One of the saddest things when you’re depressed is denial, whether from outside (e.g., when worship sometimes assumes you leave such feelings at the door), or from within. Denial, however it appears, makes acceptance of pain all the harder, and helps add to the burden. But acceptance is a form of knowing, and carries receiving, and even welcoming as part of its meaning. Thinking about receiving my pain, accepting it, I wonder if this is a hint of what drinking your cup of suffering means. To drink something might imply making it a part of you, drawing nourishment and even refreshment from it …

I’ve a problem here. It’s too easy to be carried off by such thoughts, before you realise you’ve overreached yourself I have rarely taken more than the tiniest sip from my own cup. Perhaps it say something about God and about healing that even this has been enough to help me progress. Maybe it is only human to resist taking more than a sip at a time. But in the times when I have got a hint of the taste of my own pain, my response has varied. Sometimes I have cried; sometimes I have sought listeners, or counselling. sometimes I have written about it; and sometimes I have sought comfort in books of one kind and another. So despite all my resistances to feeling my pain it has, when felt, led me outward in some (often small) way, caused me to progress by coming to know it a little better (I don’t know it this has been nourishing, made me stronger, but it certainly hasn’t been refreshing … This must savour some of what Kathy Galloway meant when she wrote, “Resignation and denial are passive but sorrow is active, dynamic. It moves us on.” For pain to become sorrow it must be accepted, even if little by little. And if acceptance is a form of knowing, resignation and denial mean not knowing, not facing pain and touching it to feel it’s outline.

Sometimes I know I have chosen denial, whether consciously or not. So this talk of moving on must not be misunderstood; progress out of depression is never a smooth solely-upward curve. (I apologise if you didn’t need me to tell you that). I wonder if this is a hint that God is always within and alongside us, but working entirely along the grain of our humanity; we’re not always open to moving on, and we do cling, even to pain. God never zaps away that pain; and perhaps, strange as it may sound, it would not be a liberation if God did.

I have no idea how to end this piece, because there is no final conclusion to lead up to. All I can say is that the end of this piece is all this is. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away behold the new has come.” I feel I’m somewhere between the old and new. Please excuse my odd ideas and frequent I-ing. And if depressed, may you be liberated, and comforted.

Blair Hunwick