If you suffer from depression or if you have a friend or loved one that suffers from depression, I bet the following five words have gone through your mind at one time or another: “Just snap out of it!” If you are the person with depression, you’d do just about anything to snap out of it. If you are a family member or friend, you sometimes can’t understand why the person won’t just snap out of it. It’s definitely an AHA moment for family and friends when they truly begin to understand that YOU can’t just turn depression on and off like a faucet. It’s not a choice – it’s a disease.
I was listening to “Insight for Living” with Chuck Swindoll* on the radio the other day, (I’m addicted to talk radio!) and he was talking about choices. He was describing that there are so many things in life that we have choices about - what we eat, what we wear, what we say at any given moment… AND there are many things we have no choice about – For instance, we cannot choose to grow younger and we cannot choose to not be terminally ill. Well, you know what? I did not choose to suffer from depression or have a thing called Bi Polar Mixed State. But, according to Mr. Swindoll (and I happen to agree with him): People may need to go through something bad in order to help someone that’s going through something worse.
Remember - God never leaves us during those times that we just can’t snap out it. If we’re really lucky, and we find the tools to get a handle on this thing called depression, He just might give us an opportunity to help others that are going through what we were going through. Then we have another type of choice. : )
*http://www.insight.org/
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