There's Still Time to be Surprised

Still the Seasons Change.

I was walking along the bike path near my house one fall evening. The sun was setting quickly, as it tends to do during autumns in Springfield, Oregon. The leaves crunched under my feet, the crisp air chilled my face, and I was walking with all the brooding of a Green Day music video. I needed the air, I needed the outside. I had spent so much of that week feeling trapped inside my emotions that I needed to feel like I could get somewhere, anywhere. So, I walked playing the last couple days over in my head. Days filled with some of the worst depression I felt in years.

I remembered how the night before, I left my house in a state of rage and fear after a small argument with Kelsey. Talk about making a mountain out of a moll-hill. I contemplated the ways in which joy and peace felt inaccessible to me, and wondered in my soul: “How long, O Lord?” This pattern was getting too familiar. How long would depression follow me? How long was I expected to put up with this? I wondered if I could continue to do my job. I don’t know any pastors who were fighting depression. I wondered if I was a burden to my wife, who has had to deal with my bouts of sadness as long as we have been married. I wondered why, in that moment, it felt like God would just let anything happen.

I approached a bench on the path, and sat on it. I tried talking down my emotions. “You’re going to be okay. Your brain just isn’t producing the serotonin it needs to calm your amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for fear and anger). Your new medicine will help you. You won’t feel this way forever.” Sometimes understanding why you feel as terrible as you do is all you need to feel a little better. This was not one of those times. So, I remembered what a few of the guys from my small group always tell me when I feel like I’m drowning, “Invite God into your process. Get new input.”

I bow my head and repeat over and over the ancient prayer from our Eastern brothers and sisters: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Tears fill my eyes as my consciousness enters into the Presence. I don’t feel joy, I don’t feel the depression lifted, but I feel an internal warmth. Spirit is with me, even in my sorrow. Not taking me out of my pain, but getting me through it. I look up and see a tree in front of a brilliant purple and pink sunset.

About half the leaves had fallen from of this tree, leaving the remaining half dry and withered. They too will soon fall. I see the tree and think of how just a few months ago it was full, bright, and green. This tree looked how I felt. But then another thought occurred to me… in time, Spring will come. This tree will be restored to its glory and beauty. Soon, the tree will be dead, but not long after it will be resurrected. The seasons change.

The depression is here for now, but it won’t be here forever. It seems as if depression will always come, but it always manages to go, too. And like it or not, that’s the cycle. That’s the divine system. Some people may experience one season longer than the others, but in this life, we all enter into some sort of death, and we all receive resurrection.

In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples they are intimately connected to him, like branches to a vine, but he also said they needed to be pruned. Pruning means cutting, reshaping, and removing what diminishes vitality. When we look at a Vineyard after it’s been pruned we can hardly believe it will ever bear fruit. Yet, when the harvest comes, we realize that all that pruning allowed the vines to concentrate their energy and produce more grapes. I don’t think God causes my depression. I don’t think God dreamed of me having a wounded brain. I sincerely believe that is a result of the curse on creation until Jesus comes back to right all wrongs. But, the redemptive purposes of my Creator see to it that while I’m in the shadowlands he prunes me.

So, I take a deep breath. I dry my eyes. I look at the tree, and rather than seeing a dying plant, I behold a thing of beauty. It is withering, yet still the seasons change. This allows me to see myself as a thing of beauty. My depression is a liar, always telling me things will never change, but Spirit continues to whisper mercy to my soul. She guides me, heals me, and prunes me. Spirit tells me “This is not the end, and there’s still time to be surprised.”