SAD but Not Hopeless

With Daylight Saving Time ending this morning at 2:00 a.m., the sun set a whole lot earlier tonight. And it will continue to set earlier and earlier until the winter solstice in late December, just like it does every year.

With the shortening of days, not coincidentally there is also a higher occurrence of SAD (seasonal affective disorder) in people. As the length of days dwindles and we move closer into the winter, those who suffer from this illness can feel depressed most of the day, lose interest in activities, have low energy or problems sleeping, feel sluggish or agitated, have difficulty concentrating, or feel just hopeless, worthless, or guilty. Some even have frequent thoughts of death or suicide.

I know this because I just googled the term seasonal affective disorder and then found stuff on the Internet. Also, because I have suffered with SAD in years past, as well as with depression throughout the calendar year. I know how very difficult it can be. I've endured all of those symptoms.

There was even a time in my life in which I was so low that depression, coupled with a difficult physical challenge, consumed me to the point I thought there was no way I would recover from either. I remember once uttering the words out loud to a loved one: "I am not going to get better from this. This is going to kill me."

Yet here I am. I'm alive and kicking. Time and experience have helped me learn that horrible times pass, that you can and do get better, that therapies combined with positive daily thought patterns lead to healing.

And while I type this, I also realize at the same time that there are others who have had these same feelings and are no longer with us because they took their own lives.

This is why depression is such a dangerous illness: It makes you believe that this is a rational option, often that it is the one and only way out of your pain and anguish.

I've been to two funerals of friends who committed suicide. I've mourned and wept with their families. I miss them.

It's at times like these that I am reminded I need to talk, or at least blog, about this topic more. Because if I haven't learned empathy for others through my own experiences with depression, then the lessons I've learned have been wasted on me. Because it is so raw and real, my hopes in opening up about it are that it helps somebody, somehow.

Last year, when I was still on the Island of Misfit Toys, I gave a talk in sacrament meeting in which I talked briefly about my experiences with depression. Fast forward to just a few months ago, when JB and I went back to visit the ward on the night our old bishopric bid farewell after being released. I stopped to chat with an acquaintance from the ward who greeted me in the parking lot. He mentioned this talk of mine and told me how grateful he was that I had spoken about depression, because he was going through a really hard time at that time. He thanked me, and I was grateful for the feedback. I followed a prompting, and it made a difference to at least one person.

There is still such a stigma associated with depression. My hope is that by talking about it we can help diminish it.

Finally, and this is my last point for this post: I am among those who used to think, naively, that prophets and Apostles didn't deal with the kinds of problems and challenges we common folk have, and I've learned over the years that it just isn't true. They know far more about it than we think. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke of this in a semi-recent general conference talk (one of the landmark addresses, I think, of the past decade) in which he addressed depression, reminding us that President George Albert Smith and a number of other prominent men and women have dealt with and are living with depression. Truly, God's rain falls "on the just and on the unjust" alike (Matthew 5:45).

While reading through the Old Testament this past week, I came across this passage in my study of the prophet Elijah:

"He himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers" (1 Kings 19:4).

It sounds suspiciously to me like Elijah was depressed, even suicidal. He had to deal with one of the worst and most wicked kings of Israel, Ahab, and his infamous wife, Jezebel, and after much fighting and struggling with a populace that largely didn't believe in the things he tried to teach them, he came to the point at which he just wanted to die.

Fortunately, there is more to this story:

"And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. And he looked, and behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee" (1 Kings 19:5-7; emphasis added).

"The journey is too great for thee" is certainly a perfect way of describing just how hard it can get for those shouldering very heavy burdens, including the depressed.

I love this passage. We learn that, thousands of years before the TV show "Touched by an Angel," Elijah was literally touched by one, and it apparently saved his life (until he was later carried to heaven in a chariot of fire!).

Whose angel will you be? Whose life will you touch (even save?) with a small act of kindness? If you ever need one, family and friends, I am here for you, at any hour of the day, whatever your demons may be—be they depression or whatever else. If you're thinking you don't matter, you do. If you're contemplating leaving, please, please stay. You are loved, and you matter.

You matter so much that someone whose love surpasses us all suffered and died for you on the cross of Calvary. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 3:16).