When I was embittered - Psalm

One of the ways I work to keep myself on the right track is to read scripture daily. Today a few verses out of the morning and evening psalms in the lectionary that I use spoke to me along with a passage from Acts.

I have been in places of darkness and despair. In medical terms I was in situationally caused clinical depression. The situation was clearly one from which most people would emerge in depression. Yet, there's also a genetic component in that my mother, members of her family and members of my dad's family have all been diagnosed with depression and, I suspect, more should have been.

Psalm 62

[3] How long will you assail a person,
will you batter your victim, all of you,
as you would a leaning wall, a tottering fence?
[4] Their only plan is to bring down a person of prominence.
They take pleasure in falsehood;
they bless with their mouths,
but inwardly they curse.

At my worst the blows fell minute by minute. There were some who thought it was guilt because of the particular situation, but the guilt, in my case, wasn't part of the depression. In fact I was frustrated and that frustration turned inward to more depression when people tried to say "Oh you must be feeling so guilty" or "I understand the guilt you're feeling." The blows of depression and sorrow were not about guilt, but about the experience of loss.

Yet loss can be transformational even as one goes into a well without a rope. The words I use to express my sympathy or to help people come out of difficulty haven't changed, but they come from someone who's been there. It has been said that the seed of the church is the blood of the martyrs. I see that in the spread of the gospel as described in Acts.

Acts 11:19-30

[19] Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that took
place over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch,

The pain that I've been through is not what God desired for my life, but God can use that pain for good. The messages in the lectionary reading today speak to me of hope in the midst of turmoil, of relief from pain, of something beyond the present experience even when we cannot see beyond the hurt. Hope, in my depression, was not because I could see a way out. I didn't hear a word that there was something else. But somehow I knew God was with me though I didn't know the way.