Stuck For a Reason
By Ronald “Dee” Vaughan
Jacob was at a crossing-over time in his life. He was on his way to see his long-estranged brother, Esau. He had reached the banks of the Jabbok River and wanted to cross over to the other side. He sent the people he loved and the possessions he had acquired through hard work and trickery across the river, but he couldn’t continue the journey with them. We’re not sure whether he sent his family and possessions across the river without him or if he took them across then returned by himself. In either case, Jacob was stuck on the wrong side of the river.
“Stuck” is a word many people have used to describe depression, the inability and, at times, the lack of desire to cross the next river, to move forward into the next chapter of their life’s story.
I was stuck in depression and I didn’t like it. I complained to my counselor that I was so weary of feeling bad and was frustrated and angry that my doctor hadn’t found a medicine or combination of medicines that would lessen my symptoms. Upon hearing this, Charlie’s face took on its own look of disgust as he challenged me to understand my breakdown on the wrong side of life’s river in a different way. He told me, very emphatically, “This is not just about finding the right medicine to treat your symptoms. This is about how you’re living your life!”
The day I heard those words was the day I began to understand I might be stuck for a reason. Beyond the genetic predisposition for depression I was certain I had inherited and could not change, I started so see that the way I was living my life, something I can work to understand, evaluate, and change, was a factor in my illness, too; perhaps a greater factor than I had ever thought possible. Even more amazingly, I pondered the possibility that I might leave this place where I’d been stuck a better person than when I arrived. The challenge to understand the way I was living my life and change it for the better was the first glimmer of hope and the first feeling of empowerment I had felt in a very long time.
If you are stuck in a season of depression right now, I want to challenge you to think about what my counselor told me. You are stuck on what feels like the wrong side of life’s river, separated from people, from joy, from motivation, even from God, not just to find the right medicine to alleviate your symptoms and allow you to continue your life where you left off. You may be stuck for a reason. You may be depressed, in part, because of the way you’re living your life. I don’t challenge you with that thought to blame or condemn you for your illness. If you are like I was, you’re probably doing a very good job of that already. I invite you to see being stuck on the wrong side of the river as an opportunity to understand yourself with new insight and an invitation to grow. After a long night of being stuck, you can, like Jacob, cross the river more healthy and whole than you’ve ever been before.
Depression is a tragic experience, but an even greater tragedy would be to miss the opportunity it offers you to grow. Depression hurts far too much to waste the pain. If you must hurt as deeply as depression makes you hurt, you want to be better for it. You want to seize the painful costly opportunity to learn what has weighed you down and worn you out and find a way to be free of it.
Jacob had no idea what the night ahead would hold for him, how dark, difficult, and frightening it would be. I imagine through those slow dark hours, Jacob felt that night would never end. That’s how depression felt for me and, perhaps, for you. That’s the bad news. But the good news is that Jacob could not begin to imagine how much his night of struggle would change him for the better. The same transformation can happen to you and me.
In a mysterious way, Jacob’s inability to cross the river that night, to go on with his life as he was living it, was part of God’s plan and God’s redemptive work. So maybe, like Jacob, you and I find ourselves stuck for a reason. And maybe we can discover why and, when the night is over, cross the river with deeper faith and more freedom than ever before. Though we can’t fully understand depression and would never choose it, by God’s purpose at work in us, we can be better for it.
This is an excerpt from Dee’s book, Don’t Let Go Before Dawn, a personal reflection on Jacob’s night of wrestling with a mysterious foe and his own struggle with depression. Click here to learn more.