I don't mean to brag, but I'm a super crawler.
When I was a wee tot, before walking days, nothing could stop me from motoring around on hands and knees. Carpet? Piece of cake. Concrete? Next. Patio? But of course. Scorching summer deck? Why not. But, according to my mom, the driveway was my favorite. The roughest of terrain for toddlers.
How I didn't scrape up my kneecaps, we have no idea. I was a hardcore baby, man. Nothing could stand in my way. I had things to do and no rigid concrete was going to stop me. Off to the races. ándele. Heavy metal slowly building in the background.
On one such excursion across our driveway, the boys were chasing me with their red pedal car. It had racing stripes on it, which every child knows makes the vehicle at least 100x faster. We might have been towing Michael precariously in back, affixed with a yellow rope we found and careening atop a red tricycle. My memory fails me. Either way, I was winning (or maybe they were letting me win), while also trying to avoid getting trampled. Mom kept an ear out for shenanigans while perched on a lawn chair, iced tea poised and book in hand. Dad was rummaging through the old yellow garage fridge for a soda. Grabbing two, he took a seat on the steps next to Grandpa Stephens and handed one over. They observed us through the open garage doors. We continued to wildly race around the driveway, occasionally stopping to ask Mom for referee assistance. It was here that Grandpa put a hand on my Dad’s knee and said, “Son, you make a good dad.”
We were all so young, we didn't really understand the magnitude of a simple sentence, or subtle weight of it. But words like these were something my dad waited a lifetime to hear.
Most people acquainted with my family know us as warm and friendly individuals. We recently lost the patriarch of my mother’s side, Poppaw, and he had a deep compassion for people that he passed on to his children and grandchildren. I might be a little biased, but I like to think that we’re good people. Mom and Dad’s love language is to force people to eat and sleep against their will, and my siblings are always finding ways to volunteer their time to serve people. That's just what we do. I need to stress here, reader, that Grandpa Stephens was a good man. I don't say that simply to honor his memory or spray some metaphorical Febreze over the family’s dirty laundry. He was a good man--it just looked different. He was generous. An extremely hard worker. A successful businessman and very skilled in his craft. A grandfather who was around and involved.
He also spent a lot of time in his own head. His world was a little less colorful and it was difficult for him to just be a person. Reader, I need you to walk with me and understand what a life with untreated, severe depression looks like. It’s going to be hard.
Are you ready?
Grandpa Stephens didn't have an easy life. The light went out of him when he lost his beloved, Vesta, to cancer when she was only in her 40s. He married two more women in succession who cleaned him out financially. Later in life he met grandma Dorothy--who he later lost to a brain tumor.
The causes of depression are still not well understood. We know that a chemical imbalance of serotonin and occasionally dopamine is involved, and that nerve receptors in the brain have a harder time doing their job. We know that it runs in families. We know that sometimes it's chronic, and sometimes it isn't. We don't know whether the root is from inflammation in the brain or intestines, or if it's from a genetic deficiency. So I couldn't tell you if trauma caused Grandpa to be sick, or heredity, or a freak accident. But I can tell you that they knew next to nothing about it in the 50’s, and living with someone with such an illness that can't be explained is absolute hell.
People who know my dad usually love him, and for good reason. He works extremely hard and doesn't ask for anything in return. He keeps an extra car on hand so he can lend it out when friends or family get in a bind (in fact, he sold one to a friend of mine very cheap when she had no other way to get to work). He has quietly helped strangers in need by sending them money anonymously so that they can have water and electricity for the month. He fixes things for people who can't afford repairs, and makes absolutely sure that there is more than enough for everyone to eat at every family meal. What people don’t know is that no one ever taught my dad how to be this way. He had to learn on his own.
Grandpa lived inside a head that did not know how to cope. He couldn't stand being alone, but being around him was also a constant game of walking on eggshells. It was an exhausting way to live. He was extremely defensive, and paranoid. He didn’t really believe in good people often.
Trust issues were a given. Some of the women he brought into his home treated him and Dad terribly--to the point where, for a time, Dad lived with his grandmother, and even in the family metal shop. Many people have millions of fond memories with their fathers--playing catch, getting ice cream, learning to drive. My dad only had a few of those, and he had to hang on to them tight. When someone has depression (or any mental illness for that matter), it messes with a person's perceptions and motivation. The world becomes dim, and it’s impossible to get tasks finished. When you can't understand what's going on--just that you feel massive amounts of unexplained guilt and behavior that disappoints the people around you, you start running out of reasons. People accuse you of making excuses and can’t understand why you spend most of your life tired. Eventually, the only logical conclusion a person can come to is that they suck. “I can't get out of bed. I can't enjoy anything anymore. I must be the piece of crap people think I am.” When a person hates themselves, in time they start treating the people around them like trash too.
I don't know if it's reachable, to try and imagine living under this particular cloak of darkness. I've tried to only explain things that I feel my dad would freely talk about, and keep the rest private. But needless to say, mental illness robbed my grandfather and my father. Of life. Of childhood. Years, decades of their lives.
Do you know how beautiful it was when medication came into the picture?
Listen. I don't like anecdotal evidence when it comes to medicine. I don't. We have too many misguided fitness blogs based on bad science, the mommy wars are getting ridiculous, and the last thing we need is another documentary that makes money off of scaring people. However, it appears that anecdotal evidence is the only thing that anyone will listen to. So here's mine. Medication--the kind people like to villainize, overpriced, manufactured by big pharma and containing ingredients made in a lab--saved my family. Without it, we could not have survived. And to me, it's as much of a testament to the restorative and exceptional power of Jesus Christ as any supernatural event. I know. I get it. It's weird. The strangeness of it is not lost on me.
People do NOT like to hear that. I'm about to piss off a bunch of Young Living salespeople, so buckle up.
They want to hear that you cut out gluten for a year, and it made a monumental difference. They want to hear that you started eating Paleo and using lavender essential oil and that it cured all your ailments. They want to hear that you did a detox and your energy is off the charts, because toxins are a thing apparently. They want to hear you blame it on vaccines and be able to take ginger supplements to clear up any leftover symptoms. I’m overgeneralizing, but you get the point. If you're going to a doctor as often as I do, then you're doing it wrong. God made our bodies to do way more than we expect them to do. We need to just let them be.
They aren't wrong. We need alternative medicine. Grandpa actually broke a bone in his neck as a young boy--only one doctor in town agreed to treat him and saved his life by stabilizing him with sand bags and flour sacks. People are rightly afraid of big pharma and the medical community because of an absolute epidemic of opioid addiction, along with a pattern of professionals who are so burned out that they stop listening to their patients. Many of you have used natural remedies with great success. But--and I say this gently--this post isn't about you. It's not always about you. This time, it's about people who tried all of it and it still didn’t work.
I feel like we do our Maker a great disservice if we ignore medical science. A doctor wrote one of the gospels for goodness sake. Science is the Great Scavenger Hunt. Anytime I learn something new about the human body, I feel like a Craftsman is opening the back of a clock and (with delight in His voice) showing me another facet of how it works. Anytime someone finds a treatment that works for them, I feel like He’s stuck another gear into place. I don't believe that Jesus wants us to live a life of sickness and suffering because it builds character...but I do believe in His sovereignty. I've understood His closeness in the quiet of waiting rooms as much as I have in the booming supernatural occurrences. He can do what He wants. He's in both, because He is everywhere. He knows everything. When you’re stuck waiting for answers an frustrated when the don’t come, He is still there holding your hand and whispering comfort into your soul. People would rather have the natural and supernatural remedies because that's what they understand. I'm sorry. I don't have that for you here. All I have is me.
When 14 year old Melinda was diagnosed with the same disease as her grandfather, she was already on a restrictive diet. She had lost all of her childhood weight and was exercising daily. She begged God to heal her and was certain that the doctors offices were only temporary. She grudgingly tried some medication and it failed (which is common, by the way). I don't know why He kept saying no. I don't have that answer. Instead--in His mercy that is the same yesterday, and today, and forever--He simply guided her to parents who could recognize her symptoms and doctors who genuinely cared about her well being. It took about two years to find a dosage that worked, and after many years of remaining on it her doctors, together, came to the conclusion that the condition would be chronic due to her pattern of treatment and family history. She would have it for the rest of her life. She was one of so many more like this in our world today.
I understand that it's with pure intentions that people share posts like this . Or this. Or this. I want to find a better solution too. But there's already so much shame surrounding the idea of medication for mental illness and I don't know have the words to communicate how tragic that is. People in the anti-pharma camp tell me that the medicine I'm taking is going to damage my internal organs (false, by the way). That I’m not really, truly happy. That I could take this much safer alternative. That I'm going to be a bad mom if I keep taking it because of complications with pregnancy and breastfeeding. That I’m taking a pill to control my personality (which, yes was said to my face, and yes, it hurt my feelings).
You guys. I need it to stop. Please. Please. I need it to stop for the same reason I need people to stop telling diabetics to try apple cider vinegar instead of insulin. It does work, but it's complicated. It doesn't properly represent the information available, does not fully grasp the problem, and at the end of the day someone is going to end up in a coma.
Jesus and I have been on this journey for a long time now. I've collected a repertoire of skills in research. I've witnessed first hand what happens when mental illness goes untreated. And if I haven't convinced you in my family history--something very personal and dear to me--then we can sit down and have a long conversation about the pain that accompanies untreated OCD and unacknowledged anxiety disorders. When I was young my best friend with untreated ADHD nearly drowned me in a pool while playing. People have been in extreme danger while trying to control their loved ones with undiagnosed paranoid schizophrenia or psychosis (I once knew someone who’s mom liked to stalk the house at night with a butcher knife). Our world is so, so broken. And our God is so, so good. Those two things alone are reason enough to be kind to each other when someone is sick. This isn’t a detached internet argument. These are people’s lives. In this instance, don't call unclean what God has made clean. It’s so important. Please.
