Depression is a step in the process of mourning. The definition for depression is the condition of feeling sad or despondent, feelings of dejection and hopelessness, despair
The following is an excerpt from the Journey with questions asked and answers given by a participant in the Journey for healing from sexual abuse.
“As you wrote about your depression as a result of sexual abuse, did you recognize a lack of quality in your life?”
The participant responded – ” A lack of quality in my life? What does that look like after being sexually abused? I’ve had to be somebody else just to get through the day. Hiding behind masks required a lot of my energy and daily, I was left with exhaustion and weariness.”
“Due to depression caused by your sexual abuse, have you developed any addictive behaviors?”
The same participant responded – “I am addicted to my masks.”
_________________________________________________
As a prisoner of depression, this precious woman struggled with trust. Trusting God with her heart seemed impossible, and as a result, she wrote,
”I never felt I could accept all God wants to give me and do in me because I felt like He wouldn’t want to if He really knew me. I knew that He saw and already knew my life, but it was my heart that I’d held back from Him. It was my heart I feared He would reject. The bottom line was that I didn’t trust Him with my heart.”
Out of her great struggle to trust God with her heart and give up the masks that had been her crutches for most of her life, she wrote this poem:
As You Were
As you were long ago opening the sea
slaying giants and keeping an ark afloat.
I need you to be for me
as you were with David and then Noah on that boat.
Now I’m facing a giant
one that’s mocked me all my life
my puny little pebbles
are a tiny spark in a cold dark night.
As you were – always for someone else
I never believed you could be
I never believed you would be
for me
As you were so long ago
as you were just yesterday
I’ve seen you’re work with my own eyes
but always in someone else’s day
As you were, would you dare to be
as you are…
even in me?
