  I’m so glad I decided on philosophy/theology/liberal arts instead.

I also decided to go away to school.  In some ways Dad’s really proud of me because I’m taking charge of my life and making things happen more than he ever did at my age.  But there are still the times when he says, ‘You know, you don’t have to go away to school.’  Thanks.  Real encouraging Dad.

And now that I have what other people would call a ‘boyfriend’ (but I don’t call him that because I hate the word ‘boyfriend’), Dad is really tense.  It’s kind of crazy.  Dad will swing from being really really tense to really relaxed and laughing.  I think he goes from being nervous about how I’m growing out of being his baby girl to trying to make the best of every second of this last summer before I go away for my first year of college out of state.  As my so-called ‘boyfriend’ (blegh; I hate that word) put it, ‘He doesn’t want his princess to go away.’

I understand that this is really hard on my Dad.  I really do, especially since I’m his oldest and his only daughter.  And honestly, for the sake of those fairy tale walks, I miss being  a little girl. Yet, right now, another fairy tale is happening in my life.  I’m still in the role of the princess, but this time the lead guy isn’t the King; it’s the other country’s prince.

I honestly try hard to understand how my Dad is effected by this so I can be a good daughter, but it’s very hard.  Because Dad is so nervous and tense that he refuses to believe or even accept the possibility of another fairy tale.  His advice is pretty much always doom and gloom.

So I am writing all this to say- if you’ve managed to read all this blah blah blah and get down to here, please give me some advice about this.  I really want others’ insight.  In writing it may seem simple enough, but it’s kind of not so simple living in the midst of it. It’s hard being the oldest: I have no older siblings to look to.  So please tell me what you honestly think, and share any stories you think will help me to understand all this.   And I realize this phase in my life is nothing new, but each person’s is different and new to them.  So please tell me what you think.

80% of the time I don’t know what to say, but I always pray for you- for everyone with depression and everyone who visits my blog.

I don’t know what to say now; it exhausts me, really, thinking so much about depression, because it’s so dark and I have to struggle so hard not to become depressed and it hurts me so much to see the people I love depressed.

And I know I’m not perfect.  I can’t answer every problem or heal every hurt.  In fact, I can’t answer any problem or heal any hurt, because no one can do any good unaided by God.  So every minute I realize more and more how much I need God, how much every one needs God.  The most I can hope to do is to show you the hope He gives us and His undying love.  I pray I may do that:

“I cannot help them as I wish.

Lord, I’m helpless without You.

So I pray You’ll take my hand,

and guide us all to You.

.

.

I’m afraid and want to hide

from all my faults and fears,

but I dare to love them still,

for You’ve loved me all these years.

.

.

I’m weary with the labor

of trying to bring hope to despair,

like trying to fill a net with water;

But I know that You’re still there

.

.

and I have only to look to You

and cry to You from my plight,

and You will give me strength

to bear to them Your light.

Hello, my name is... uh, I am...

My best friend very insightfully pointed out on Friday that a lot of depression has to do with not knowing who you are. While cleaning my room, I came across this formula written on a sheet of paper about the four temperaments:

Inherited Temperament + Childhood Training + Parental Love + Life Experiences + Habit + Education + Self Discipline + Motivation + Mental Attitude + Health = Your Behavior

Other people, since they are on the outside of you, define you by your behavior.  But, as anyone knows, who has suffered the pain of not knowing who they are and other people acting as if they do know who are, Your Behavior = Who You Are    is Simply Not True.

I cannot tell you how to find who you are, for that is different for every person because no one is the same.  But I can give you three pieces of advice:

1.  The struggle to unearth  the person who struggles to emerge is worth it. Sometimes it takes some huge test, or life changing experience, or total change in where you are.  Sometimes you might intuitively know what will help you find yourself, and all you can do then is to push for that thing.  The very effort will define you.

2.  Do not try to define yourself with bad labels or captions. I used to caption myself as “I am a burdened and unhappy girl.”  Looking back- Well, DUH, that was a stupid thing to say.  That surely did nothing to help.  A friend of mine used

My caption goes here! : )

to say of herself, “I am a disturbed person.”  Oh, ouch!  Another friend of mine said she often tells herself, “I’m going crazy.”  Another ouch!  Giving yourself derogatory labels and captions until you know who you are for real will do nothing but make finding yourself harder.  Because if you do, you will have to erase it, and if you’ve grown to used to it, erasing it will feel like erasing part of yourself. If you must make captions for yourself, make good ones about the good things you do, like “I am a Catholic girl” or “I am an A student who loves her friends”. Finally, when you do find yourself, do not expect it to be in words. I have a pretty good idea of who I am, but it is more a feeling and a recognizing of myself in music, but I cannot define in words what my personality is.

3.  Do not invent a pseudo self.  Do not cave into being the person other people think you are. My friend and I daydream way too much.  Once we were talking about it, and he observed that daydreaming about other people disappoints you because when that person doesn’t fill your daydreams, you start thinking they don’t care

I will be who you want me to be! ; )

about you.  It also dulls your mind to seeing who they really are.   If you invent a pseudo self to satisfy other people’s expectations, then you will loose hold of yourself and become a blah nothingness. If you do not know how to act or respond, it is better to say, “I don’t know what to say about that,” or “I don’t know how to decide or respond” than to do something that is not naturally you. Because the more unnatural you are, the harder it will be to be naturally you.

To Hope to be Happy

There is hardly anything the human heart longs for more than happiness.  Yet our longing is continually disappointed. Every source of happiness is limited.  Our happiness is never complete in every dimension.  We always have an abundant amount of reasons to be unhappy, but only a few, sparse reasons to be happy.  Happiness can even seem like a lie while depression seems to be the honest reaction. Nevertheless, we strive on and dare to hope for happiness at the conclusion of our toils. Why does happiness disappoint us, and why do we inveterately hope we will at last attain a satisfying and unending happiness?

Like a bird which cannot fly because the air

Falling Bird I by Rose Bleckner, 2002

will not bear it, our dissatisfied optimism plummets. Our hopes sadly evaporate.  Nothing can lift us to the heights we so yearn to reach.  Paintings and sculptures seem drab after some time.  Music never quite holds all that we wish it could.  Amazing experiences tire with repetition. Even such great sources of happiness as marriage and children do not last past death.   But we keep searching for happiness, like mineworkers who persist, no matter how hard the rocks.  The more we labor, the more we promise ourselves.  Yet our striving, yielding only brief results, merely frustrates us. Ogden Nash, an American humorist poet, wrote,

“The most exciting happiness is the happiness generated by forces beyond your control.

[…]  That comes when something so wonderful falls in your lap that joy is what you jump for,

Something not of your own doing,

[…]And obviously such miracles don’t happen every day,

But there’s hoping they may.”

We do hope, and this hope lends a sort of happiness, but what do we hope for?  What miracle is so surpassingly good that it will heal us, complete us, and give us happiness transcending all limitations? We are worn out with hoping; we wonder if happiness is worth the trouble. In a letter to a friend, I wrote, “All the things that I love, try to enjoy, are only makeshifts of something higher that’s beyond me. […]  I was aching […] I didn’t know what it was, only that I needed… needed- […] I have only earthly shadows of all that I love, that is true and real.”  Indeed, everything on earth is a shadow of something more, perhaps the miracle in Nash’s poem.  We desire, and we hardly know for what we desire.  We cannot even imagine how beautiful and good the world would have to be for us to be wholly happy.  Because complete happiness is beyond our comprehension.

We indeed desire what is beyond our comprehension.  At times, however, we pretend that happiness is merely a lack of sadness.   When our sadness passes, we are so relieved we often call our feelings happiness.  Then, as the alleged happiness dissipates, we face again how little reason we had to be truly and wholly happy and how weak the happiness was.  So we go off in pursuit of happiness all over again- a party, a friend, food, a psychologist, or some new commodity.  Or, we place our hope for happiness in the dream of a perfect society in which everyone is invariably happy.  For we have convinced ourselves that happiness, great as it is, can be reached through good things, or achieved by us, who are limited and mortal.  This assumption drives and paralyzes us. “We get caught up in an avalanche of fears and desires that propel us into a race we can’t possibly win.  So we rush, rush, rush to get to a certain ideal point in our life, and then what?” (Greive 49-50)  We desire, and our desire is left hollow.  We have forgotten- or perhaps we never quite realized- that to be happy is not our ultimate goal and purpose in life.  Nor is it the supreme cause in our lives.  It is a splendid, unforeseen side-effect of doing the right thing and having good things happen.  It is a fragile proof that, at the moment, at least one thing is right, like a light shining over a street in the lonely darkness of night.

A year ago I became very unhappy.  “I want to curl up into a shell away from the darkness and blood and pain of the world,” I wrote.  “[I am] too saddened and muted to enjoy life, too scared and weak. [...]I’m sick of the dying.  I’m sick of everything being so frail, mortal, miserable, perverted, vulnerable to sin.  I want to be alive.  But why start living?”  Unhappiness quickly gave way to despondency.  Despondency grew into a black hole in my mind.  “Why do I bother living?”  I asked myself, “I feel […] like my soul is hollow and longing for a reason to exist.” I thought of people who had gone so far as to end their lives.  I feared that if I followed them, I might find the reason to exist while floating about in the World-After-Death. I prayed about my hopelessness. Yet by the following day, though I still held to an afterlife, all my belief in heaven was eroded, perhaps because I did not want to think of facing a divine judge. I wrote about that afternoon when the hopelessness came to a climax.

“Mom is telling me all about all these scholarships […] but I don’t care. [...] I have to concentrate on [my problems] and answer my questions and face the gnawing emptiness within me […].  When she’s done, I nod and walk back into my room.  I stood a moment in my room, then fell into a chair.  I stared about at all the paintings, but saw nothing.  ‘Why does she think about fancy tests and going to college?  Maybe all I want to do is curl up in a hole and die.’   My head fell back, and my body sagged.  Tears from an empty carcass streamed down my face.”

Happiness…  It seems a futile and overrated emotion, but our natural desire for it is far from empty. I am now here at college, the very place I had not wanted to even hear about a year ago. I was unhappy because earthly happiness and every earthly sources of happiness continuously falls short in at least one way. But I have discovered that the whole, complete, incomprehensible happiness that we desire is real.  And I have found its source.  This happiness arises from hope. Hope emanates from God, who never disappoints, is never weak, is always merciful even when we hate and fear the very thought of Him.  Such happiness is too great and rare a treasure to possibly come from anything less than God Himself.

——————————————————

It took a trip to New York City, a walking pilgrimage through Canada, one heck of a second semester, and a ton of prayer before I actually really, truly believed in happiness.   About what I said, “What miracle is so surpassingly good that it will heat us, complete us, and give us happiness transcending all limitations?”  Reading that now, I think, “Duh, the resurrection.”   But you know about miracles– you can ask for them.  I did, just last January; I asked for something to fill my life and soul with light, so that I could be strong enough to fight the depression, as I had decided in November 2009.  My miracle happened in a reunion with a best friend and an outpouring of God’s grace.  It blew my mind.

We don’t ask for people to die.  we don’t ask for thing to be frail, mortal, miserable, perverted, and vulnerable to sin. But we can ask for miracles. Prepare to be astounded!

——————————————————–

Works Cited:

Williams, Oscar, ed.  A Little Treasury of American Poetry.  Charles Scribner’s sons, 1948

Greive, Bradley Trevor.  The Meaning of Life.  Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2002

As I’ve mentioned before, anger is one of the causes of depression.

To deal with anger, the first step is to identify exactly WHO is making you angry and exactly WHAT it is they are doing that is so darn maddening.   Once you know what it specifically and precisely is, you can analyze it.

Analyzing it is when you see whether or not what’s happening is really worth getting mad over.  If it is, then you cannot let that anger dominate you; you cannot become a slave of your rage.    If it’s not worth getting mad, then you have to force yourself to let go. (This is my big problem, and why I asked my spiritual director.  One time, without even realizing it, I held onto a grudge for about four years. )

Either way, whether it deserves anger or not, you can’t hold that anger forever (do NOT follow my example!).  Now what do you do with this maddening person and their maddening deeds?

This is where we come to the fork in the road. Well, there are three roads you can take.  You have to judge wisely which is best. This is why it’s so important to not let your anger control you.  If your anger controls you, you will not be able to judge correctly or follow the way you’ve chosen. Justice and Mercy must both be present in what you do.  If you are controlled by your madness you will hardly even be just. So, the three options:

1.  Let it go, in silence.  Just breathe… let it go… forget about it, and move on. (This is the option for four year long grudges when neither you nor the person you were mad at knew you were upset.)

2.  Come up to the person and say, “I’m sorry if I did anything to make you mad.  And I got really mad when you did…  I forgive you.” This is a clean forgiveness, even if the person doesn’t realize what they did made you mad or that they need forgiveness.  I was reading in this really sweet book called the Sacred Art of Forgiveness that if there’s a problem that needs forgiving, but the offender hasn’t apologized to you, don’t sit around waiting for them to. They might never.  Tell them they made you mad and forgive them right there. And don’t don’t don’t tell them first how awful they were and how hard it is to forgive them, and then deign to forgive them.  True forgiveness forgives without recap the repulsiveness of the person you’re forgiving.  Forgiveness that is sincere is ready to move on, not dwell on the old offenses.  ‘Forgiveness’ that dwells on the old offense isn’t forgiving!

3.  There are some instances where, for the sake of that person and/or your sanity, you must tell them what they’re messing up. Say for example that what they did was a sin.  If you are their friend or family and if their sin directly effected you (you didn’t find out by snooping into their personal business; it actually reached into your life without you having to find them out), you have the duty to tell them they messed up. Don’t be all like, “You horrid wretched person!  You…”  No way.  Be calm, be peaceful, even if you’re screaming inside. Tell them, “You did this wrong thing…  You shouldn’t do that because…  But i forgive you.”

Now let me explain this last one with a story of my own.  There was a time in my life when I had to tell one of my my best friends he had sinned.  I hope you never have to go through something like that. But if you do, you need to know that you can live through it and that it’s not impossible. If you do have to do something like that, I will listen to you and help you as best I can.

I was shaking all over.  I prayed and prayed, but still was so afraid.  I talked to one of our church’s priests; he showed me that it was indeed my duty to tell my friend he had sinned, and he encouraged me to be strong and brave.  So about half and hour after talking to the priest, trembling with fear, I walked up to my friend and said, “I need to talk to you.”

We went outside, and I said, “What you did really hurt me and disappointing me.”   The conversation went on from there.  I remember staring at a dead leaf on the ground.   He didn’t seem to realize how bad it was the thing he’d done, but I just stared at my leaf, and told him what I had to tell him- that it was indeed bad, why it was bad, and what the consequences were.

The strangest thing was that there was an uncanny sense of peace.  Very fragile, yet I was incredible calm.  After all the crying, and feeling like I was falling into a black hole, and the aching, and rage, here at the climax, I was calm.  I could breathe for once, and when I whispered, “I forgive you,” I thought the world would explode because I knew then how powerful those words are.  I really meant it, and I made myself not keep a grudge.

But the world stayed in one piece as we walked away.  I kept looking over my shoulder.  But his head, hanging from his slouched broad shoulders, never turned back to me.  He just kept walking away, away, away.  I went inside and sat down beside my other best friend.  I was so exhausted, yet I talked and talked and talked.  I would have (metaphorically) died if she hadn’t been there, listening to me, agreeing to everything I said, from the wise to the insane. The last thing I said to her was, “I’ll be emotionally disturbed for the next month.”  But I wasn’t.  Somehow I was calm.  Because I knew I had done the right thing.  Even if the friendship would never grow back again, I had done the right thing.

But, you know, a little over a month later, he was standing near me.  I had been watching him, I had been praying, and I knew then that it was up to me to bring it back together.  Intuitively, I knew it was then or never.  That  was the perfect moment, and a minute later would be stale.  So I said, “how’ve you been all this time?”

Last winter we went to the DIA and while he was driving me home, the whole incident came up again.  I had often wondered if he would ever see it as clearly and seriously as I did, but as we were driving through the whirling snow, he said, “I’m really sorry.”  And he meant it.

But imagine how awful it would have been if I had decided to sit on my butt till he apologized in a way that was good enough for perfect-little-grudge-keeping me?  By then we would have been too distant, especially since he went out of state for college.  He might never have given a second and real apology; he might never have realized; I might have missed one of the best friendships God has ever given me.

I thank God, I thank the priest, I thank my best friend for listening to me afterwords and for being with me through the whole thing.

So in conclusion:  It is frightening to forgive; it takes guts to control yourself and do what’s best for the other person and yourself;  but it is way more frightful and horrific to live in anger.  And that is a lesson I am learning every day.  I pray we all learn it well.

Because my biggest hope for my future is to marry and love my husband and he love me forever and ever and even beyond death (though after we die, our love will be different).  I hold on to that dream when depression comes haunting back, and now the possibilities of that dream were… fading.

“Hi! What are you doing?”  I jumped (I startle super easily) and found my philosophy teacher from last semester looking over my shoulder at the drawing in front of me.  She said since the classroom door was open and she had seen me, she had decided to stroll in and say hello.  We talked a little and then she had to go.

And I bowed my head again, but this time to pray.

“God, thank you for that distraction…  I will never stop hoping or give up on You.  Please don’t ever give up on me (I know You won’t.).”

As my spiritual director told me, distraction is a big way to fight depression.  Even a few seconds can help you let go of how you are seeing things (I was looking at the dream of my future from a pessimistic human view) and look at them fresh, in the light of God’s eternal power.

“For nothing is impossible with God.” ~Angel Gabriel, as recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke, 1:37