Intents and Purposes

"To the Life!" was my stab at optimism once upon a time. I was sitting on my bed in Arrington Hall when the concept popped into my mind. Surrounded by linoleum floors and cold, white walls, the clinical environment of Arrington aptly cocooned my healing soul. This was sophomore year when I built a slew of friendships and started to learn what it meant to love not only my friends but God. "To the Life!" said, "There is so much here for me to learn. There is a God I know so little about. I am now charging myself to learn those things and turn my compass to the life God has provided for me." I didn't want life to go by; I wanted to pursue it.

Of course, there have been a lot of fumbles along the way. As it turns out, life is as exciting as my naivete projected, but it's equally difficult. I knew there would be bumps along the way, but I really never grasped how severe those could be. My mind went to some dark places my freshman and junior years, and while I did say that I was "spiraling into depression" during those times, I didn't believe it to be true. I didn't actually think I had a chemical imbalance in my head. Instead, I blamed myself for letting those things happen to me. I put the blame on my "bad faith" and made desperate attempts through studying the Bible to figure this whole faith thing out. The knowledge entered my mind but couldn't penetrate some unknown barrier inside of me. I started to think that I was uncontrollably cold-hearted, as if I was the devil himself. It didn't make sense that my friends and family could praise God and the wonderful things He was doing in their lives, and I had to work ten times harder to even reach a semblance of that reality in my own life. These struggles stacked onto the depression.

My sophomore and senior years, I think, were only better because of the measures of distraction I took from the real turmoil boiling underneath the surface. My entire college experience has not been a terrible one because of this, because (I really do believe) God is good, and His goodness functions through my dysfunction.

Sophomore year, I charged myself to know God.

Now three months shy of 23-years-old, I charge myself to let God.

The reality of my mental disorder is closing in on me hard, so hard that it's going to take every bit of energy and strength inside of me to walk the two minutes to my class in an hour. Yeah, this is hard, but I am now starting to see how wonderful is that cross Jesus carried. Walking in faith through this haze of depression means knowing how temporary this is, and knowing that Jesus experienced pain one-hundredfold. My Savior exists for this purpose, to walk with me through the valley of the shadow of death.

And so, I press on "To the Life!"