Living with Clinical Depression: Beginning Stages

My husband Dan is asking me questions about my experiences with depression. Here are the questions and answers. I hope you will learn something from my experiences and testimony.

Q. What first brought the onset of your clinical depression? Was it one incident or several incidents converging?

A. I believe that I was always depressed as a child but that I had developed coping skills to keep myself pumped up. Experiences with my family, the death of a loved one and subsequently being kicked out of an elderly relatives home whom we were taking care of and then several years of hormonal imbalance from trying to conceive were taking a tole on me. I also was pushing myself and my entire family to be perfect. We were always at church every time the door was open and quick to serve and take on tasks. I was not taking care of myself.

 The clinical depression began after a series of events in the summer of 1991 just as the church where Dan worked and I volunteered  called a new Pastor. One of the three previous co-pastors left and planted a church a few miles from the Mother church. Several hundred of our members left with him causing quite a stur. I loved this pastor and his wife dearly and was very upset over all of the anger and grief our church was experiencing at that time. Our entire worship team including another best friend who was our pianist and organ player and my husbands right hand in the ministry also left us. Dan and I were left to pick up the pieces of the music ministry. I was determined not to be angry with those who left even though rumors were circulating that the Holy Spirit had left our church and gone with the people who had left to start the new church. Dan and I did not feel called to leave our church so we begin to lead worship for both Sunday services and Wednesday nights while beginning a training course to help train and equip new worship leaders.  It was all consuming and exhausting. Eventually God sent new people to fill in the gaps and after one year of training the worship team was in good shape again.

 I also had two sweet adopted boys at home that GOD had blessed our lives with at that time. Both boys had ear infections and other sicknesses the first several years of their lives that had taken a toll on our sleeping. I was continuing to try to serve the church, be the perfect Mother and please everyone when Dan and I got word that there was a group of people within the worship ministry that were angry with me and were accusing me of trying to take over Dan’s job. We went to each person, one by one, and talked to them personally asking forgiveness if we had offended them in any way and asking them to please come to us next time if a problem occurred.

After meeting with five people I was so exhausted and discouraged. I had tried so hard to serve God, the church and make it better only to come under harsh criticism from people who I thought loved God and me. There was such a deep sadness in my spirit and my hopes were dashed that we Christians could be so mean to each other and not do what is scripturally right. I wanted everyone to do what Matthew 18 said…if you have ought with your brother, go to them. This isn’t happening, Lord. My loving church home was not the utopia I had hoped for and the reality was that it would more than likely never be hit me hard. (I was really neieve.)  I also could not understand why my God had let them have at me when I had been trying to do all of the right things I thought for the right reasons and it was as if I was being punished instead of blessed. I found myself at the foot of the cross in the sanctuary crying my eyes out to God and saying “If you want me to continue to serve you like this then you are going to have to do something to make me handle things better.” Two days later I was pushing myself through the exaustion to do my sister in law's perm, all our kids were playing and I suddenly had such a feeling of fear, dread and hopelessness like I had never experienced before. This is when I experienced my first panic attack.

TO BE CONTINUED (It gets better!)