Sometimes life isn't pretty ...

I thought I would share with you a recent article I wrote on the topic of depression, because ... 

Sometimes life isn't pretty ... and sometimes love hurts.  

Some years back I was a part of a community of people who conversed online about two loves we shared – Jesus and scrapbooking. Over the years I was involved with this group, I always wondered at what seemed to me to be the high number of scrapbookers who suffered from depression. I began to think that it was almost a prerequisite to belong!

Interestingly, awareness of the depression was not usually found in the shared layouts of our lives. The scrapbooking was always beautiful, fun, colourful, entertaining and wonderful. Many of these girls were uber talented, with layouts regularly published in the prestigious magazines of the time. Depression didn’t live on those pages, and neither was it welcome there. Depression was, however, freely discussed online in our forums, the areas where prayer and sharing were encouraged. It was obvious there was a disconnect between the pages of our albums and the real lives we lived. 

I was no different.

Until the day came when God challenged me to do a scrapbooking layout on a difficult subject, and to be real about how I felt. It wasn’t about making it pretty, or acceptable to the outside world, or suitable for a glossy magazine. 

He challenged me to be real about loss.

Pets are precious creatures. They make our lives infinitely better, and dog versus cat arguments notwithstanding, I’m sure all owners would agree. We love having them in our lives, but there’s always that nagging reality that one day it will come to an end and the pet will die. And so it was with my little Monte.

Monte was a miniature chocolate dachshund, presented to me as a surprise gift by my husband when I was pregnant with my first child. I had grown up with a dachshund, and was delighted that my children would get to do the same. And as the years went on and I look back at the myriad of family events I photographed and chronicled, Monte makes an appearance in most of them. 

The Three Amigos 

My children and our darling Monte. Hard to believe that boy is now 25 and recently engaged!   

Then came that fateful day when Monte was struck down by sudden illness, forcing us into having to make the decision that all pet owners dread. 

The depth of grief that enveloped me was scary. I was a grown woman, and this was a dog, surely I could hold it together? Set a good example for my kids? Just get over it and on with it?

When looking at what the Bible says about depression, Jessica Brodie describes it as ‘a persistent, invading melancholy that won’t go away no matter how good life seems to be’.  That was such an apt description of my life for as long as I could remember, a hopelessly flawed foundation from which I was trying and failing to deal with the loss of my little Monte.  

That’s when God said to scrapbook the truth.

It would have been tempting to have done a beautiful layout of all the lovely memories of Monte, but it was the last thing I felt like doing. I didn’t feel remotely creative, in fact I didn’t feel like doing much of anything at all. To just pull the covers over my head and disappear seemed a far more inviting option.

Yet, God was persistent. He encouraged me to put all the ugly down on paper, create something for Him – an audience of one. He was more interested in the real me, the fumbling, struggling, melancholy, messy me. He wasn’t hanging out for my perfectly presented recollections, resplendent with beautiful embellishments and ‘look-on-the-bright-side’ journaling. He just wanted me. The real me.

So, I did.

God’s heart for all of us is that He never wants us to remain in dark places any longer than we have to, or choose to. The variety of ways in which He can help us out knows no bounds – we just have to seek Him in the midst of the mess for the way out, not wait until everything is tidy and acceptable and neatly embellished.

This year seems to be one where God is speaking to me about the audience of one - which seems a contradiction when I'm writing a blog! But what that means for this blog is that He is my first audience, and He will guide me as to what I put out there - because He knows who may need to read it on any given day. Is that you, today, I wonder?

  

As soon as I began pondering a song for this post, what popped into my head but Neil Diamond's Song Sung Blue?  Everybody knows one.

Tracey 💙

With thanks to:

Jessica Brodie, 23/6/2019, 'What does the Bible say about depression?', 

The YouTube Channel of fritz51346 for Neil Diamond's Song Sung Blue 1972.

And my apologies if the fonts appear all over the shop in this post - I have tried and failed to diagnose the cause of Blogger's hissy fit of the day 👀