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(c) 2010 Christiana Lambert
In the Bible there are all these stories of Jesus removing demons from people—and I confess that I have prayed for such miracles in our times and in our homes. To those who have never been touched by or loved someone with a serious mental illness, sometimes all this darkness seems clinical, at best—and, at worst, something people and/or their loved ones have brought upon themselves. But, truly, for many the darkness is a demon that strikes no matter what they or we do.
You can expound all you want about the evils of treatments such as psychiatric medications or the benefits of diet and exercise and positive thinking, but it appears that for some people it is just so much harder to feel hopeful than for others.
For anyone other than the person who is feeling suicidal to say that he or she is weak or only selfish shows a lack of understanding about the beastliness of suicidal feelings. How does any of us know that these people haven’t been required to face more darkness than we can ever imagine—and that they haven’t battled valiantly, time after time, year after year, against the darkness that descends upon them like some demon?
What do we know of their pain, especially if we have not been given a similar level of pain to fight in our lives? I don’t speak of the pain that comes from specific life experiences but of the pain of an organic darkness that for whatever medical reason overtakes certain people no matter what is happening in their lives.
How humbling to know that sometimes love for us is the only reason our loved ones continue the fight. That in those moments of pain and darkness for them, it is not a love for this life that keeps them here, but simply that love for us. No matter how grateful we are for this gift of continued living, wouldn’t you rather the demon be exorcised—for good—so that life itself—with all its normal ups and down and lightness and darkness—would be more than enough reason for them to stay amongst us?
While we ourselves might not often have the power to cast out demons permanently for others, we can bring as much light into this world as we can by being kind to one another and by providing whatever help is at our hands—as well as by refusing to judge those whose pain we can only pretend to understand.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t keep praying for miracles . . . both for those possessed by the demons of mental illness and for those of us who have also been touched by the darkness within those whom we love.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
(c) 2013 Trina Lambert
The people walking through the darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. Isaiah 9:2, NIV
When something subtle but huge has been missed in diagnosis and treatment, it’s easy for darkness to overwhelm any light, let alone a great light. With little change and improvement, life as previously known can seem dead and the new normal bleak at best and hopeless at worst.
Yesterday I heard these words in church and thought, “God has heard our prayers. The light is coming back.” I know it’s too early to say that light is returning for good in our family, but for now it seems as if the yoke of darkness has been shattered.
We’re years beyond thinking we’d just rather the darkness go away for good. By now we can accept that proper management will be light enough—because that’s likely the best healing we will get and because it’s so far from past darkness that we know it can be enough to illuminate a life well-lived.
For another day to consider the tears and rage of those years that can’t be regained—too much of that will allow the darkness to obscure the light we do have. For now we will walk toward the light—and rejoice at the dawn of a new era.
(c) 2013 Trina Lambert
Some days my baggage is a lightweight wheelie suitcase or backpack—some days a full-fledged daypack—and other days, it’s an old-fashioned suitcase I have to switch from one hand to another while struggling to maintain my balance.
That’s why sometimes I dance/run/hike/whatever to remember and other times I do so to forget.
Yeah, my life is just full of rock and roll lyrics—as are the lives of most people—that’s why those songs stick with us.
Lately, I keep encountering links for posts/articles where someone who has depression is describing how people don’t get how he or she feels and then that person goes on to describe how everything others say or do for them demonstrates that.
Well, the same is true of those of us who love depressed people—the depressed people don’t know how we feel either. Do they think we only want them better for our own sakes? Well, not at first and not for a long time, but after awhile it becomes so hard to try to help someone who doesn’t seem to be able to or at least think he or she is able to provide that self-help. Finally we admit that, yeah, we would really love to have the burden of depression lift from them not only for them, but also to lighten our own loads, too.
We are all ultimately responsible for our own happiness—I so get that, but for some of us it seems that to be able to find our own happiness, we will have to give up any illusions that we can help someone who is currently not open to receiving that help. And, if so, we will have to walk or run away to what makes us happy—without that person.
That is the true conundrum of loving someone with depression. How many years can you keep adding to your own baggage without receiving more than a little in return? The money spent on possible solutions, the time spent pursuing those possibilities, and the emotions spent walking along the side of someone plunged into darkness are the price for caring deeply. But sometimes it seems a bit like day trading—you are just at the whims of multiple factors beyond your control and all you can do is pay attention and respond.
I don’t want to keep waking up in between memories and dreams anymore—I’d rather grow young, than cold. Just got to figure out how to switch out my baggage for something a little bit lighter because it’s way past time to head on down the road.
(c) 2010 Sherman Lambert
This week in Denver it seems it’s been the week to talk about suicide—which is not something our society likes to talk about until forced to do so. I’ll consider myself forced to jump on the bandwagon—or at least compelled to do so.
Last Sunday Sherman and I walked with a group from Bethany Lutheran Church in the Second Wind Run. As I mentioned before the event, the Second Wind organization seeks to prevent teenage suicides by providing mental health resources for students who may not have access to the care they need. And as much as it might have seemed that I was just enjoying a warm day exercising and connecting with people I know, trust me, the tears came later.
That the event was followed by the suicide of a young Denver Bronco, Kenny McKinley, kept those tears fresh as the topic continued to be discussed throughout the week.
One of the bravest pieces I read was not informational as much as confessional. Long-time Denver Post columnist Woody Paige shared his brush with the suicide dance—and gave just another example of a person considering taking his life when the world would say that he should have had plenty to live for.
That’s the thing, it’s just not that easy to look around and know who is harboring those feelings. We’ve got to do a better job of really hearing what people are saying—and making it OK for people to express those feelings so we can do our best to help them before it’s too late.
And when it comes to young people, it’s even trickier to figure out who is in trouble and who isn’t—even for the professionals.
First of all, what doesn’t always get presented in informational checklists about depression or suicide risk in youths is that the young don’t always look the same as more mature people do when depressed or suicidal. Life in adolescence is lived in the moment—and the swings from high to low can be immense.
A student can keep up the grades, activities, appearance, and achievement levels, in general believing that life is worth living, but one or two bad events can turn his/her life view upside down. They don’t always have the life experience to know that the good events will come again.
And their peers, who are also still growing, may range from less than helpful to outright harmful. My own kids talked about how during Suicide Prevention Week some people roamed the school halls who felt nothing of making jokes about people who felt suicidal—as if there’s something funny about someone feeling hopeless.
The other thing I truly believe is that we have to be the advocates for our loved ones, even if the professionals think we are somehow too jumpy to see the good changes. But when you live around the depression, you see a whole lot more than a professional can see in one hour once a week. You have to trust your own gut, too. You might agree that 90% of the time your loved one is OK, but you know that for 10% of the time, it’s anybody’s guess what will happen. You see what happens when the mask comes off . . . and often what you see frightens you.
I wish there were more answers for how to help people before it’s too late. The good news is that we are finally talking about this word that used to be whispered and hidden in shame. More of us are paying attention—which is good because we just can’t stand losing them—any of them.
P.S. I should add something more than talking about suicide as something we can do to help those in need. We can also direct them to call the national suicide hotline, 1-800-273-TALK, which is available 24 hours a day.
(c) 2010 Christiana Lambert
As much science as we now understand about the brain, still we are only successful in helping some brains to regain hope—and then maybe only for a certain length of time.
If you have loved someone who has fallen into a deep depression, you understand how tenuous our hold is on someone else’s outlook on hope. We cannot make them see the good, either in themselves, the world, or the future. Only that person’s mind can really make the decisions. And even then, sometimes something in that mind has turned traitor to the life force and has become a liar, distorting truth in grotesque ways.
If you haven’t loved such a person, you might be tempted to judge either the person and/or those who would try to change his/her brain chemistry and outlook on life. You might think trying harder, loving better, or doing more would be enough.
Sometimes treatment works, sometimes it doesn’t. There is no true manual because each person is individual in how the darkness descends.
While in a battle for someone’s life, you don’t really know if what you do helps or hurts. You worry about what you do or don’t do and what you say or don’t say. You hold your breath because you know you aren’t in control, and, sadly, neither is the person at that point—except to choose when to exercise one final moment of control.
There but for the grace of God go I . . . . that much I do know. But when somebody else’s loved one chooses to stop the fight, I am brought to my knees with guilt—and fear. Guilt that we have moved on, fear that because some brains just choose to develop a direction of their own from time to time, we can never really relax quite the same way as before we met depression in our own loved one.
That’s where I either have to cling to God and accept that he loves me and my own even knowing there is no promise that all will always be well for us in this life—or turn from him and succumb to hopelessness.
But I cannot choose God if he is an ogre who punishes us for brain chemistry difficulties that for some reason are part of some people’s lives. I have to trust that in the past our human faith institutions and leaders made declarations based upon how little was known about the brain. However, God did not make those declarations.
Some will call me a heretic while others will call me a fool, but what I cling to is that because God is lux aeterna, he can heal what we cannot. I don’t have to understand—I just have to believe.
Going the Distance 
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