iStockphoto.com/Soubrette. Statue of Christ by sculptor Angela Johnson
Editor’s note: This is a short book that will be serialized on Meridian each week. It will be published in the (hopefully) not too-distant future. Please feel free to respond to any of the authors through G.G.’s website at www.GGVandagriff.com.
“God has delivered me from prison, and from bonds,
and from death; yea, and I do put my trust in him, and he will still deliver me.” (Alma 36:27)
The mission of this book is threefold:
- To offer hope and understanding for those suffering from clinical depression by using our own experiences with healing through a.) medical means, and b.) the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ.
- To help those associated closely with sufferers of clinical depression to understand it and to know how they can a.) cope with it, and b.) aid their loved ones.
- To explain to all who suffer, whatever the cause, that deliverance can be achieved through the vertical and horizontal aspects of the atonement.
We are not so much authorities as witnesses that deliverance is possible. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said in his masterful address “Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence”:
The .lesson from the Lord’s spirit of revelation in the miracle of crossing the Red Sea is that along with the illuminating revelation that points us towards a righteous purpose or duty, God will also provide the means and power to achieve that purpose. Trust in that eternal truth. If God has told you something is right, if something is indeed true for you, He will provide the way for you to accomplish it.
Quoting from the Doctrine and Covenants, he says,
Therefore, let not your hearts faint … Mine angels shall go up before you, and also my presence, and in time ye shall possess the goodly land
Then Elder Holland tells us what the “goodly land” is:
Your promised land. Your new Jerusalem. Your own little acre flowing with milk and honey. Your future. Your dreams. Your destiny (“Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence,” Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Devotional Address given at Brigham Young University, 2 Mar 1999).
We are witnesses that healing from this form of mental illness can be a reality, that suffering in all its forms can be mitigated by the power of the Atonement. (See Alma 7:12-13) There is purpose in suffering, because our primary reason for coming here to this sphere of mortality is to become acquainted with our Savior and our Heavenly Father, to learn by faith that they are there, that they love us, and that they know us by name. “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17:3).
Whatever price we pay for that knowledge is worth it, if it means we can live eternally in the presence of that being who is the source of all light, all truth, all hope, and all love.
We never thought we would know joy in this life, but we are witnesses that with God, all things are possible.
– GG, Gregory, and David Vandagriff
PART ONE: GG’s Deliverance from Clinical Depression after Twenty-Five Years
CHAPTER ONE: All Manner of Afflictions
Allow me to paint a word picture for you. All your life you have wanted to go to the Italian countryside. The moment you have dreamed of is here.
You are standing on a hill with tall grass and cornflowers waving around you. It is springtime and the breeze is gentle with just a kiss of warmth. Above you the sky is as blue as something from an Impressionist’s paint box – deep, so deep a blue that it verges on periwinkle. There are no clouds, but the sun is not hot, just caressing as it sits on your shoulders.
The trees around the meadow are heavy with pear blossoms, sweet and ivory white. In the distance, you can see Florence – ancient and mellow with the muddy green Arno River running through it. You can just make out the Cathedral and vaguely hear the bells tolling their achingly deep tones.
The person you married is standing beside you. The sacrifice of this person, his sole object to please you, has made this whole experience possible. Out of nowhere, a string quartet begins to play Vivaldi.
You feel nothing. Your heart is dead. Everything might as well be ashes.
“Is it everything you dreamed?” your spouse asks, looking into your face with concerned hopefulness.
“Yes,” you lie, overcome with guilt because your stone heart cannot even feel gratitude or love towards this person. Right that moment you wish you could die because you are the most wretched, horrible person on earth. You have everything anyone could want and yet you are miserable.
You long for death to stop the only thing you can feel – deep, yawning, black despair. But you fear death because you know that you will be eternally damned by a God who must surely despise you for your inability to feel grateful for what you have, for your inability to feel faith, hope, or charity.
In fact, you are in the grip of a life-threatening illness, as real as cancer. It is called depression. What is happening in reality is that your nervous system is not functioning properly. All the nerve-endings which should be communicating the visual and sensory details of the scene before you, the love which you should be feeling for your mate and your Creator are not doing their job. You cannot feel because your brain is literally broken.
The only thing that exists inside you is a void so deep and so dark that you alternately fear for your life on the one hand, and wish for extinction on the other. You echo Nephi’s anguished cry,
Oh wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities … and when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins… (2 Nephi 4:17).
Though you have not transgressed in any major way, you cry along with Alma, “O Jesus, thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am encircled about by the everlasting chains of death” (Alma 36:18).
You think, “I am not worthy of a priesthood blessing, but if anything could cure me, that surely could.” You seek many such blessings. You feel nothing. The love of God cannot penetrate your breast. It is as though your heart were encased in a lead shield.
The only thing that sometimes helps is sitting in the Celestial Room of the temple – the purest place on earth. Once in a great while, for a few moments, the anguish leaves. You are not happy, but you are not tormented. And even if you go to the temple daily, you cannot live in the Celestial Room.
After many years, you give up hoping for a miracle. You know vaguely in some part of your being that if there is any hope it in is holding on to the Rod of Iron, and praying that when death finally comes, you will still be holding onto it.
The time comes that you can no longer go out of your home, for you are plagued by anxiety that brings on panic attacks where you fight for each breath. You never know when one will strike. Sometimes they go on for hours.
Even when you are quietly sitting in church, you can suddenly be stricken. Your body goes numb from hyperventilation until you cannot even walk unassisted. Or another type of panic attack may ensue – your fight-or-flight mechanism may kick in and cause your body to “play dead.” It simply shuts down, so you can neither speak nor move. Your thinking is very sluggish. You are like a piece of meat.
Will there ever be an end to it? You foresee only a gray, embattled future, where each day is an endurance test just to survive. You are completely alone in your leaden shell. No one and nothing can reach you.
Is such a scenario a bit extreme? Would a just God allow a person to exist in such a state? The answer is that depression is like any other illness. It is a condition of mortality. It is not a judgment. A broken brain is a physical thing. It has nothing to do with personal righteousness, anymore than cancer does. The major difference between depression and other illnesses is that a depressed person can rarely, if ever, feel the Spirit, but is fully prey to the buffetings of the adversary.
How do I know in such exquisite detail what this disease feels like? I suffered from it for twenty-five years. I am the first person in my family, as far back as I can trace my genealogy, who has suffered from this genetic disorder who has not been institutionalized for life. I raised a family. I wrote three books that were published. I held positions of responsibility in the Church. Twice I was a bishop’s wife. Yet every day I woke to the wish that it could be the day that I would be able to go back to my Heavenly Father.
However did I endure? Most of the time, it was only because I knew that my suicide would scar my children beyond anything I could imagine.
I think the only way I got through those blank, dead, heavy years is that I was enabled just enough by the power of the atonement of Jesus Christ to keep going, not to give up, to keep my eye on the distant goal that one day Jesus himself would put his arms around me and say, “G.G., well done, thou good and faithful servant.” I pictured him holding my face in his hands and saying, “You are healed.” I imagined eyes so deeply compassionate that they knew every pain I had endured, looking into mine with a love so intense that their very warmth would heal me clear through.
I just never thought it would happen in this life.
[To be continued. Look for future installments on Fridays in Meridian.]
