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I'm going to open up a little bit here, in the interests of perhaps helping others with my own experiences with depression. This is long and I apologize for it, but I hope it will help someone who might be depressed and feeling worthless or helpless:

I was depressed for a lot of years. I remember little of my high school years, beyond attending class and then coming home and climbing into my bed in my dark room. I was able to perform at school, but it was very difficult because I always felt worthless, lonely and scared. Coming home and just getting into bed and sleeping was the way I coped. My parents just thought I was being a difficult teenager and that I would outgrow it. And, for periods of time, I did. This pattern of depressive behavior would wax and wane through my college years and early 20s.

In my 20s, I met a man and I fell totally, deeply in love with him. I was like many young women are, though. I was a total fool for this man. I believed I was so worthless and so insignificant I deserved his cheating and lying and that if I just waited for him long enough, he would one day love me and we'd be happy together. That didn't happen. I became pregnant, and when he found out, he refused to have anything to do with me or our child. This caused me to have a breakdown and I was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for a couple of weeks, when I was about 3 months pregnant, to keep me from harming myself or someone else.

I'll be honest. The counseling in the psychiatric hospital didn't help me one bit. The peace and tranquility of the psychiatric hospital, however, helped me to quiet my burned-out mind and to turn back to Jesus for his forgiveness for my sins and to experience His peace and calmness in my mind and soul.

When I left the hospital, I was stronger spiritually and mentally than I ever was in my life. I vowed to work to take care of myself and the baby I was carrying and to put this man out of my mind and my heart. This helped me to withstand some very serious personal blows during my pregnancy - alienation of much of my family over my pregnancy, and very dire financial circumstances being two of those personal blows.

I worked two jobs all during my pregnancy and until my son was almost two years old to provide for us. I never asked my son's father for a dime because of threats he made against our baby's life, while I was pregnant, if I tried to take him to court for child support. I decided I would scratch with the chickens for a living before I took a dime from a monster who would threaten the life of his own baby.

At any rate, I worked very hard for that period of time - only sleeping three or four hours a night and seeing very little of my baby, who was being cared for by my first cousin's wife - a wonderful girl who loved my baby like her own. I thank God every day for LouAnn and what she did for me and my son.

I guess because I was so tired and emotionally burned out, I began to take my eyes off Jesus and how He was wonderfully providing for me and my child, and I began to let depression back into my mind and soul, a little at a time. Finally, one Sunday night, I just couldn't face another day, I thought, and I took a handful of muscle relaxants. I went to bed, not caring - I believed - that I would never wake up. But the Lord cared. My baby began to cry and it was like the curtain of depression was ripped from my mind. I knew I couldn't die and leave him. I was all he had. I was horrified at what I had done and I asked the Lord to help me get help and not die and leave my baby.

I spent a couple of days in the hospital recuperating and crying and praying, and I finally took a long look at myself and my life. I had believed I was doing the right thing by working all the time to provide for my son, but the Lord showed me that I wasn't trusting Him to provide for us beyond what I was physically able to do. By trying to meet all our needs myself, this led to physical exhaustion, which led to escalating depression. I also realized that I WAS worth something. I was a good mother and a good person, not the total screw-up I had always considered myself to be. When I got out of the hospital, I quit one of my jobs and put our future in the Lord's hands.

While I was lying in that hospital, I began to see that depression is a lie. "Depression" is believing the lies you're telling yourself - "I'm worthless, I can't do anything right, I'm never going to climb out of this pit I'm in". If you've ever been depressed, you know all those lies because you've repeated them to yourself a million times.

From that time forward, once I really came to see depression for what it was - a lie I was telling myself - I have never been depressed again.

It's been 15 years, now, since I was hospitalized for that suicide attempt. Since that time, the Lord has given me a perfect, blessed husband and three more sons. He's taken away the self-hatred I used to have and given me a sense of worth - not for who or what I am - but because He loved me so much that He died for me, and He was there to lift me up and protect me when I wasn't capable of seeing any goodness or worth in myself.

If I could say anything to depressed people it's this: Quit lying to yourself and reinforcing your depressive feelings. You're NOT worthless. You're NOT useless. Don't even let those thoughts enter your mind. You have wonderfully and fearfully made, in the image of God. You were bought at a price by Jesus and He will be faithful to you if you'll only ask Him. He can take a depressed troubled mind and make it new and peaceful.

God bless you all. I'm sorry I've written so much here, but I just wanted to tell you all what I've learned at Jesus's mercy seat.

Thank you for sharing your story and your insights. You're right, our minds and thoughts are very powerful. And we are ultimately in control of how we direct them and what we let into our lives. It took me a long time to understand that. I still have to remember sometimes to take responsibility for some of my moods etc.

Your story brought a couple things to mind. The hymn "What a Friend We Have In Jesus" was one of my mom's favorites, and the line in it "oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer".

Ralph Waldo Emerson also wrote this:

Finish every day and be done with it; you have done what you could.

Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.

Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and severelyy and with too high a spirit to be combered with your old nonsense.

This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with it's hopes and invcitationsk to waste a moment on the yesterdays.

May you and your family have a blessed Christmas and New Year!

Prairie