Learning to Suffer in Silence

From a young age I have grappled with what my mom always called "melancholy." When I was around five years old she started noticing that I would experience emotional lows and no amount of motherly consolation would lift them. The only sure way they would pass is with patience. More than two decades have passed, yet I still experience my melancholy moments. These days my shifts in mood may be more properly identified as depression, but, no matter what you call it, the treatment is the same: time.

Before going any further, I need to address what many may be compelled to point out. Medication exists to help manage depression, anxiety, and a whole host of other psychological ailments. I don't think these are inherently bad, and I would say that plenty of people should take some form of medication to mitigate mental illness. At the same time, I would say that the practitioners of psychology/psychiatric care have leaned a bit too heavily on prescribing pharmaceutics to legitimize itself in the eyes of hard sciences and other health fields. Given my experiences with my mental health, I am under the impression that medication isn't the best answer for me.

For me the best answer is to wait patiently. The feelings of despair, frustration, loneliness, and pain always pass. In the same way, I know they will return. The past two or three weeks have certainly proven that the feelings return, as I have felt the full measure of my depression weigh on me again. The "novelty" of returning to my Lutheran faith is wearing off, leaving room for my mind to get antsy and look for problems. Before returning to my Lutheran church, I was inquiring with the Orthodox mission my best friend is a member at. My interactions with him were all that kept Christianity on my mind as I strayed, and I thank God for him for this reason. I wanted to be Christian with him, to have full fellowship with him, but I was unable to shake my convictions concerning the teachings of the Orthodox church. I couldn't become a catechumen in good conscience. I had to go back home to the Lutheran church.

I have felt a continual unrest in our friendship since I made that decision. I'm under the impression that this is almost entirely of my own doing, for I am not a man who handles close relationships well. The depths of my destructive behavior knows no bounds when it comes to damaging my connections to others, often manifesting itself as emotional outbursts and manic vents as I reach my wits end. These moments of weakness have seemingly only served the purpose of creating a negative reputation for myself, straining my relationships, and damaging my spiritual life. It is as if my mouth is possessed and can't help but speak spells meant to destroy everything in my life, and this only happens because I so often lack a sense of patience.

As a "90s kid" whose teenage years and young adulthood are intimately tied to the boom in communications technology, I have cultivated a terrible appetite for instant gratification, and the record shows that it compels me to speak for the sake of speaking, to instantly release the load of negative emotions that have built up inside of me.

Today, as I spoke with my above-mentioned Orthodox friend, I realized that I my melancholy was brought to an all-time-low as a mutual friend of ours announced that he has become an Orthodox catechumen with the intention of joining the Orthodox church. This announcement was somewhat crushing. Even now it gives me a great sense of isolation and loneliness knowing that I my two closest friends will live out their faith on the other side of a theological chasm. We are still brothers in Christ, but it is undeniable that the fullness of fellowship will not exist between us as long as we remain where we are now.

That thought has weighed on my mind ever since the announcement, and today (and yesterday) I unwisely decided to loosen my lips and spew a waterfall of emotionally-charged, malformed thoughts. As my friend, who has been Orthodox for a while now, responded to all that I said, two things became clear to me.
    1) The desire to vent and share every thought that has crossed my mind during an emotional low is a damaging behavior, for it is, at least unconsciously, an attempt to displace my misery. Maybe even an attempt to multiply misery as I drag others down to experience some semblance of my melancholy.
    2) I have not yet learned how to properly ecumenically engage with Christians from other traditions.

I don't presume to know how I ought to start tackling issue number two, but I think a few verses in Lamentations has taught me a bit about what I ought to do concerning the first one:
"The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, 
To the soul who seeks Him. 
It is good that one should hope and wait quietly 
For the salvation of the Lord. 
It is good for a man to bear 
The yoke in his youth. 
Let him sit alone and keep silent,
Because God has laid it on him;
Let him put his mouth in the dust— 
There may yet be hope.
Let him give his cheek to the one who strikes him, 
And be full of reproach."
At the risk of someone telling me I have twisted scripture to suit a private interpretation, I want to share what I am understanding as the value of being silent and patiently waiting. My emotions assail me with some regularity, and it is a cross I have to bear. I also tend to talk too much whenever I pick this cross up, complaining and making a fool of myself. As I've spend today reflecting on these facts about myself, my conclusion lies in those verses from the prophet Jeremiah in his lamentations: It is good to hope and wait quietly, to sit alone and keep silent as I wait for the hope of deliverance, the deliverance promised by Christ, from the afflictions I experience of this life. My Orthodox friend said something about my depression today, and it is something that sticks with me: These struggles are here for your salvation. To the Lutheran mind that phrase coming from an Orthodox person may make us get jumpy, but I think we ought to be on the same page concerning the progressive, ongoing work of salvation God is working in our lives. Because of this, I agree with my Orthodox friend, God has laid this on me, and I know He does not do so as a punishment or to push me away from the faith. He desires my salvation, just as He desires the salvation of all the world, and that is a hope I must learn to silently dwell on, to meditate on as I sort out how to live this Christian life here and now in our imperfect world.

Until next time!

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

Comments

  1. I would love to hear more of the story of how you came to join a LCMS congregation.

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