Preparing to dig deeper

I guess this post starts with this article:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/03/utah-suicide-gun-laws-traffic-fatalities

It's disturbing on multiple levels, and there is a lot of material here, some of which I will probably return to on the regular blog at some point. I want to deal with Utah being the most depressed state though, because that seems very wrong, and I can see people interpreting it badly and as something against the church.

The first point I want to make is that it is not impossible that a higher depression rate is somewhat influenced environmentally. I know of Utah families with a high incidence of cancers and neurological diseases which appear to be linked to the fallout from the atomic bomb testing that happened in Nevada in the 1950's. I have not read of a specific link between radiation and depression, but considering some of the definite connections, depression seems well within the realm of possibility.

A concern I have with this is that some members I have known with clinical depression have met with discouragement from others on taking medication for it, because they should be able to be healed by faith, or just choose a positive attitude, or suck it up. I think this kind of thing happens outside of the church too, but it's still wrong.

Yes, there are those who tend to over-medicate, and there are people who would benefit more from therapy than from medication, or who should at least get both, but there are people whose brain chemistry is not right, and there are medications that can help them, and being against that help because you don't specifically need it is a very destructive form of arrogance.

And you can't use the absence of such medications in the past as a justification for it either. We have been polluting the atmosphere and the groundwater and adding chemicals to the food, and testing nuclear bombs, and we don't fully know the effects of those changes. Maybe some of this didn't exist two hundred years ago, and that's questionable, but it exists now, and it should be helped when possible.

So, add environmental contaminants to reluctance to medicate, and maybe that's why the depression levels are so high, at least on the chemical end of it, but someone else had referenced depressed Mormon housewives who need to stay vapid to keep from giving into the despair, and she has a point, and I want to address that.

I'm going to start addressing it by using some people who are not in our church, but my sister asked me about them, because she was disturbed by it. They lost three children close together. I think two were due to a genetic condition that they had not known about until the first one died, and then the other was an illness. I believe they had one child left.

Now, that is a disturbing story just for the sheer pain, but what bothered her is how they were playing it down, saying the loss was God's will, and they were just going to trust Him and be grateful. It did not feel right to her, and I had to agree.

You do need to make peace with loss, but what it felt like in this case was that it happened too easily, and too soon, like maybe they just assumed peace instead of actually making peace. One unfortunate result of that is that people were not being inspired; they were being horrified, and feeling like Christians are freaks.

Well, you can't worry too much about that, because often when we do things right we are going to look like freaks too. However, you still need to do right by yourself, and part of that is that leaving your faith shallow leaves it likely to crumble at a bad moment.

We are human, and humanity hurts. People die and we miss them. We feel guilty for things that are not our fault, and we try and avoid guilt for things that are our fault. We get sick and we get old. There is a lot of suffering. There can be a lot of joy, too, but there will definitely be suffering.That's part of the plan. It teaches us compassion, and gratitude, and we become stronger. It works. And yet, because it hurts, it is completely natural to feel rebellious at times, and bristle, and to get mad. Someone who is trying really hard to be good may be tempted to sweep that under the rug. Don't.

I'm not saying to give into the rebellion, and stop praying and start drinking. However, we do need to question, and a lot of people seem to be scared to do that.

I suppose it's the same sort of behavior that makes it easy to write other people off as sinners, without finding charity for them. This is wrong! They do this thing! Sinner! That's pretty much never the right attitude. We leave judgment to God, and we just love. That's how it works. Also, sometimes one thing definitely is a sin, but we add a lot of related things to it on our own. Or yes, they are sinning, but it's understandable given their background, and they need love more than judgment.

We can be too quick to write off other people, but we can also be too quick to write off ourselves. We deny the pain and the anger inside, but that leaves them inside, and they can fester there. I've done it. The worst depression of my life was when something that I had been pushing down for nearly thirty years would not stay down any longer. And here is the horrible and amazing thing about that: forcing myself to look at the thing was much worse than actually looking at the thing.

I had all this fear built up of how horrible I was, and I just did not want to know, and I let that keep me from relationships, and from knowing myself at all, and it had all been a lie that I internalized from some kids picking on me. I should have fixed that years ago.

My message is that God is good enough to handle your weakness. The Plan of Salvation is complete enough to comfort your afflictions. You're not just allowed to ask; you're supposed to ask.

I'll keep saying that it's hard. So much of what hurts us is the choices other people make. It seems unfair, but we learn the value of having our own choices, so they need theirs. As we grow, we learn that we hurt people too, and we can get humble about that, and grateful for the Atonement. We realize how much is fixed by forgiveness and resurrection and how valuable the Millennium will be, and not only is all of that beautiful, but it gives meaning to everything that is happening now.

We don't understand it all right away. There will be questions where to understand the answer you need to know too many things that you haven't learned yet, and so you have to wait, but there is still the assurance and the comfort.

As Latter-Day Saints we are the last people who should be coasting on a shallow faith, ever! We have so much knowledge to build on. We have the Holy Ghost and we have temples. We have the priesthood for blessings and for guidance from leaders. Ask and seek and knock.

It's okay to be slow learners. The lie that was at the bottom of my troubles was that I couldn't be loved. I cannot tell you how many times God had to tell me that He loved me before I believed it. He kept it up though, in dreams and in blessings and in experiences, until at some point it stuck. I don't know of any reason why He would be less patient with you.