Episode #282 - The Harder We Try

Sometimes the harder we try the more difficult it gets.

Transcript

Episode #282 - The Harder We Try

I would like to start today with a song from a country group called Rascal Flats.  The song is called why?

You must've a been in a place so dark, couldn't feel the light
 Reachin' for you through that stormy cloud
 Now here we are gathered in our little home town
 This can't be the way you meant to draw a crowd

Oh why, that's what I keep askin'
 Was there anything I could have said or done
 Oh I, had no clue you were masking a troubled soul, God only knows
 What went wrong, and why you'd leave the stage in the middle of a song

Now in my mind I keep you frozen as a seventeen year old
 Roundin' third to score that winning run
 You always played with passion no matter what the game
 When you took the stage you shined just like the sun

Oh why, that's what I keep askin'
 Was there anything I could have said or done
 Oh I, had no clue you were masking a troubled soul, God only knows
 What went wrong, and why you'd leave the stage in the middle of a song

Yeah, yeah, yeah

Now the oak trees are swayin' in the early autumn breeze
 The golden sun is shining on my face
 The tangled thoughts I hear a mockingbird sing
 This old world really ain't that bad a place

Oh why there's no comprehending
 And who am I to try to judge or explain
 Oh, but I do have one burning question
 Who told you life wasn't worth the fight
 They were wrong
 They lied
 And now you're gone
 And we cried

'Cause It's not like you, to walk away in the middle of a song

Your beautiful song
 Your absolutely beautiful song

I love this song for many reasons but most of all the way it expresses something incredibly important.  There is a moment in time a space when we enter what I call the void.  It is a place worse that depression or anxiety.  It is a dark hole where you can’t feel anything.  Now you might think that it would be better to not feel that to feel the pains and sufferings of depression.  But it is not.  This dark hole takes your breathe away.  You have no desire, no love, no passion, no cares, no frame of reference.  Everything is just dark.  You don’t even have any fear.  And that is the problem.

This moment in time and place is dangerous to you and to those around you.  Not that you have any desire to hurt someone but you have entered a place that you can no longer give anything.  

You can utterly feel as though you are living outside your body.  I am not talking about a drug induced euphoria.  I am talking about a place where you do not even recognize yourself.

What is most dangerous about this place is that a complete lack of desire is the most difficult thing for your body to handle.  It can handle pain and suffering for some time but a darkness so deep you can’t feel is something it cannot comprehend.  If you are in this space, please cry out to the Lord and get some help.

I like to talk about suicide at least once a year on my show.  It is important and I wish more people would talk about the experiences that lead them to feel the need to take their life.  I realize that for most people the discussion of suicide is not a comfortable topic.  But it should be far more addressed within church talks, callings and teachings.  I suppose that very few if anyone ever feels the need for suicide and perhaps that is one of the reasons.  Perhaps due to pioneer ancestry and pulling carts and wagons across a forbidden landscape, one might see suicide as lacking fortitude.  However, I view those who have come to that door and walked away some of the bravest people I know.

We need to do more to bring to light the causes and reasons for suicide in our own lives and in the lives of others.  While one might logically think that talking about suicide leads to suicide.  Actually the truth is that talking about suicide, what leads up to it and how one can get help is one of the most positive things that can be done for the problem.  Suicide itself is not an illness.  I want to be very clear about it.  Suicide is the culmination of avoidance, lack of awareness and avoiding treatment.  Suicide is a natural result of the body finding only one pathway for peace in this life.  Yes that statement can be twisted when someone who has not experienced the depths of darkness thinks about it from a normal perspective.

But I promise you that within the social groups you share with others.  Several individuals have thought about suicide and others have come close.  You cannot see suicide in another.  Masking is our ability to look like life is fine when in reality it is not.  And we are good at it.  Our society including the churches social groups stigmatizes suicide and anything like it under the doctrine that we are in control of our emotions and our thoughts.  And if we can’t control those emotions and thoughts we are either weak or unwilling to accept the truth or in sin.

The real truth is that our emotions are as much as chemical process as anything else in our body.  Mental illness is no different than a cancer of the brain where chemistry is altered and emotions are brought forth with a depth of darkness most normal people would never experience much less survive.  One cannot descend to the weakness theory without significant fear.  Most individuals who deny mental and emotional illness are fearful of the idea that they just might not be entirely in control of everything in their body and mind.

Individual and group theories also include the idea that the Lord would heal someone before they took their life.  I am not necessarily of that opinion.  Depression, anxiety and bipolar tread in some very murky waters and while I am certain the Lord does not lead us to suicide.  We can through our own actions and those murky waters find a place so dark that it feels as though one cannot escape.  Do I believe that the Lord allows for suicide.  Yes I am of the opinion that the Lord does not condemn someone for actions for which they are not responsible.  Almost every instance of suicide comes with the realization that the individual had to overcome the strongest emotion in the mortal body, self-preservation.  To overcome our desire to live, one must pass through a depth of darkness, pain and suffering that most individuals will not experience and if they did they would likely take their own lives.

So we see that mental and emotional illness are unique trials given to those who can withstand some of the most difficult trials ever posed to mortals.  To be classed among one of those who can pass such trials is a blessing.  I admit that I don’t always see my illnesses as blessings and I might from time to time cry out, why is this so hard.

Why is this so hard when I am trying with every available source in my body?  Why do things get harder when we try so hard in our lives to climb out of the hole?  It seems that when we have made progress climbing the wall, the rains descend and we find ourselves at the bottom of the hole muddy and wet and even more miserable.  We are likely to ask, why do I even try?  What purpose is there to climbing partially out of the misery only to be pushed right back down?  Why does the Lord allow such things?

I don’t have all the answers to that question.  Some of it, most of it, comes at a steep personal price and the answers are very personal but what I can say is that I have come to know the Savior better.  When the Savior says come follow me, I think that I expected he would clear the way, remove the stumbling blocks, keep the adversary from my doorstep and lead me along green pastures.  The truth is that the Savior’s path is fraught with everything he faced.  The Savior is not saying come follow me and I will make your life easy.  He is saying follow in the path that I did, which if you study that path did not include very many easy days.  So part of the answer to why is that the path the Savior walked was very difficult.  The Savior does not clear the path but walks it with us.  He assures us that it is possible and that he will always be there as long as we don’t wander off.  But he also says that we must endure pruning, chastisement, loneliness, turmoil, distress, doubt and every manner of privation as he did.  For that is the way he learned and truthfully the way we all learn.  

I am going to end today with one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite artists about this very topic.  It is a song that was originally written for those of us with the trials and troubles of mental illness.

Keep Going

Here it comes again, I feel it rolling in, a storm I can’t escape

It feels black as night, stealing all the light, its nothing I can shake.

You asked what you can do, how can you help me now, it hurts so bad I wish I knew.

Tell me you love me and say that you’ll stay with me while I fight to climb out of this pit I been livin in.

Tell me I going to make it, I need to hear you say it, while I fight to believe that I have what it takes to try again.  

Keep on going.  Keep on going.

It makes me feel alone, even thought I know, I am not the only one. 

No matter whats been said this isn’t in my head and I am barely hanging on.

if you ask me I’m ok, I want to tell you yes, I’ll find away.

Just tell me you love me and say that you’ll stay with me while I fight to climb out of this pit I been living in.

Tell me I’m going to make it, I need to hear you say it.  While I fight to believe that I have what it takes to try again.  And keep on going.  And so instead of my usual ending.  I end today with never give up the fight and keep on going and the Lord will lead you along.  Until next week.