he who has eyes...

“Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” [Ecclesiastes 1:2]

Have you ever reached that place when everything seems to be completely pointless?  You know that place… I believe psychologists would refer to it as “horrible, horrible depression.”  I’ve been there, for quite an extended period of time.  Until about a month ago, that is.  This is when it happened.

There are occasionally experiences that we have that seem totally common-place — completely ordinary — until you realize through the blessing of hindsight that they are rather extraordinary events after all.  You know those moments… where the Divine intersects with your life in such a way that you simply have to refer to it as a miracle.  About a month ago, a simple act that threw me into a simple act quite simply freed me from seemingly years of depression*.

This is often the way of God, isn’t it?

I used to meet quite regularly with a pastor and friend of mine Insoo and talk about life.  I liked to think that I was quite an easy person to counsel when talking about my problems.  I mean, sure I talked about my problems a lot (you know, in fact, I complained pretty well continually now that I think about it…), but the wonderful thing is — I knew exactly how to fix them all.  I was my own counseling machine!  Of course, despite the fact that I “had all the answers,” I still couldn’t manage to put any of these into action.  That is, I knew how to fix all that was wrong with me theoretically, but could never put these things into practical application.  Thinking back on it, I was probably an absolute frustration to talk to at times, because things never seemed to get better, no matter how much I would have it all figured out.  Among those things was the spiritual low-point that I am talking about here.

In his magnificent satire The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes about humanity through the eyes of a senior devil (Screwtape) in Satan’s employment who is counseling a young nephew about how to properly tempt and destroy a young Christian.  On the topic at hand, Screwtape talks about how humans are amphibians — half spirit and half animal.  And as such, while our spirits can be directed towards the eternal world, our bodies, passions, and imaginations are in continual flux.  He refers to it as the law of Undulation.

If you have watched your patient carefully you would have seen this undulation in every department of his life — his interest in work, his affection for his friends, his physical appetites, all go up and down.  As long as he lives on earth periods of emotional and bodily richness and liveliness will alternate with periods of numbness and poverty.  The dryness and dullness through which your patient is now going are not, as you fondly suppose, your workmanship; they are merely a natural phenomenon which will do us no good unless you make good use of it.

That numbness and poverty?  That was me for the last few years.  It was quite the period.  For me, understanding that things wax and wane like this in one’s spiritual walk, I had dealt with it for quite some time.  But, the length to which this general state was beginning to grow was getting a tad ridiculous.  However, into that moment, God intervened and simply woke me up at 4:30 in the morning. Day after day.

At first I was annoyed.  I couldn’t understand why I was all of a sudden wide awake and out of bed at 4:30.  My alarm wasn’t set until around 9 or so.  This was ridiculous.  But, with the stillness of the morning, you can’t help to get infected with the calm.  And in this serene moment, you can’t help but get contemplative.

Now, I’ve recognized all along that this depression I was fighting was a pretty bad deal.  It was certainly on the forefront of my mind.  So, I shot out an e-mail to my closest friends with whom I burden my prayer requests asking them to pray for this season of my life to be over.  And then… I had nothing to do for 4 hours.  So, I read.  I started reading Acts.  I read a few books simply for enjoyment.  I read articles on ESPN.  And I prayed.

And do you know what?  When the time actually came for me to go to work, I had an amazing day.  I was filled with such joy — it was great!  I came home, stayed up until about midnight as usual, and went to sleep.

And then I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.

What… the… heck?

So, I did the same thing as before — having my soul renewed at the start of the day by spending time with God in prayer and in His Word.  And again: amazing day.

This happened for a whole week through no effort of my own to wake up at that time.

And then it stopped.

I all of a sudden could sleep until 9 like usual.  I’d wake up, have to rush to work and ignore my recent morning ritual, and would do my usual daily duties.  And do you know what?  I was back to my old, miserable ways.  Immediately.

The juxtaposition of these weeks was jarring.  One way, I was completely joyful and focused on God all day long.  The other, I was completely miserable and angry at the slightest misstep by anyone else.  There was no happy medium.

Screwtape goes on:

Now it may surprise you to learn that in [God's] efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.  The reason is this.  To us a human is primarily food; our aim is the absorption of its will into ours, the increase of our own area of selfhood at its expense.  But the obedience which the Enemy demands of men is quite a different thing.  One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth.  He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself — creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.  We want cattle who can finally become food; He wants servants who can finally become sons.

I very much believe that God saw fit to answer my prayers for a release from this spiritual trough.  And He used it to point out to me that life without Him in a very real, vibrant way was not a life worth living.  It seems quite fitting that He used this trough in my life to gain a more permanent possession of my soul, just as Screwtape suggests.  After all, God wants me as his son.

All along, I knew that actually spending time with God consistently was essential to a joy-filled Christian lifestyle.  I mean, this isn’t a religion that I’m subscribing to — it’s a relationship with a Being.  You simply cannot have a relationship with anyone (let alone Anyone) without spending time with them.  It’s just not logical.  But, it took God finally stepping in and forcibly waking me up to this fact (quite literally) before I realized my own dependence on Him and His longing for time with me every day.

Without relationship, life can be absolutely draining.  And, thanks to the unquestionable and obvious differences that arise in my own spirit when living within and without relationship with the Divine, I’ve been able to very successfully rediscover joy in life.  This new-found discipline to spend time with God has maintained this trajectory since, with very little resistance from my spirit (it also doesn’t hurt that there has been quite a surprise along the way to help solidify my joy — and she is absolutely wonderful).

And really, a joyless day is such an absolute waste.  How could this precious of a 24-hour period not be worth an extra hour or so in the morning spent with your Father?

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* I do want to say that if you are struggling with depression, it’s not like you should avoid seeing a doctor or counselor about it.  God heals in many, many ways, and sometimes He heals through the simple act of medicating what is wrong.  Depression isn’t always a symptom of simply being distant from God.  Sometimes it is, in fact, chemical in nature and therefore require medication.  In short, do not neglect seeing a doctor because you “should be spiritual enough” to make it all better by drawing closer to God.  That’s my professional opinion.