With the birth of my child came depression and with depression came revelation. I sit here humbled, broken, excited, and a little scared because EVERYTHING has changed.
I will be the first to tell you that I hated being pregnant. It was extremely miserable. I became everything I said I wouldn’t become when I was pregnant. When Avi was born I was expecting life to become this beautiful thing of joy and happiness, I wasn’t going to be one of those people who complain about being a mom. This was gonna be wonderful, the best thing that ever happened to me, my life would have purpose, etc. Quite frankly, that was the farthest thing from what really happened.
Avi was born and everything changed, yes, but it didn’t turn into something wonderful and magical. In fact it threw me into one of the darkest times of my life. It wasn’t her fault, I want to make that VERY clear!! It was simply the way God allowed it to happen. I kept on thinking each week would get better, ending the week discouraged cause it hadn’t. Most weeks it felt like things were actually getting worse. I tried this and that, scurried here and there, thinking surely if I just get the right combination of details together I will finally find healing, life will be good again. I knew if nothing else would heal me my meds would have to eventually heal me. I prayed for healing to come, I was anointed, had some very Godly people pray over me, I renounced satan, I tried to keep my thoughts clean, I did ‘spiritual exercises’, nothing helped. I would feel better for a little but it would come back again. One morning, I was laying on the couch, shaking with fear, talking to Clint, praying and praying. He said something that hit me like a load of bricks, I of course, quickly shoved it off like it didn’t mean anything but it has come to mean so much to me, he said, “Maybe God can’t heal you because you are trying to heal yourself.” In other words, I was getting in the way. Like I said I brushed it off as if it were nothing. The next morning came and I did my ‘spiritual exercises’ which is basically personalizing Scripture and filling your mind with promises from God. It was a rough day. Really rough. I was doing everything ‘right’ but still not getting better. Life still was a black hole and I still had very little hope. I felt so confused and angry. Why wasn’t God healing me?!?! That afternoon while giving Avi her bottle, I gagged (it happens with my medication) so I ran to the bathroom, ended up puking a little bit and then just crumpled to the floor my head on my knees. I was too depressed to even cry. I sat there and thought, “Jesus, I have done everything I know to do. You’re the only thing I have left. You are my only hope.” And I meant it. It’s one thing to say that it’s another to really mean it. I was at the very very end of my rope. The world was so so ugly. I was such a mess. He really was my only hope of survival. Left to my own devices. . . well I was a product of my own devices. . . and it wasn’t pretty.
My devotional is going through Hosea right now. It’s very timely. I see myself in Israel and Gomer so much. Throughout this depression I have been trying to find just the right doctor, just the right med, just the right amount of faith, I have been busy doing ‘right’ things, but to no avail. I have been pursuing all kinds of other gods/lovers, not resting in the love of the one who made me. I have been unfaithful to my first love.
As time goes by He is revealing more and more to me. I wasn’t just doing this in this depression. I was doing this throughout my entire relationship with Him. I have never come before Him utterly naked, knowing that I have absolutely nothing to offer Him, seeing His holiness and my depravity, my desperate need of Him. In the past I have ‘cleaned up my act’ before I came to Him for forgiveness. I made sure I was doing everything right before I asked Him for help. On one hand I didn’t want to be a pest, on the other hand it was too hard to admit that I really am nothing, that there is no good in me.
There’s a verse in Galatians that talks about the ‘offense’ of the cross: that we can do nothing to earn our salvation. I looked up the word in the strong’s concordance, it means stumbling block. I don’t usually think of an offense being something I stumble over, I usually think of it as something someone does to me. But I am beginning to really understand this verse, where as before I read it and was like, people are crazy, why would they be able to earn their salvation?!? Now I read it and am like, I’m right there. I’m stumbling over the cross, I am offended that I can’t be pleasing to God on my own.
Do you know what it really means to have God really love you??
He made this beautiful earth, full of peace and joy. We destroyed it. We chose to follow the lusts of our eyes instead of the God who is the very description of beauty. We thought we knew better. We did that.
He should have destroyed us with a glance. Of all the nerve of us. God deserved something so much better than that. But look, we knew better than He did, we loved ourselves more.
He, knowing our desperate need of Him, sends Jesus, Who comes willingly and gladly, to become our sin. God pours out His wrath and hatred for sin onto Jesus, Who knew NO SIN. He NEVER sinned. It’s hard to fathom that especially when I see the gross amounts of sin I do on a daily basis. This perfect, spotless Lamb of God became my sin. He was willing to become utterly repulsive to His Father, so that my relationship with God could be restored. I’ve known this my whole life, but I haven’t really believed it. I haven’t really understood and I am fairly certain I will never understand, but I have gotten a glimpse of it and it causes me to shudder. To look at myself and think, “Brittany, you think you can somehow be worthy of that kind of love?! How arrogant can you be?!?” He died for my sin. My SIN. I am the one who walked away from Him, who constantly chooses herself over her God, and He became my sin, He took the punishment I deserve. Just so that I could once again be united with Him. I can not wrap my mind around that.
Why would you make something, see it choose to serve itself over You, and then willingly die for it? Why wouldn't you just vaporize that thing??? Why not at least make it work for it’s salvation? Why would you become this very things sin, take it’s punishment, just so that You could know it again? Why would you want a relationship with something that can’t even love you on it’s own? Whose faith and trust you have to give to it? Why would you want a relationship with something so utterly beneath you so completely and wholly dependent on You?
I don’t understand it. I can not fathom a love like that. I am utterly destroyed in the face of such love. I know, I know I can not earn that love.
I stumble over it because I don’t understand it. I have turned to Gospel into some kind of horrible religion because I can’t admit what I really am.
I am nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I have nothing to offer this great big God who loves me.
The only thing I can do is accept this free gift. I revolt at the very idea. Just accept it?! That’s really all there is to it?!? How can that be possible? How can I just simply get peace, joy, rest by just accepting it? I know I don’t deserve it. I want to earn it. I mean God’s really getting the raw end of the deal. But I look at it and see there is no possible way I can ever ever ever earn that kind of love. I would never be good enough, pure enough, clean enough, holy enough to deserve it. No way under the sun that that could happen. I am very aware of my depravity.
This. is. a. real. gamechanger.
It affects everything. The very way I see life. It for sure affects the way I live it. There is so much freedom in admitting that you are nothing and HE IS EVERYTHING, that you can do no good, He does the good through you, that you can’t even love Him in your own power. There is freedom. such freedom.
It’s terrifying. It’s revolutionary. It’s beautiful. It’s a huge gamechanger.
To bask in the glow of His love. To choose to believe that He really means it when He says I love you. That nothing I do can change it or separate me from His love. He loves me. He is for me. He gives me the victory. It’s all about Him. Not about me. About Him, what HE can do and does do.
Life changes when it becomes all about God. Things that were a big deal before are suddenly very very tiny. Things that were very very tiny before suddenly become a REALLY big deal. Everything changes.
I am so thankful. So very thankful for the darkness and wilderness of depression. It stripped me bear. It feels like God took me out into the wilderness, took away everything I thought I had, in order to give me Himself. I am so thankful. Overwhelmed by His mercy and love.
I am thankful for my husband, who faithfully prayed for and loved me during this time. Even though He didn’t always understand, he held me and loved me.
I am also so thankful for the sweet friends that have walked this dark time with me. Stacy, Lori, Mom, Mariann, & Naomi, You will never ever know how much your sweet love and encouragement, your sometimes very honest, almost painful words, your prayers and faithfulness, meant and still mean to me. God knew I needed you. Thank you. Thank you for being there and for driving me to His feet.
To those of you who knew about my darkness and struggle and prayed for me. Thank you. I am so grateful. So extremely blessed.
I know it’s not over. This totally changes everything. It means starting over. But He is faithful. He will NEVER leave me or forsake me.
