Putting Choice to Work for Me

Do you think it odd to hear me say I am working through anxiety and depression now, during this beautiful and happy time of my life? But I am. I call Ivan, ask him to pray with me. “I wish I could be with you,” he says. “Wish I could hold you.” 

I feel better for a while, then the sadness rises, engulfs me. Jeff comes home from work. “Will you pray with me?” I ask. He sits across from me, one hand on my shoulder, another on my knee. He is unbelievably comforting, this brother. He has changed from the young bully brother I once knew to a man who is deep, tender, compassionate. I know this change comes from the hurts, rejection, and depression that he has experienced. I have seen a little of the length and the breadth of his struggle, and I would never have wished it for him. But I like this new person, this man who empathizes so deeply with pain—I like this person better. 

I walk with my sister beside pale brown November stalks of corn and tell her our family has a propensity for depression and anxiety. Worriers, we are. Holders on. Mourners. Fearers. Self-blamers. Self-shamers. Jeffrey told me this, and it comforts me to think I am not strange, only genetic. 

“We’re always about relationships,” she says. “Our depression always stems from loss of relationship, or the fear of loss.” 

I think about that. Is there any other kind? 

Sitting in the Walmart parking lot one day, my mind runs over and over the old track. Why did it happen? What did I do wrong? Of course I never find an answer. But around and around the old track I go, thinking, I guess, that if I drive long enough, search hard enough, someday I will. My wheels have worn the rut deep. 

This day, though, I remember the blog I posted on choice. I complained to God in that post, told him he never should have given us choice, because choices hurt. If he had delivered us packaged with pre-planned itineraries, there would be no unpleasant jolts, no life-threatening shocks when choices collide and entangle. There would be no unpleasant reaping because every seed sowed would be correct seed, the thing laid down by God at the beginning of time. Of course I meant the whole thing tongue in cheek, because who of us would give up her freedom?

But this day, for the first time, I think of choice in a new way. Not as a thing predestined for trouble because of my own inadequacies, but as a life-giving gift designed by God to help me out of my stew of negativity. Because every day, every hour, every minute provides a new choice. If there are old ruts today, tomorrow there can be new ones—slight perhaps but still a beginning—laid by my own hand and my own brain and nobody else’s.

Choice, in this view, is not a hopeless mess of tangled destinies but a new start every single minute; a new opportunity to rejoice. 

I feel like I have been making the default choice, I tell God. Letting my mind run in deepening circles over the same worn track until it is almost impossible to rev my engine hard enough to get over that rut. But from now on, I want to make choice work for me. I choose you. I choose to believe your promises over this list of negativity, over the how’s and why’s and the frustration at my inability to control.

I expect to feel a sense of determination, a new acceptance of the situation. Instead, I experience such joy it surprises me. I have chosen God’s sufficiency instead of my own solutions. I think He is pleased. 

The joy lasts all morning and into the afternoon. By evening joy has waned and worry nips its defenses. The next morning I awake feverish with my own power to fix the problem, full of solutions, guaranteed. By afternoon I am drowning.

Still, choices help. 

Ann Voskampish, I start a list on my phone of 1,000 gifts.

And I also start on my phone a list of the promises God has given me, words I choose to stand on. They are familiar verses, words that have rolled around in my brain forever and are still as foreign, still as earth-shattering and mind-blowing, as the first time I heard them. 

With God nothing shall be impossible.

Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

Be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Whatsoever you ask in my name, I will do it.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your paths. 

Come unto me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 

A power-filled position, this position of prayer. 

I still mourn. I still cry. I still worry and grieve. But several times now, when the furor in my heart has churned itself big, I stop. I take my list of promises to a quiet place, and one by one I pray through them, applying each to my situation the best I know how. 

Believing in God’s sufficiency, his power to work miracles, I am filled with hope and joy. Not an emotion that comes from me believing I will be able to manipulate the situation just right for a happy outcome. But hope and joy that comes from knowing God always keeps his promises. However that looks, however that happens, in some way He will fulfill them. 

And maybe in the future someone who loves me will say to me, “You know, you are a different person now than you used to be. I like this person better.”

***

Disclaimer: I have never to my knowledge experienced clinical depression. When I talk of depression, I mean something like “deep sadness, worry, sense of loss and discouragement.” I have never experienced a deadening of my emotions, a complete loss of enjoyment, or a desire to end my life. If you have experienced these things, your story is a different one and you will need different helps to properly address it. This post does not intend to portray “choice” as an immediate, end-all solution, only to say that choice is a gift that can help us out of any negative state we are in. Perhaps, for you, that means choosing to seek medication and outside counseling.

Feature photo by Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash