Thanksgivingfull

Let's see... where to begin. Oh, I might as well just lay it all out for you.

Prepare yourselves. This will be likely be long and tangenty and quite possibly ultimately unreadable.

Several years ago, back in 2004? 2005?, I went through a pretty rough depression. (Well, I should say, we went through a pretty rough depression. Peter might not have felt all of the same emotions, but he definitely still paid a lot of the cost.) We had been living in California for a couple of years at that point. Our "adventure" to the West Coast wasn't going quite like I'd planned. As it turns out, change is hard. And I was reeling from a lot of change - we'd left our family, most of our friends, a rural Midwestern culture, relative financial stability, and a lot of preconceived notions about marriage and God and purpose and probably a host of other things behind us. I was working in a job that I disliked and only accepted in a fit of anger and bitterness since it seemed like a last resort against complete financial implosion. It wasn't a good fit for me. I wasn't very good at it and was exhausted from trying to pretend that I was good at it or that I EVEN CARED about any of it at all. Peter was busy with school and internships and jobs and had an entirely separate community of friends from my own. I was tired and disillusioned and disappointed and miserable. And somewhere in the middle of it I lost the ability to see any part of my life or my future or especially myself with any perspective. Life was gray, tedious, tiresome. And I just wanted it to be over.

And man, it really was that bad. It might even have been a little worse.

Somewhere, somehow in the middle of all that mess - I don't know. I don't even know how to explain it. I got to the end of myself? And gave up? And then discovered that hey - there's Something bigger than me out there? And It's been sustaining me all along even when I thought I was holding myself together through a last desperate clutching of my own despairing will?

Even now, I keep starting sentences and then erasing them because I can't think of a way to explain how I got out of that pit. I know pieces of it. Peter loved me determinedly, relentlessly, unconditionally and slowly convinced me to talk to a counselor (I would only go if he came too), to at least consider seeing a doctor (I flatly refused for over a year), to do whatever it took to get healthy again. (And it took quitting my job while he was still in seminary, and I was the main source of income.) I also received love, support, and prayers from friends. Eventually, I abandoned my stubbornness (because really, what had it done for me?) and agreed to try some medication. And that helped. A lot. It didn't solve everything or "fix" me, but it stopped the freefall of my emotions and cleared my head enough so that I could make a grasp at some perspective, begin to separate truth from lies, and make the choices and changes that I needed to make. And I know for sure that in all these things, the Love and Grace of a God whom I had turned and walked away from because He didn't seem trustworthy, gripped me, surrounded me, patiently kept my head above water even as I was trying to drown, and then, when I finally gave up, ever so slowly and gently lifted me up and set my feet on dry, solid ground. And I know He did it not because I was so great but just because He loved me. Loves me.

***

There is a song that I've been listening to and thinking about for awhile. It's "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie. If you haven't heard it before, I highly recommend that you find and listen to it sometime - it's a beautiful song. Here are the lyrics:

And it came to me then
That every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous paces bracing for bad news
Then the nurse comes around and everyone lifts their head
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who's going to watch you die
So who's going to watch you die
So who's going to watch you die

Anyway, like I said I've been thinking about this song a lot - about the truth of it - that love is watching someone die. And the thought that keeps coming back to me is that I've only watched one person die. And it was the hardest, most painful thing I've ever done. But what I can't get away from, what I can't stop thinking about, is that there is Someone who watches over every death. Every single one. From beginning to end, the famous, the lonely, and the forgotten. And He loves them all just like He loves me. More than I love my own child. And I've never even stopped to think about what that must cost Him.

***

This Thanksgiving I'm thankful for so many things. I really began this post with the intention of listing some of those things. I also meant to talk about how I've been feeling a bit low again lately, and how I've been afraid that I'm at the beginning of heading back down the path I described above, and the decisions that I'm trying to make about what to do about this, and the things that just this week have been disappointing and discouraging. And then I meant to write about all the good things that I have in my life that I'm so thankful for, and how also this week I've had opportunity to gain some perspective and realize just how blessed I really am. And despite the discouragement, I feel so hopeful.

Maybe I'll write more about those things later. Right now I just want to focus on being thankful for this one thing: for the Someone who loves all of us enough to be with us and watch over us as we die - in all the ways that we experience death - in our depression, or grief, or disappointment, or disillusionment - and ultimately, in our last breath. That alone is enough. My heart is full of thanksgiving.