THE BROKENHEARTED
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
THE BROKENHEARTED
by Adam Carroll Draper
Yesterday, Paul Simon’s Kodachrome popped up on Spotify as I was driving home. It starts, “When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.” Experiences differ, but I am not particularly fond of thinking back on high school. I was depressed, and seriously contemplated suicide. I am glad I didn’t do it, but it was a close call.
At one dark point, I nearly tried to murder myself. At the last second, I remembered my dog, Noab. When I was away, he would sit outside my door, waiting for me to come home. The thought of that stopped me. In that sense, he saved my life. Love saved me.
I spent too many years alone in the dark. During one particularly dark time, I used to listen to Michael Stipe sing Everybody Hurts over and over again: “If you’re on your own in this life, the days and nights are long.” The days and nights are not long any more for me. My day is not night alone, as the song goes.
The pointlessness of the suffering and the sense that it would never end was hard. If knowing that it does end helps someone who reads this, it was worth talking about, but it did not end by me listening to R.EM. and Pink Floyd incessantly. That is the real reason I chose to write about having been depressed. In my case, depression was a symptom – the manifestation of what I listened to (or to whom I listened). In Closer to Fine the Indigo Girls sing, “Darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable, and lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.” Forgive me for throwing out a bunch of musical references, but they help me make the point. I am not talking about the music I heard. It is the voice behind the music that calls.
“Lightness has a call that’s hard to hear.”
Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” I came to the point that I was able to ask myself, “Come on, man, what does His voice sound like?” When I asked the Holy Spirit, I got an answer. The Lord’s voice sounds like the elementary particles (which I wrote about a few weeks ago). When Phillip wanted to know what God looked like, Jesus said essentially, “He looks like me.” God is love. He sounds like love.
This is key to the stuff I wrote in this blog about spiritual warfare last week. Darkness has a voice, too. We empower the liar when we believe his lies. It actually amounts to worship. Jesus told me this himself in a dream. He is the truth (or the reality) and we, in effect, commit treason against the truth when we believe a lie. We have no idea all the lies we believe. God is not mad at us about that. Jesus died to set us free from the enemy’s lies. He wants us to learn to fight back, which is the role of the Holy Spirit, Who will lead us into all truth. (John 16:13).
I learned to recognize the liar’s voice, too. When I was depressed, I agreed with something like, “You suck!” That did not come from God. I know this sounds inherently schizoid, but just because a thought occurs to me, doesn’t mean that thought came from me. It is not schizophrenic to recognize that “we wrestle not with flesh and blood.” If the kingdom of God is within me, that is where the war is waged. I have learned to recognize when a thought or a feeling is not from God and not agree with it. Rebuke it! St. Paul instructs that in spiritual warfare we are “casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of God.” 2 Corinthians 10:5.
This whole last part would probably just have pissed me off when I was depressed. But I hope this provides some comfort to the afflicted who might read it. The suffering is not interminable. Let me say this, too. Pain and depression come from a lot of different sources. I am just relating what I went through. If it doesn’t apply to you, please just let it roll right off your back. I am definitely not qualified to point fingers!
I can say this now (quite emotionally). I am not depressed! There is only one way I made it through. I looked to Jesus! He healed me, the brokenhearted. Isaiah 61: 1-3 has given me a great deal of comfort. Jesus said that this prophesy was of Him:
1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound;
2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn;
3 To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified.
Not too long ago, Stef found this song by Samuel Lane. It sums up what I am trying to say.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajzo6NwbXhA
If you got anything out of this missive, please give it a thumbs up, comment, and/or share it. It helps. I sincerely appreciate that you took the time to read this.