Hurting People Don't Need Band-Aids

My heart is heavy this morning. All morning it has been weighed down with someone who is struggling to stay afloat as the ugly throes of Depression threaten to strangle life out of her. My heart hurts for her because I remember a season in my life when Depression hung around my heart.

It was one of the most horrible seasons in my journey. I remember how painful everything was…getting up out of bed, sleeping, getting ready, engaging with people. There were some days I just knew that I couldn’t go on. Darkness surrounded me daily and I felt as if I was just inches away from being swallowed completely into a Black Hole.

In listening to this person, I remember as well how many people tried to “fix me.” Well meaning people to be sure, but people who knew my life at a glance and who were only concerned that my countenance would very quickly tidy itself up. After all, Christians are supposed to “choose joy” as one Fixer Upper told me. Believe me, I wanted to be fixed. I made several attempts at bandaging wounds in my heart…but only seemed to end up with a wound that never seemed to heal and often smelled suspiciously of infection.

This morning as I’ve been praying for this person as I recall my own journey, I know that there was no quick fix. What I remember from that time was practically living in my oversized chair and ottoman and pouring out my heart to Jesus. King David’s honesty with God was a model for me. Verses such as Psalm 38:9, “All my longings lie open before you, O Lord; my sighing is not hidden from you” and Psalm 62:8, “Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge” not only encouraged me to stay in the fray but taught me that God alone could handle my honesty – the gross, yucky, ugly stuff in my heart that most people couldn’t hear, understand, or handle.

Looking back over that season, I couldn’t tell you that there was any one thing that snapped me out of depression. It was a slow healing. But, the one thing that I do know is that I learned to run to Him with the garbage of my soul and in time my heart began to finally hear His words of comfort. Maybe in learning to share with Him honestly, knowing that He could take it and that He heard me eventually softened my heart to listen to Him and not the Enemy. And, I know that I learned that Band-Aids, while they can protect from further infection, are not healing agents. Only Jesus can truly heal our deepest wounds.

And that’s what I’m praying for my hurting friend today.