Day One: It All Started in the Shower

    This seemed like an average Tuesday.  I woke up to a terrible radio station on my alarm clock combined with beeps and static.  After rolling out of bed and groggily feeding the animals, I trudged downstairs, picked out my clothes for the day, and started the shower.  I didn't know my life was about to change.
    I live with depression, and sometimes waking up doesn't seem worth the effort.  For a few weeks, my mind has been playing a question on repeat: "What is the point of life?"  Not just my life, but all life.  Why are we here?  What does it mean to be a human being on the face of this planet?  What is truth?  What is love?  How does my existence fit into the grand scheme of the universe?  I know these are questions that most people ask themselves, but even knowing it is normal has been scant consolation to me.  I want my life to mean something.  I want the world to have a point.  I want to know that whatever happens to me has a purpose.
    I used to believe that the God of Christianity had a plan for my life.  Raised in a Christian family, I attended church multiple times per week from my infancy.  I grew up on a steady stream of Christian books, Christian movies, Christian music, church camp, Bible quizzing, praise band, and finally, a Christian private college.  I knew what Christianity was all about.  I had practically bathed in it my entire life.  I did all of the right things: prayed, went to church regularly, read the Bible, kept a prayer journal, attended Bible studies, and played music in various different praise bands.  However, I felt empty.  It seemed like I was seeking but not finding.  Even though my life was so full of Christianity, God seemed far off and hard to find.  I was reaching out, but I felt like everything that had been promised to me when I became a Christian was still out of my grasp.  It wasn't fair.  I was doing everything right!  It didn't make sense.
    In 2007 my world turned upside down.  The Christian family I had grown up in disintegrated before my eyes as my parents separated, then divorced.  Despite all of my prayers and faith, God had not saved my parents' marriage.  His love had not been enough to teach them to love each other.  I was crushed, and all of my beliefs crumbled.  Everything I had been taught seemed useless.  If God could not save a Christian family, was he even real?  Was there even a god, or power, or consciousness that heard my pleas?  What had once seemed rock solid lay spread out like a million grains of sand around me.  If there was not God, then what was there?  I felt alone in my pain.
    As time passed, I gradually began to assemble a collection of fragmented beliefs, picking them out of the rubble left behind after the divorce.  I chose each one carefully, making sure I actually believed it.  I kept nothing out of a sense of duty or guilt.  Each piece I salvaged was a genuine belief that I accepted only after careful analysis and stringent examination.  I first believed that there was a higher power.  There seemed to be too much of a distinction between good and evil in the world to deny that some standard had to have been originally set for human behavior and morals.  Beyond that, how could a world of such beautiful complexity exist merely by chance?  I think it would have taken more faith for me to not believe in a higher power than for me to admit that there was probably an intelligent force at work in the universe.
    After I believed in a higher power, I began to examine other beliefs I used to take for granted.  I analyzed the God of Christianity.  I took a bitter, jaded look at Him and decided that He still made more sense to me than any other religion I had encountered.  I then moved from God to Jesus and decided that yes, I could keep Jesus, too.  But I wasn't sure about the effectiveness of prayer, the validity of certain theological interpretations of scripture, or how much God really has to do with day-to-day life on this planet.  Were the things I was taught about the nature of God still true?  I could not believe that God had a plan for me.  Not yet.
    A dear friend of mine tried to lead me in prayerful meditation to start healing the brokenness in me, but I was too skeptical of prayer to venture very far down that path.  Everything was still too raw, even years after the split.  I was married by then.  I had a daughter, a home, pets, a job...all of the makings of a good life.  However, I lived in the shadow of depression.  How could I rest when any day my life could fall apart?  My marriage could implode.  My daughter could die in a freak accident.  My mental health could hit the breaking point and land me in the hospital with a string of bills in the wake.  There were just no guarantees that I would be okay.  I was not safe.  Life was a scary, uncertain place, and I struggled frequently with depression, fear, and anxiety.  I felt like God was a spectator in a sky box, watching humanity with half-apathetic interest to see what we would make of our lives.  I did not ask him for anything.  I would not risk the pain of another disappointment.
    Throughout the entire searching process, I did not give up going to church.  Even though I was not sure I even believed in a higher power, much less Christianity, I was not willing to stop seeking for truth.  I figured it couldn't hurt to listen to sermons and analyze them.  I think even in the deepest parts of my doubt, I was still drawn to the God of my childhood and youth.  I believed that if God was not real, I would emerge from my search empty-handed.  If he was real, He would not mind if I poked and prodded him a little bit to make sure.  I did not really want to give up on God.  I just wanted a good reason to keep believing.  I wanted enough proof to make it safe to trust again.
    I entered counseling and began taking medication to treat my depression.  My mental health became a roller coaster of "okay" highs and panicky, weeping, paralyzing lows.  Sometimes I had thoughts of suicide.  I felt broken beyond repair, and it was a struggle to function like a normal person.  I swung like a pendulum between loving gratitude for my family and a leaden, hopeless desire to leave them and live by myself.  I tried to convince my husband that he would be better off without me.  I pictured a small apartment in my mind: a safe, quiet place where I could be alone until I could fix myself.  If I could just be alone, if I just had time to sort it all out, maybe I could get better somehow.  Every tiny conflict in life seemed unbearable.  I stretched out my hands desperately for happiness, but it seemed to be very, very far away.
    Beneath the pain and panicked reactions to fear, I still believed that there might be help for me.  In the times when all I could do was collapse and cry, I reached out for life.  I cried out to a God in whom I was not sure I even believed.  In the deepest part of my despair, I called out to the God of my youth and begged for help.  I did not know what kind of help to ask for.  I was not sure I even believed that He would do anything.  I was just out of options.  As I cried and pleaded, I sensed that God heard me.  I believed it.  I did not hear a voice or see a vision.  There were no miracles, no Bible verse leaping off of the page to comfort me, no phone call from a friend who "just felt that God was telling me to call you."  Only silence.  But in that silence, I felt that there was help for me.  I was not alone.  My tears slowed, and as I climbed from my knees, I felt drained, but no longer hopeless.  There was a God, and there was help coming for me.
    My sessions with the counselor were eventually so successful that he and I agreed that I did not need to come regularly anymore.  I had learned how to cope with conflict, how to self-differentiate from my parents and my spouse, and how to assert myself.  My psychiatrist told me he wished he could show me off to his colleagues, because they really still did not have much of an idea how people who have depression get better, and he was pleased with the progress I had made in my treatment.  I still had highs and lows, but it seemed that the extremes were becoming less as I learned how to successfully navigate life's obstacles.  I felt that I had gained much from the time I spent in counseling, and it seemed like a graduation when I left the office that day.  However, life still felt heavy.  Not unmanageable, but not joyful.  Not terrible, but not wonderful.  Not volatile, but not secure.  There was still something broken in me.
    I couldn't figure out what it was.  Was it my marriage?  My job?  My home?  My faults and flaws?  My social life?  Even though none of those things was perfect, none was flawed enough to be called "bad."  My life was enviable in many ways.  I really had no room to complain.  So why did I feel so restless?  Why could I not be content?  I flitted from project to project, trying to find happiness in my many hobbies.  I re-read favorite books.  I watched TV and movies with my husband.  I played with my beautiful baby daughter.  I cooked, decorated cakes, and cleaned my house.  I sewed curtains for my mother.  Nothing seemed to have a point.  They were all good things, but they didn't mean anything.  I was adding water to the ocean with an eyedropper.  The tiny amount of beautiful and creative things I did seemed futile.  I was still depressed. 
    That feeling was with me when I climbed into the shower this morning.  In the early morning stillness of my house, I faced a new day and did not care.  What was another day?  My life had no meaning.  Just another day of breathing, eating, working, playing, and finally, sleeping.  A simple human existence.  I would probably never have a lot of money or be famous.  I would probably never create anything that would change the world.  I was just a woman in a small town, living in a small house, working at a low-level no-prestige job to pay the bills while other people raised my daughter.  What could this day possible hold for me?
    As I mechanically washed my hair, I thought about something my pastor had said in his sermon on Sunday.  He was preaching from the book of John, and he read the story of Jesus and Nicodemus.  Nicodemus was a Jewish teacher.  The religious law was his entire life.  He knew all about what God required of his people, and he was secure in that.  Then, he met Jesus, and Jesus told him that he needed to be born again if he wanted to see the kingdom of God.  Thinking logically, Nicodemus asked how it would be possible for a man to enter his mother's womb a second time.  It seemed pretty impossible.  However, despite all of his study, all of his knowledge, Nicodemus could not perceive the spiritual truth that was being laid before his eyes.  Jesus explained that the new birth was of water and spirit.  For Nicodemus to see the kingdom of God, he would have to lay aside his understanding of the way things of God worked.  He would have to believe something new.  Something impossible.
    When Jesus was performing all kinds of crazy miracles, people flocked to follow him.  They celebrated him, they praised him; they hung on his every word.  They also changed their minds as soon as Jesus no longer appeared to be successful.  By the time he made it to the cross, even his best friends had run away and said they didn't even know him.  He seemed to have utterly failed.  Everything that had "proved" him to be the Messiah had fallen apart.  Where was his adoring fan club?  Where were his miracles?  Where was the voice from heaven calling him "Son?"  No one knew the plan God had for Jesus as he hung up there dying.  What a disappointment Jesus was.  We thought he was going to save us, but he didn't.  We believed in him, but we were wrong.  It didn't make sense...until later.
    This morning, I realized that I need to believe in something bigger than myself.  No, not "need" as in "I am obligated," or, "I should," or "It would be a good thing if..."  If I am going to remain alive on this planet, I need to believe that there is a purpose for my life.  My spirit is dying a slow death without that belief.  I am being swallowed by depression and fear.  I am unable to enjoy the simplest pleasures in life because they all feel so pointless.  I need to believe that I am a thread being woven into a pattern of beautiful intent.  I need to believe that the painful things I endure in life are worth more than my momentary comfort and self-preservation.  So I do.  As of this morning.  For the first time in my life, I believe that God has a plan for me.  I don't believe it because I have been convinced by facts or impressed by crazy miracles.  I don't believe it because God answered my prayers and saved my family from painful dissolution.  He didn't.  But I am choosing to believe because I need to.  And you know what?  By the time I stepped out of the shower this morning, the depression was gone.  In its place: joy.