Lions, Tigers and
Bears, Oh My
Depression, Anxiety
and Dread, Oh My
I absolutely love the movie The Wizard
of Oz. There are scenes, phrases in that movie that I still say today. “I have
a feeling we aren’t in Kansas anymore” and “There’s no place like home”. I bet
most of you did not know that the two most often quoted sources (for day- to-
day dialogue) are the Bible and William Shakespeare. Yet, most of us have never
read either source. Isn’t it amazing how
something as small as words can enter your ear and stay in your brain forever?
There are so many gifts and
blessings that we, as the children of God, have received throughout the ages. I
count the gift of language as one of the top 5 (air, water, fire, vegetation,
and language). I whole heartedly believe that God’s gift of expression via
words was always intended to bring us closer to him and lift one another up.
But just as we have abused the other top 5 gifts, we have also gutted the original
intent of language. Our words these days do very little to raise a soul closer
to heaven. Often times, we use words to destroy and belittle a person, a
culture, a race, a theological sect. We use and abuse people with the words we
speak. But this post is not about how we inflict pain to others, but how we
used this beautiful gift to destroy our own minds and hearts.
I am not the only woman to look at
her image and think “I’m fat” “I’m ugly” “if only I…”. I am not the only human
to fall short at a goal and then berate my own shortcomings as total failure, absolute
loss and unforgiveable sins. We take the words God created (love, beauty, identity) to destroy ourselves and,
in the process, we slowly break out chain, our connection to God.
In 2006, I did my first round of
marriage counseling. We spent a lot of time talking about our feelings. I now
see that as a bad way to work through pain and hurt. Pain and hurt live in feelings.
To get out of pain and hurt, one needs to change the way they think, not feel.
If more time had been spent addressing each other’s actual needs and red lines,
then maybe things could have improved. Instead, the focus was on how someone’s
actions made us feel? And to be honest, feelings
are always raw, and picking at raw wounds is not how you heal a wound. Giving a
wound the time and space, unbothered, is the only way it heals. After all a wound acts, if allowed, on it's own to heal, eventually scabbing over and allowing new flesh to grow underneath (description here is of a skin wound).
Do not get me wrong, there are many
wonderful words God gave us that are tied to emotions. Words like “love” “sadness”
“joy”, etc. But each of these words, at least from a biblical sense, is tied to
action as well. One does love. One does joy. These words, these feelings do not
just linger as an object, as a NOUN, they are working and moving and are very
much VERBS. We forgot that. We labeled them as subpar verbs and often use them
descriptively and not actively. We stopped working at loving, liking, being
happy, finding joy, allowing for sadness, embracing our disappointments,
surrendering to hope…and I could go on. And all of this is to say…I used words
to discredit my own thoughts and therefore allowed feelings, feelings that I was
not actively working through, to lead me into a dark and deep depression.
Oh, I know, I know that I have had
so much blessing and mercy and triumph through this battle called Cancer. A
battle I never volunteered for. I was voluntold by God – you will suffer and
battle through…and others will see your battle. It has not always been pretty.
I have wallowed in self-pity, I have suffered from non-belief, I have bottomed
out on hope, etc., etc.…. I have experienced great highs and horrendous lows. I
have put on the brave face, I have smiled when I wanted to cry, I have isolated
from others to help ease their burdens of “not knowing what to do”. I dread
using this phrase but battling (over and over) cancer is very much like suffering
from a TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) and/or PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Yes, PTSD is very much like a TBI in that your brain has experienced a trauma
and is unable to operate as usual. The difference being a TBI is physical trauma
and PTSD is psychological trauma. But both disorders of the brain can create
inaccurate responses and allow for “misfires” in certain areas. PTSD can change
a persons’ language use. For example, many with PTSD blur first-person and
third-person wording and associations (basically a singular view and a world
view all in one) and they typically adopt very negative words, often associate
death with everything and remove light and joy from their vocabulary.
Do you know how long it has taken
for me to admit that I suffer from PTSD? I still have not accepted it
completely. I mean cancer wreaked havoc on my body. The cancer (or should I say
treatments) destroyed my blood, numbed my hands and feet, created a loss of
short-term memory and memory recall (I can think something but am unable to get
it from brain to mouth), has weakened my eyesight, has deafened one ear, has
concaved my fingernails, has darkened my veins, changed my skin, the daily
chemo pill I am on has weakened my bones, destroyed my joints and stiffened my
muscles. And all of this is physical, I deal with it daily and it is what it
is. But the absolute worst effect has been my mental changes. I don’t date
hope, I don’t dare plan, I live in the very minimal moment (I know we are supposed to
do this anyway – but mine is extreme), I am scared, I am always waiting for the
other shoe to drop, I see doctors ALL THE TIME – SO I HATE THEM, I don’t dream,
I don’t live fully, because I am always dreading getting going on something and
having to PAUSE for treatment, or worse to DIE. There is no joy, there is no
happiness, it is all just a “wait and see”. Cancer destroyed my body and my
mind and right now today – I feel like it is aiming for my Soul.
This brings me right back to those
early days of marriage counseling. Where we had to write a list of all our “let
down” moments and feelings about them. I remember clearly my list was pages,
and my ex-husband's was two things. My let-down moments were all “things” very
materialistic and his were all “actions” very doable things. I remember the
pastor telling me that even though my let-down moments were very important, his
“action” moments were more substantial. Simply put actions outweigh feelings. We
both learned that communication was key, but I also learned that my behavior,
my actions, my “doing” was way more vital to health than my “feels”. For example,
being upset about the trash not being taken out was not as heavy as say
withholding intimacy because I was mad. You see from an early age; I twisted
action and feelings and created a combo of inaction when I felt. You know the “silent
treatment” or as my daughter and ex-husband still say today “she blows up like
a puffer fish” – meaning I sit quiet and look mad but say nothing. I failed at
using God’s gift of words to fix, heal, and move on. Instead, I took those words,
made them angry and hateful and let them brew in my head.
I have done the same thing with
this cancer. I have let its evilness live in my brain. I have let the let-down
and disappointment associated with cancer live and thrive in my heart. I
stopped crying. I stopped screaming. I just stopped. When you stop and close
your heart and brain, you allow for a breading ground of emptiness, darkness, and
hate. Every action becomes a chore, becomes an unbearable thing that you just
need to get through. You close shop to all the possible light in the world and
you say, “hey Satan – I am open for business”. Sounds stupid I know, but God
exists in the light and will rescue in the dark, but Satan lives and operates only in
the dark. So, when you close shop, you are primed for the picking by Satan.
I do not want to live this way. I
really don’t. I want to be me, but I have forgotten who I am. This downward
spiral into this current depression began long before the cancer. I have just
shoveled disappointment, grief and hurt, one after the other, for decades and
now I cannot stand to feel this anymore. Trouble is I don’t know where to start
to dig out.
I know the words of God (and the
words of Shakespeare) and can say them to myself over and over, but something
else is missing. The words are hitting me but no sinking in. I feel worthless
and dirty. Seriously cancer is so dirty. For a year there I did not even have
my own blood in me. Say what you want, but sometimes I feel like a stranger in
my own skin. Like I am clawing from the inside to get out.
And I no longer want to feel like
this. I remember a girl that loved the Wizard of Oz. I would watch it every
year on the TV. The hourglass moment in the movie is one of my favorites. I
loved Star Wars and the opening scene of Return of the Jedi is one of my
favorites. I like good overcoming evil. In both of those stories at those
moments, really bad things have happened to the main character (Yes Han Solo is
a main character) and what they do not know is that while they are facing peril,
their friends are in the background plotting/creating a way to rescue them.
When all hope looks lost, light finds a way to rescue. I love it. It is a redeeming
storyline that makes Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings,
etc. live in our hearts. Good overcomes evil.
So maybe I am living a Job moment.
Maybe I need to remember that Job, like Elijah, like Paul, each suffered greatly
for their faith. Each for different reasons. Each, in my own opinion, suffers a
time of depression. I mean Elijah begs to die, Job lies in mud and wills
himself to just die, Paul after the encounter on the road to Damascus is forced
to question everything he has ever known, and he is forced to physically suffer. Each suffers pain, both physical and mental. Each is redeemed, raised-up and
rescued by God.
That gives me comfort to know that
this is a season. I know I was not supposed to be in this season for as long as
I have been in, and that comes back to language. I need to start speaking words
over my own life, that represent where I want to be, who I want to be and how I
want to live. In the words of Shakespeare “what’s done is done”, it is now time
to get on with life and live life as written in the bible “eat, drink and be
merry”!
REFERENCES:
TBI and Cancer (Chemo brain): https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/chemo-brain/symptoms-causes/syc-20351060
PTSD and Cancer: https://www.cancer.net/survivorship/life-after-cancer/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-and-cancer
Isolation and Satan: https://knowingisdoing.org/blog/devil-desires-isolate-you-christ-dont-let-him
Job, Elijah and Paul and Depression:
http://www.catholiclane.com/paul-and-elijah-the-pharisee-and-the-prophet-on-sinai/
https://faithalone.org/grace-in-focus-articles/suicide-bible-people-who-wanted-to-die/
https://seattlechristiancounseling.com/articles/coping-depression-even-bible-heroes-cope-depression
Shakespeare's use of the bible: https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/latest/news/shakespeare-and-the-bible/3
https://www1.cbn.com/how-bible-influenced-william-shakespeare
Language and Depression: https://theconversation.com/people-with-depression-use-language-differently-heres-how-to-spot-it-90877
https://www.mentalhealthtoday.co.uk/blog/how-the-mechanisms-of-depression-are-reflected-in-language
Suicide Hotline: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ 800-273-8255
Online Therapy: https://www.betterhelp.com/
https://www.talkspace.com/
A small sample of Shakespeare's Phrases still used today:
1. We have seen better days (As you
Like It)
2. Too much of a good thing (As you
Like it)
3. Neither rhyme nor reason (The
comedy of errors)
4. Cruel to be king (Hamlet)
5. The clothes make the man (Hamlet)
6. In my heart of hearts (Hamlet)
7. He hath eaten me out of house
and home (Henry IV)
8. The be-all and the end-all
(Macbeth)
9. Jealousy is the green-eyed
monster (Othello)
10. What’s done is done (Macbeth)
11. Something wicked this way comes
(Macbeth)
12. All that glitters isn’t gold
(The Merchant of Venice)
13. Star-crossed lovers (Romeo and
Juliet)
14. Wild-goose chase (Romeo and
Juliet)
15. Break the ice (Taming the
Shrew)
A small sample of biblical phrases
still used in common language today:
1. At the eleventh hour (Matthew
20:1-16)
2. At your wit’s end (Psalms
107:23-27)
3. The blind leading the blind
(Matthew 15:14)
4. By the skin of your teeth (Job
19:20)
5. Eat, drink and be merry (Luke
12:19/1 Corinthians 15:32/Ecclesiastes 8:15)
6. To fall by the wayside (Luke
8:5)
7. A Leopard cannot change its
spots (Jeremiah 13:23)
8. Like a lamb to the slaughter
(Isaiah 53:7)
9. There is nothing new under the
sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9) (also Shakespeare's 59th sonnet)
10. The writing is on the wall (Daniel
5:1-31)
11. A wolf in sheep’s clothing
(Matthew 7:15)
12. Rise and Shine (Isaiah 60:1)
13. The powers that be (Romans
13:1)
14. Go the extra mile (Matthew 5:41)
15. By the skin of your teeth (Job
19:20)
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