Losing Faith, Finding Hope
A Journey With Depression
by Monica A. Coleman
reposted from the Huffington Post
"Many people describe depression as a kind of intense grief. It is a deep sadness. It's like heartbreak, agony and despair all at once. I think depression is worse than grief. Grief usually has an identifiable cause. There are stages. People understand why you are sad. It eases with time.
I find that depression is more like death. In every depressive episode, something is lost. Sometimes it's the belief that I'm not that sick. Sometimes it's a dream. Sometimes it's a concrete plan or goal. Sometimes it's who I desperately wanted and expected myself to be. Sometimes it's a harmful lie I've told myself, or that someone told me. Sometimes what dies, needed to go. Most times, it seems I would have been perfectly fine without the loss. I would smile more. I would know how I spent the hours in my day. I would see fewer doctors. When people ask me how I am doing, my response of "fine" would only be a lie thirty percent of the time. Like most people, right?
I have lived with a depressive condition since I was a teenager, although I didn't have a name for it until my 20s. I don't know how many lows I've had -- excluding the two suicidal bouts. I don't count how many times I've been sad and desperate for months. I don't make a list of what I've lost.
I do, however, remember when I lost my faith.
Like many people who are raised in a religious environment, I was taught to believe that God loves me and protects me. I was taught that God punishes sin, and rewards those who are faithful. I learned about my religion by studying Holy Scriptures. I prayed. I worshipped. This was supposed to strengthen my faith. It was supposed to make me happy.
For many years, it did. I cherished Sundays spent in church -- singing, kneeling and feeling inspired by the words of the preachers. My friends were made up of the other people I met in church. We volunteered at Vacation Bible School for the children, the food drive and tutoring programs.
Meanwhile, I prayed for peace. In my sleepless nights, I asked God to save me, help me and rescue me from my sadness. Just make it all better. I also heard the messages that my faith told me about depression: that I was be too blessed to be stressed; that depression was a lie from "the enemy"; that suicide is an unforgiveable sin. Somewhere between my unanswered prayers and the realization that I could not worship myself into happiness, my faith died.
I kept going to church. I kept saying the words of the prayers. I still sang the songs. I'm a minister -- I have to. But I was a fraud. I stopped talking with God. What could I say to the One who was not delivering me? What praise did I have? I could list my blessings, but I could not feel gratitude. I hid my faithlessness like a bobby pin in an updo. Everything looked composed on the outside, but I was barely holding it together. I was not faithful or pious. I felt abandoned and alone.
As my depression worsened, I learned more about it. I read books. I found doctors who understood my condition. I stopped fearing medication. I met other people who struggled like me. We learned to hear sorrow in one "hello," and how to sit with each other without words. I began to believe that depression was not a personal weakness or failure. By accepting it, I began to manage it. When I felt joy, I appreciated it all the more. I started to trust the healing process. But I missed my faith in God, religion and worshipping community.
Oddly enough, death is the purview of the religious. We call chaplains into hospital rooms. When someone dies, we go to the altar. Mourners bend their backs and wail. The spirituals express deep sorrow. We gather together with large meals. We don't pretend like people aren't in pain. In those times, we understand when people cannot praise God. We only ask people to be honest with God. And we don't leave them alone. This is exactly what my depressed self needs: tears, music, good food, raw honesty, community. The same faith that demonizes my depression also teaches me how to have faith in the midst of it.
I lost the faith I once had. I stopped believing that God only loved me if I was happy and peaceful. I also gave up on the idea that depression was punishment or isolation from God. I can't enjoy the same songs. I cannot bear the same sermons. That faith is gone. Just like the hours, weeks or months I lose to melancholy. And my incomplete plans. Or the image I'd like to have of myself.
In these moments when death prevails, I appreciate that so many religions have an understanding of life after death. Regrowth, reincarnation, resurrection. They all understand that there is a finality to death. We don't get back what we lost. We get something or someone new.
My new faith is a deep trust that God is present with me and understands how I feel -- especially when no one else can. I no more blame God for my sadness, than I credit God for happy days. This faith tells God how I really feel knowing that an offer of my true self is worship. I appreciate songs of sorrow more. I dance only when joyful. I am upheld by church community that can linger in pain without moving to fix it. This faith is different than what died. But it's just as holy.
-- Monica Coleman
I find that depression is more like death. In every depressive episode, something is lost. Sometimes it's the belief that I'm not that sick. Sometimes it's a dream. Sometimes it's a concrete plan or goal. Sometimes it's who I desperately wanted and expected myself to be. Sometimes it's a harmful lie I've told myself, or that someone told me. Sometimes what dies, needed to go. Most times, it seems I would have been perfectly fine without the loss. I would smile more. I would know how I spent the hours in my day. I would see fewer doctors. When people ask me how I am doing, my response of "fine" would only be a lie thirty percent of the time. Like most people, right?
I have lived with a depressive condition since I was a teenager, although I didn't have a name for it until my 20s. I don't know how many lows I've had -- excluding the two suicidal bouts. I don't count how many times I've been sad and desperate for months. I don't make a list of what I've lost.
I do, however, remember when I lost my faith.
Like many people who are raised in a religious environment, I was taught to believe that God loves me and protects me. I was taught that God punishes sin, and rewards those who are faithful. I learned about my religion by studying Holy Scriptures. I prayed. I worshipped. This was supposed to strengthen my faith. It was supposed to make me happy.
For many years, it did. I cherished Sundays spent in church -- singing, kneeling and feeling inspired by the words of the preachers. My friends were made up of the other people I met in church. We volunteered at Vacation Bible School for the children, the food drive and tutoring programs.
Meanwhile, I prayed for peace. In my sleepless nights, I asked God to save me, help me and rescue me from my sadness. Just make it all better. I also heard the messages that my faith told me about depression: that I was be too blessed to be stressed; that depression was a lie from "the enemy"; that suicide is an unforgiveable sin. Somewhere between my unanswered prayers and the realization that I could not worship myself into happiness, my faith died.
I kept going to church. I kept saying the words of the prayers. I still sang the songs. I'm a minister -- I have to. But I was a fraud. I stopped talking with God. What could I say to the One who was not delivering me? What praise did I have? I could list my blessings, but I could not feel gratitude. I hid my faithlessness like a bobby pin in an updo. Everything looked composed on the outside, but I was barely holding it together. I was not faithful or pious. I felt abandoned and alone.
As my depression worsened, I learned more about it. I read books. I found doctors who understood my condition. I stopped fearing medication. I met other people who struggled like me. We learned to hear sorrow in one "hello," and how to sit with each other without words. I began to believe that depression was not a personal weakness or failure. By accepting it, I began to manage it. When I felt joy, I appreciated it all the more. I started to trust the healing process. But I missed my faith in God, religion and worshipping community.
Oddly enough, death is the purview of the religious. We call chaplains into hospital rooms. When someone dies, we go to the altar. Mourners bend their backs and wail. The spirituals express deep sorrow. We gather together with large meals. We don't pretend like people aren't in pain. In those times, we understand when people cannot praise God. We only ask people to be honest with God. And we don't leave them alone. This is exactly what my depressed self needs: tears, music, good food, raw honesty, community. The same faith that demonizes my depression also teaches me how to have faith in the midst of it.
I lost the faith I once had. I stopped believing that God only loved me if I was happy and peaceful. I also gave up on the idea that depression was punishment or isolation from God. I can't enjoy the same songs. I cannot bear the same sermons. That faith is gone. Just like the hours, weeks or months I lose to melancholy. And my incomplete plans. Or the image I'd like to have of myself.
In these moments when death prevails, I appreciate that so many religions have an understanding of life after death. Regrowth, reincarnation, resurrection. They all understand that there is a finality to death. We don't get back what we lost. We get something or someone new.
My new faith is a deep trust that God is present with me and understands how I feel -- especially when no one else can. I no more blame God for my sadness, than I credit God for happy days. This faith tells God how I really feel knowing that an offer of my true self is worship. I appreciate songs of sorrow more. I dance only when joyful. I am upheld by church community that can linger in pain without moving to fix it. This faith is different than what died. But it's just as holy.
-- Monica Coleman
How Process Theology
Gives Faith to My Depression
by Monica A. Coleman
I’ve had more than my share of fights with God.
That’s one reason that I love the Hebrew scriptures so much.
People, the people we often think of as holy, often duke it out with God. Jacob wrestled with God, or some messenger of God. Job’s wife cursed God. Job questions God. The psalmist asks God for revenge on those who have hurt him.
Raw. Human. Honest. Faith.
In Dynamics of Faith, Paul Tillich says that doubt is part of faith. I find that anger and argument is also a part of faith.
Yes, I’ve been mad at God because I’ve felt betrayed by God. I’ve felt as if God’s promises were not fulfilled in my life. When I lost a loved one. When I couldn’t emerge from long bouts of despair. When all my hopes seemed elusive from my grasp. Then I wondered: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
That questioning led me to fights. Like an argument with a sibling, friend or partner, my tactics have varied. Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I just stop talking with God. Other times, I walk away from God and all who seem to be on God’s side. I declare internally, “God, you and I … we are through.”
I’m sure that much of my angst has stemmed from my experience with depression. Wordless seasons of despair have stripped me all that faith seems to require. I cannot believe in myself, what I feel, what I think. There’s nothing left to believe in a God. Especially if I’m supposed to believe in a God that doesn’t hate me.
Process theology allows me to be faithful and honest. It releases me from my fights with God. It frees me from believing that God has failed in God’s promises to protect me or ensure that I’m always happy. It takes me away from the idea that God has the power todo this bad depressive thing to me. Likewise, it means I don’t have to ask God to take it away.
With process thought, God is not a Lord or big huge Being (old white man with gray beard, of course) to whom I submit. God is my friend, my partnering co-creator; a companion and a fellow-sufferer, to use the words of Alfred North Whitehead. Of course, what makes God so amazing is that God knows more than me. God knows what’s going on in parts of the world and parts of creation that I can only imagine. God is able to hold possibilities and offer options that I can’t see. I find that miraculous.
What I cling to, what lets me live faithfully with depression, is God’s knowledge. I believe that God knows. God knows me. I find this knowledge more compelling and moving than Love. Sure God may love me, but I want more to be known. I need to be known. I believe that God knows me intimately. God knows me from the inside out. God knows me as I know myself. And in the isolation of depression where I feel as the old spiritual, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen” … I am soothed by knowing that God, in fact, does know me.
For the process heads out there, it’s subjective immortality that excites me. Whitehead felt strongly that people need something to assure them that all is not lost. That we must have some way of knowing that death is not the final word. Sometimes he was referring to the finitude of human and creaturely existence. Sometimes he was referring to the way in which the past fades. He describes “objective immortality” as a way that our lives have meaning past their time. This is why our memories and legacies can be so important. What has happened matters to God and to others in the world. As they remember us and re-tell our stories, we live on past death. We are immortal.
It takes later process thinkers – like Marjorie Suchocki – to develop the concept of “subjective immortality.” That is, God does not know us only in the fact of who we are and what we did, but God actually knows us as we know ourselves. For Suchocki and myself, this is not some radically different kind of knowing – just a deeper kind or higher degree of knowing.
I can’t say that I’m so deeply interested in living forever. That’s what immortality means for most people. But I can say that being known as I know myself is more than a gift. It brings me life.
-- Monica Coleman
That’s one reason that I love the Hebrew scriptures so much.
People, the people we often think of as holy, often duke it out with God. Jacob wrestled with God, or some messenger of God. Job’s wife cursed God. Job questions God. The psalmist asks God for revenge on those who have hurt him.
Raw. Human. Honest. Faith.
In Dynamics of Faith, Paul Tillich says that doubt is part of faith. I find that anger and argument is also a part of faith.
Yes, I’ve been mad at God because I’ve felt betrayed by God. I’ve felt as if God’s promises were not fulfilled in my life. When I lost a loved one. When I couldn’t emerge from long bouts of despair. When all my hopes seemed elusive from my grasp. Then I wondered: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
That questioning led me to fights. Like an argument with a sibling, friend or partner, my tactics have varied. Sometimes I yell. Sometimes I just stop talking with God. Other times, I walk away from God and all who seem to be on God’s side. I declare internally, “God, you and I … we are through.”
I’m sure that much of my angst has stemmed from my experience with depression. Wordless seasons of despair have stripped me all that faith seems to require. I cannot believe in myself, what I feel, what I think. There’s nothing left to believe in a God. Especially if I’m supposed to believe in a God that doesn’t hate me.
Process theology allows me to be faithful and honest. It releases me from my fights with God. It frees me from believing that God has failed in God’s promises to protect me or ensure that I’m always happy. It takes me away from the idea that God has the power todo this bad depressive thing to me. Likewise, it means I don’t have to ask God to take it away.
With process thought, God is not a Lord or big huge Being (old white man with gray beard, of course) to whom I submit. God is my friend, my partnering co-creator; a companion and a fellow-sufferer, to use the words of Alfred North Whitehead. Of course, what makes God so amazing is that God knows more than me. God knows what’s going on in parts of the world and parts of creation that I can only imagine. God is able to hold possibilities and offer options that I can’t see. I find that miraculous.
What I cling to, what lets me live faithfully with depression, is God’s knowledge. I believe that God knows. God knows me. I find this knowledge more compelling and moving than Love. Sure God may love me, but I want more to be known. I need to be known. I believe that God knows me intimately. God knows me from the inside out. God knows me as I know myself. And in the isolation of depression where I feel as the old spiritual, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen” … I am soothed by knowing that God, in fact, does know me.
For the process heads out there, it’s subjective immortality that excites me. Whitehead felt strongly that people need something to assure them that all is not lost. That we must have some way of knowing that death is not the final word. Sometimes he was referring to the finitude of human and creaturely existence. Sometimes he was referring to the way in which the past fades. He describes “objective immortality” as a way that our lives have meaning past their time. This is why our memories and legacies can be so important. What has happened matters to God and to others in the world. As they remember us and re-tell our stories, we live on past death. We are immortal.
It takes later process thinkers – like Marjorie Suchocki – to develop the concept of “subjective immortality.” That is, God does not know us only in the fact of who we are and what we did, but God actually knows us as we know ourselves. For Suchocki and myself, this is not some radically different kind of knowing – just a deeper kind or higher degree of knowing.
I can’t say that I’m so deeply interested in living forever. That’s what immortality means for most people. But I can say that being known as I know myself is more than a gift. It brings me life.
-- Monica Coleman
No Stigmas
For me, and thousands of other people in the world, living with a depressive condition also means working with a depressive condition..Work is more challenging because of silence, stigma and shame and sickness. If I take “mental health days” off for all the days I need them, I would have no income. This is my job. I felt like my choices were limited. |
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The Courage to Get out of Bed
a note from Jay McDaniel in appreciation
of Monica Coleman's healing ministry
The Courage to Get Out of Bed
A psychiatrist friend and I were talking about acts of courage that we have witnessed in our lives. We talked about various kinds of bravery, physical and emotional.
"Some of the most courageous people I have ever known," she said, "are those who suffer from very severe depression, who are almost totally debilitated from the suffering, and who step foot out of bed in the morning. Taking a step is an act of courage."
She was referring to act which Monica Coleman calls Making a Way Out of No Way.
It is an African-American expression, and it means exactly what it says. We find ourselves in circumstances from which there seems to be no exit, and yet we must make a way out of no way.
In Monica Coleman's theology, the phrase works at multiple levels: personal, familial, social, and political. In the video she emphasizes the social and political side. She is interested in how, as communities of people in a broken world, we might help bring forth bring forth opportunities for justice, equity, creativity and dignity in what can seem like hopeless or at least difficult situations.
Nevertheless, these sorts of political concerns are not the whole story, Consider her article in the Huffington Post, reprinted above, called Losing Faith, Finding Hope: A Journey With Depression. She explains how she herself has experienced depression and needed, as it were, to take that single step out of bed.
One thing valuable about her theology is that she pays attention to both dimensions of life, the personal and the political, the individual and the communal. Making a Way Out of No Way is a central dynamic at both levels.
God Helps Us Make a Way Out of No Way
How do people do this? It takes powerful effort to make a way out of no way, and it also takes faith that a way can be made even when no way seems available. In the language of process theology, it takes "trust in the availability of fresh possibilities."
Where does this trust come from? It might seem as if we make ourselves trust, as if the trust were a pure act of will. individual or collective. But for process thinkers the trust is a response to something still deeper that comes to us as a gift and that we cannot simply will into existence.
That something is God's love. Monica Coleman puts it simply: "God helps us make a way out of no way."
How Does God Help Us?
Courage and Guidance
This helping is not an act of force or coercion on God' part, but it does have an energy of its own. Imagine that you are in a dire situation in your life and that someone with a non-anxious presence is your companion along the way. This someone cannot reverse the situation or change the past, but still you feel her mood as she sits with you. In the language of Whitehead, you feel her feelings.
This is one way that we are helped by God. Inwardly and through the mediation of others, we actually feel the feelings of God's love within us. It is a feeling of being understood and accepted in a non-judgmental way, and it includes a sense of peace and inner courage. The peace and courage belong to God and to us, neither to the exclusion of the other. The courage comes from God's confidence in us.
Imagine further that this person offers proposals -- lures for feeling and reflection -- to which you can respond, sometimes through words and sometimes simply through expressions in her face. These proposals are fresh possibilities. Thus you find yourself filled with trust and also aware of fresh possibilities.
In process theology the fresh possibilities come from God, too. Sometimes they come directly, in moments of solitude, and sometimes they are mediated by communities of solidarity and care: friends and family, church and community. Thus, moment by moment, and in situations of no exit, we nevertheless find openings and the courage to respond to them.
Monica A. Coleman puts it rightly: "God is One who helps us to Make a Way Out of No Way."
A psychiatrist friend and I were talking about acts of courage that we have witnessed in our lives. We talked about various kinds of bravery, physical and emotional.
"Some of the most courageous people I have ever known," she said, "are those who suffer from very severe depression, who are almost totally debilitated from the suffering, and who step foot out of bed in the morning. Taking a step is an act of courage."
She was referring to act which Monica Coleman calls Making a Way Out of No Way.
It is an African-American expression, and it means exactly what it says. We find ourselves in circumstances from which there seems to be no exit, and yet we must make a way out of no way.
In Monica Coleman's theology, the phrase works at multiple levels: personal, familial, social, and political. In the video she emphasizes the social and political side. She is interested in how, as communities of people in a broken world, we might help bring forth bring forth opportunities for justice, equity, creativity and dignity in what can seem like hopeless or at least difficult situations.
Nevertheless, these sorts of political concerns are not the whole story, Consider her article in the Huffington Post, reprinted above, called Losing Faith, Finding Hope: A Journey With Depression. She explains how she herself has experienced depression and needed, as it were, to take that single step out of bed.
One thing valuable about her theology is that she pays attention to both dimensions of life, the personal and the political, the individual and the communal. Making a Way Out of No Way is a central dynamic at both levels.
God Helps Us Make a Way Out of No Way
How do people do this? It takes powerful effort to make a way out of no way, and it also takes faith that a way can be made even when no way seems available. In the language of process theology, it takes "trust in the availability of fresh possibilities."
Where does this trust come from? It might seem as if we make ourselves trust, as if the trust were a pure act of will. individual or collective. But for process thinkers the trust is a response to something still deeper that comes to us as a gift and that we cannot simply will into existence.
That something is God's love. Monica Coleman puts it simply: "God helps us make a way out of no way."
How Does God Help Us?
Courage and Guidance
This helping is not an act of force or coercion on God' part, but it does have an energy of its own. Imagine that you are in a dire situation in your life and that someone with a non-anxious presence is your companion along the way. This someone cannot reverse the situation or change the past, but still you feel her mood as she sits with you. In the language of Whitehead, you feel her feelings.
This is one way that we are helped by God. Inwardly and through the mediation of others, we actually feel the feelings of God's love within us. It is a feeling of being understood and accepted in a non-judgmental way, and it includes a sense of peace and inner courage. The peace and courage belong to God and to us, neither to the exclusion of the other. The courage comes from God's confidence in us.
Imagine further that this person offers proposals -- lures for feeling and reflection -- to which you can respond, sometimes through words and sometimes simply through expressions in her face. These proposals are fresh possibilities. Thus you find yourself filled with trust and also aware of fresh possibilities.
In process theology the fresh possibilities come from God, too. Sometimes they come directly, in moments of solitude, and sometimes they are mediated by communities of solidarity and care: friends and family, church and community. Thus, moment by moment, and in situations of no exit, we nevertheless find openings and the courage to respond to them.
Monica A. Coleman puts it rightly: "God is One who helps us to Make a Way Out of No Way."
