pit of depression

God is on the Move Today

/ Carol Underhill / Leave a comment

Anytime I fight against the darkness in my life, God moves in with the light.

It was no different this week.

On Thursday night I struggled with sliding towards the pit of depression.

By the Grace of God, He reminded me to Feed the Light that is in me through salvation.

Through praise and worship, that lightness overtook the darkness and I was again set free from falling into the pit.

God is good.
All the time.
Even when our circumstances are not.

Plans for future lessons for children’s church have been rattling around in my brain the past couple of days. More so since I woke up at 3:00 a.m. which is the time I usually like to get up. I go to bed early at night so I can rise early and start my day while the world is silent.

A couple of cups of coffee, some social media until I wake up enough to work on my writing or children’s curriculum.

The Passport to the Promised Land curriculum that I created and others assisted with turned out successfully. We’re learning to work with flannelgraphs. If you’re not familiar with them, they are felt pieces of characters and items in the Bible that are presented on a large board as a story is told

We’ve also used videos, games and crafts to present unique lessons. We’ve stamped our passports and traveled through the Old Testament with Abraham, Joseph and Moses. We’ll cross the Jordan River in another week and then celebrate along with the Israelites who returned to the land God promised Abraham. We’ll learn that God keeps His promises. He promised to never leave or forsake us. He always keeps His Word.

Now that the holidays are nearly upon us, the focus of our children’s church lessons will be on the events surrounding birth of Jesus and how He brought hope and joy and love into our hearts.

Since those lessons are outlined already, I’m looking ahead to what the Year 2023 will bring.

Our church has saved Vacation Bible School curriculum for many years. I’m coming up with the lesson plans and creating my own curriculum, well, me and the Lord that is. And I brought home the director’s manuals for most of the previous VBS programs.

Last night I started searching through them. Today I did some more indepth searching and also looking up the stories that correspond with the lessons from our Betty Lukens Bible story book that came with the awesome set of flannelgraphs our church ordered last spring. We’ve used the flannelgraphs, which are bright and colorful, along with the stories in several of our lessons, successfully.

Last winter and spring, I taught the Bible in chronological sequence beginning with Jesus growing up as a boy and getting lost at the temple. Well, He wasn’t lost. He knew exactly where He was, in His Father’s House. His parents lost track of Him.

After that story we followed Jesus’ teaching and miracles, his death and resurrection and ascension (Return to heaven). Then we continued with Pentecost and the Acts of the disciples in May.

For 2023, I intend to do something similar but with all new stories and lessons. We’ll have the opportunity to put the flannelgraphs to good use..

I spent time last night and this morning organizing most of the lessons into an outline with specific dates and stories we’ll be learning. I’ve marked pages of the VBS directors’ manuals to search more thoroughly and gather ideas from.

I see some exciting things in our future!

God is on the Move!

I’m excited about the possibilities for the future, both for my local church and one day when I publish these lesson plans and make them available to other churches.

Sometimes we have only one child. Usually three or four. A couple of times we’ve had 9 children, and that is exciting when that happens. But we still do the lesson and work the program as much as possible for one or two children as we do eight or nine. Or 12, or 20.

Each child deserves our best effort and the full impact of the lessons.

You see, I grew up in a little country church. We didn’t even have indoor plumbing. The congregation faded away, until it was just our family and a couple of other people before the church closed.

Yet we always had Sunday School. We sang choruses in the opening and had class time. Our teachers prepared the lessons for us even though we were the only ones in the class.

The foundation of my faith began in that little church with those dedicated teachers.

I hope that the lessons we teach will be the foundation on which our children in my local church will build their faith, also.

God is on the Move!

The link to a song by this title is below. The lyrics are very meaningful to me. As evidenced in my own life in the past two days, God moves when we surrender to Him and move from the darkness into the light.

From the Archives: Get Up and Try Again

/ Carol Underhill / Leave a comment

Week 4 of my Journey out of the Pit

During the process of healing from my depression, I found that maintaining change was hard work. After just a few weeks of counseling sessions, I was already failing in my attempts to get out of the pit.

I felt like I was in a downward cycle. I felt overwhelmed. I couldn’t maintain the house or remind myself of the truths I’d memorized.

I couldn’t find my way back out of the pit.

My counselor shared with me these Bible verses from Job:

Job 23:8-10

8 “But if I go to the east, he is not there;
    if I go to the west, I do not find him.
9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him;
    when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.
10 But he knows the way that I take;
    when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

My counselor said that even though I couldn’t find God in my life, He knew where I was.

He was with me in the pit even though I couldn’t see Him.

My feelings were all over the place. My counselor reminded me that feelings are not facts. That’s why I needed to latch onto the truths I had learned.

She also said that it’s okay to slip and fall. But I had to make a choice: I could lie in the pit, or I could apply the tools I’d learned and continue to move forward.

It’s okay to pray, “No, I really can’t do this, but God, if You help me, I’ll try.”

In those low moments, we need go back to these verses in Job. God knows where we are. He is with us, even when we don’t feel His presence or see Him.

And we don’t give up hope.

We get back up, and we try again.

It’s now been several years since I began the process of healing from depression. I wish I could say that it’s easy, but it has ups and downs. I slid back into the pit a couple of times, but never as low as I was before I started counseling.

These days, I live above the pit. By the Grace of God, applying what I’ve learned through counseling, and with support of family and friends, I can fight the darkness that drags me to the edge.

I stand strong most of the time, but sometimes a person says things that hit me wrong, I make a mistake that I perceive as dumb, or a circumstance that I can’t avoid happens. (Like when a new job didn’t work out–more than once).

Then my feelings start to get in the way of the truths I have learned about myself. I falter in my steps and slide a little closer to the pit.

When that happens, I do these things:

I attend counseling sessions so my counselor can help me get back on track.

I also read my Bible often, and pray for myself and for others.

I listen to music. With a music app, I can set up a playlist for every mood.

I take care of myself physically through regular exercise, healthy eating choices and getting enough sleep. (Not always, but often enough to make a difference in how I feel).

I do a lot of journaling, as well as other forms of writing.

I have friends and family who offer emotional support.

My counselor said I remind her of the Energizer bunny. Remember those commercials? I slip, I fall sometimes, but I always get back up and try again to move forward.

Proverbs 24:16 says:

” for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again”

It’s by the grace of God and all of the above-mentioned efforts that I am able to keep out of the pit.

Still, one year later and 8.5 years after my first counseling appointment, I need to reset my mind and thoughts often. I don’t handle change very well, and my social anxiety is sometimes off the charts. But the only way to move is forward.

Psalm 46:1 says it all:

God is our refuge and strength,
    an ever-present help in trouble.

From the Archive: Tools to Change

/ Carol Underhill / Leave a comment

Week 3 of my Journey out of the Pit

I’ve shared in previous posts that 1) the rungs to help us climb out of the pit are the truths about ourselves; and 2) our feelings are not facts.

After the first two sessions, I was still integrating the new thought patterns into my life. One night, I was feeling down and negative about myself. I was in physical pain.

I looked back at my counseling notes and remembered:

One day at a time…THIS is the day that the Lord has made…

I remembered a pastor’s message to “make a joyful noise.”

I started to sing (I don’t remember what song). After a few wobbly notes, I was singing praise songs.

I spent time in my room, with Itunes playing on my laptop, and relaxed for half an hour. Physical pain subsided as I quieted my thoughts.

The next time I met with my counselor, she reminded me of these Bible verses:

James 4:7-8

7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8(a) Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.

She encouraged me to resist the negative thoughts that had dragged me into depression and to turn and embrace God, who is powerful.

When we say, “Help me,” His Spirit comes in and rescues us.

The journey out of depression is like taking baby steps.

My counselor gave me some tools to help me in my battle with depression:

Get out in the sunlight.

Do something to move. Get my body in motion.

Deep breathing

Muscle relaxing

Picturing a quiet place (which for me was our friend’s cabin on the river)

Thinking of a hymn or song

Remembering helpful Scripture verses

Change is uncomfortable, but without it, we can’t grow. Change isn’t going to happen by accident, but by applying the tools I’ve learned and working on myself.

I thought of myself as damaged goods, but Jesus paid the price for my sins because to God I am worthwhile.

I have value in God’s eyes.

Therefore, I need to take care of myself.

Climbing Out of Depression: Key Steps to Healing

/ Carol Underhill / 1 Comment

I published this post a few years ago. Every now and then I read back over it to remind myself of the steps I took to get out of the pit of depression. God’s eternal truths never change. And by clinging to those truths, we can rise above thoughts that lead us into depression.

I started going to a Christian counselor in October 2013 to help me through the depression I was stuck in.

I’m certain God led me to this counselor, as she and her husband were missionaries in Saltillo, Mexico, in the same year that I studied there. Not only that, but she studied Spanish at the same language institute that I did there in Saltillo, just not at the same exact time. It was enough of a connection to believe that God brought her into my life to help me heal.

One of the first things my counselor did was share with me Psalm 40:1-2.

I waited patiently for the Lord;
    he turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
    out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
    and gave me a firm place to stand.

The verses describe what it feels like to live in depression and grief.

My counselor gave me the word picture that there is a pit of depression, but there are rungs to help us climb out of it.

The rungs are truths that we know. For a Christian, those truths are founded in the Word of God.

My late husband had made notes in the margins of his Bible. Icame across these words he’d written in the book of Ephesians:

God loves me.

God accepts me.

God forgives me.

These were three truths that I could count on. They were rungs that I could use to help myself climb out of the pit.

I added a truth of my own:

I am a child of God.

My counselor agreed with these truths. She also added some.

I am who I am by God’s design.

God gave life to dirt. He made us in His image. My value comes from being made in the image of God.

God sees us as His children.

He delights in us.

He loves us for who we are.

Whether we believe it or not, it’s still the truth.

As a person thinks in their heart, so they are.

Those are the rungs of truth that I could use to climb out of the pit of depression.

Before I could grasp hold of a rung, however, I first needed to catch myself thinking negative thoughts.

I had to picture a stop sign.

Once I caught myself thinking a negative thought about myself, I could stop the thought from taking root.

The the next step was to replace the negative thought with a positive rung of truth. After a while, these truths became a part of who I was.

The process of climbing out of the pit did not happen overnight. Sometimes it was two steps forward and three steps back. But I continued to go to counseling and built on that foundation.

Over time and through much prayer and determination, I can say that I am safely out of that pit most of the time. When I start to slip, I try to remember what I’ve learned and keep from falling back in.

God wants me to remember that He is my heavenly Father, that He loves me and accepts me just as I am. I am His child. And I’m so thankful to God for His faithfulness in my life.

The Creator of Light

/ Carol Underhill / Leave a comment

My reading this morning was from Psalm 69.

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold.

I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched.

Psalm 69:1-3

My study Bible says that if David is the author of this Psalm, the occasion is unknown. New Testament authors viewed this cry of a godly sufferer as foreshadowing of the sufferings of Christ.

I’m not a scholar, so I can’t tell you what this means.

What I know is how I feel when I read those 3 verses.

  1. I feel the Psalmist David understood how our emotions can range from the highest mountaintops to the deepest valleys.
  2. Since the words could also be about Christ, I feel that Jesus, too, understands what it is like to have conflicting emotions.

The emotional struggle is real. For a person with bipolar disorder, the ups can be very high and the downs can be very low, much like the Psalmist. Fortunately for me, the pendulum swing is not that extreme. I struggle mostly with depression interspersed with a few moments here and there of manic thoughts and actions.

In the past fifteen months, I’ve often shared how God brought me out of the pit of depression and brought me into the light. A couple of weeks ago, I likened my journey to that of a caterpillar in a cocoon that transforms into a butterfly.

I still feel that to be true, but unlike a butterfly, I wanted to retreat into my cocoon and ride out the mild depression I felt the past few days.

The depression might have been brought on by grief, as I lost an uncle last week. We were not close, but he was a part of my mom’s family. I pictured him as he walked through heaven’s gates, with my grandma, his mom, there to greet him with open arms. Even so, the loss of yet another family member hovered in my mind as the weekend progressed.

Throughout the weekend, I studied what the Bible has to say about creation: how God created light by the Word of His mouth.

Jesus was with God in the beginning. The same God, yet a separate identity.

In the beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

In Him (Jesus) was life, and that life was the light of man. The light shines in the darkness…

John 1:1-2; 4, 5a

Jesus confirmed this when he called Himself the Light of the World in John 8:12.

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

John 8:12

Sometimes Christians can experience emotionally dark times, but God is present with us even then. Just because we can’t see the sun on a cloudy day, its presence is still there. So God has promised to never leave us or forsake us.

God also promises one day there will be no more darkness. When we reach our heavenly home and are in the presence of God, Revelation 22:5 says,

There will be no more night. They will not need the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.

Revelation 22:5

I am so thankful that God is the Giver of Light. He is also the God of forgiveness. And the Great Healer. May anyone who is going through a time of darkness lift their eyes toward heaven and cry out as the Psalmist did. And if you need a counselor, or a doctor-prescribed medication, to get you through the lows, don’t be afraid to reach out to a trusted source for help.

God hears our every prayer, even the words we cannot speak. He will be with us and give us light. And someday, there will be no more darkness, and no more night.

Praise the Lord.