Today's psalm is the longest one I've read thus far in this little exercise, but I know it's not the longest to come yet (Psalm 119 may have to be spread over a few days!). Given its length, I decided to take a slightly different tactic for this meditation. As I always do, I read the psalm in my Bible and then left it for a little bit. More specifically, I went and took a shower. I don't know about y'all, but I do some of my best thinking in the shower. Well, wouldn't you know it, I didn't think much about it at all. Instead, my brain went a thousand other directions. As I was coming back to it, I decided that instead of focusing on the entire psalm, I was only going to focus on a single passage from it. In this case, it's a couple of verses.
The Lord is a stronghold for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. And those who know Your name put their trust in You, for You, O Lord, have not forsaken those who seek You. (verses 9-10)
This particular passage kinda jumped out at me because of the word "oppressed." As I said in one of my previous posts, I've been seeing all the red flags that would normally indicate demonic oppression for well over a year. Gray has said several times in the last three years that he believes that the severity and lengthiness of this episode of depression is due to some kind of attack by the enemy. Any other time I would have agreed with him, but when you're struggling amidst such heavy darkness, it's hard to see light or anything -- much less actually discern spirits.
I think another reason that he probably arrived at that conclusion was because of the drastic change in my spiritual life. It's not that I suddenly stopped going to Mass or doing the base level required stuff, but I lost my ability to connect to it, to find joy in it, and most of all, began to struggle with even wanting to do the basics. I found Mass to be emotionally tortuous at times and an especially agonising challenge most of the rest of the time. For a good portion of the last three years, I participated as a cantor (someone who sings the Psalms and Gospel Acclamation for Mass) and soloist as well as being a regular chorister. I felt like I had an obligation and that people were counting on me, so I stayed and I was honestly miserable. It got to a point where I not only dreaded Sunday mornings, but found that I had no desire to go at all. At some point, I began to feel a kind of revulsion at the idea of attending Mass and even told my big brother Chez that I just didn't want anything to do with anything of faith anymore.
Still, I pushed forward. I went through the motions week after week, month after month. I began to despair that I would never find any peace with my faith or with my relationship to God ever again. At one point, I began to question whether everything I'd always believed was really true or was just something someone made up. That was the lowest point. In that dark valley, apathy set in and the only thing that made me get up and go to Mass on Sundays or pray blessings at meal times and bedtime prayers with my children was my love for my children and my desire to be a good example of them. I wanted them to see me as someone who was struggling, but still continuing to practice her faith, so that some day when life hits them with something that causes them to be angry at God or question their faith, they'll maybe recall my example.
I don't remember what pulled me out of that low point exactly, but I know whatever it was, grace was behind it. A little less than year ago, I began seeing Fr. B for spiritual direction. That was when my faith began to change. It wasn't overnight or even after a few months. It took a good six months before I noticed anything at all. It had been happening gradually, but one Sunday evening when we'd gone to Mass, I realised that I hadn't felt so annoyed and angry. At some point after that, I had several bad weeks in a row with my depression. Given how bad things had become, Fr. B and I stepped up our meetings to every week instead of every 2-3 weeks.
I knew when I walked into the first of those weekly meetings and saw Father's purple stole, holy oil, holy water, a small hand sized Benedictine crucifix, Father's Bible, and a very worn looking small leather book that things were about to get serious. It was about to go down spiritually. That day Father heard my confession, anointed me with the Oil of the Sick for healing, and prayed prayers of deliverance over me. To say that it was intense is an understatement. As he prayed, he blessed me several times with the holy water and touched the crucifix to my head. I started bawling at some point and just kept crying and crying and crying. After he was done, I blew my nose and wiped my eyes. I wasn't sure if I felt different, but I knew that I was actually looking forward to spending some time with Jesus once Father and I parted ways.
We walked over to the church and he gave me the Eucharist and then left me to pray. I spent the next hour and a half praying, crying, praying some more, crying a lot more, and then I did something I hadn't done of my own volition in a long time -- I sang. It was just a simple Latin chant that I know and that was all I sang, but I sang. Don't get me wrong, I didn't feel great paroxysms of joy, but I sang. It was kind of a big deal. When I left, I felt emotionally lighter.
It didn't last though. That's the thing about experiencing spiritual attack or oppression. It's rarely over and vanquished in one go. I think that's because demons are kinda persistent. It's not much consolation at the time, especially if you've been suffering as long as I have, but you have to ignore that it sucks and be more persistent than the demons. So I went back the next week and the next and the next and the next. Before I knew it, Christmas was approaching and both my schedule and Father's got very busy. Then we went out of town for the two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year's to visit Gray's family.
After Christmas, I set up another meeting with Father, but we didn't resume at our weekly pace. It was back to every 2-ish weeks. Then February hit and my mood took a serious nosedive. We stepped up our meetings again and Father continued to pray both deliverance and other prayers over me, hear my confession, anoint me, and give me the Eucharist. I continued to spend an hour or so after meeting with him to pray and talk to Jesus. Somewhere toward the end of the month, something significant happened. I didn't see it at the time, but Father did. He had told me earlier in that meeting that he really believed that my depression had both psychological and spiritual causes. I halfheartedly agreed with him in the moment, but was still clinging to not wanting to see oppression where it was clearly present.
After that meeting, my mood improved and I found I had more energy emotionally and physically. I found that I was actually enjoying some things, laughing more often, being less grouchy with my children, and that I was looking forward to things in the future in a way I hadn't before. It took another week for me to make the connection between how I was feeling and the spiritual side of my depression.
It's been about three weeks since that happened and although I've had some bad days, my mood has been more or less at the same level. I'm not joyful or what I'd call happy, but this feels different. I told Gray today that I'm starting to feel more like myself. I've been wondering in the last couple of weeks if how I'm feeling means that I'm turning a corner with the depression. I've been very nervous about even thinking that because I've experienced such disappointment in the past when I thought things might be getting better, but today, I found a kind of peace about it. Whether or not this is a harbinger of good things to come, I don't know, but I'm accepting it for what it is for right now.
So why the long story? Because at some point in all this mess, I realized in a very palpable way that I was definitely being oppressed and that motivated me to put my trust ever more firmly in the Lord. In some ways, I think my insistence on not believing that it was oppression protected me in a way. I needed to find my way back to God, to have some healing take place in that relationship, to let go of a lot of the anger before I could be in a place where I could call my God my stronghold and actually believe that He wouldn't forsake me in my time of trouble.
The other thing that I realized as I read this verse is that despite my anger, despite how far from Him I ran, I was still looking back over my shoulder at Him and trusting Him on a certain level. My stronghold was in Him all the time, but I just didn't know it. That obedience and that desire to have my children see some better example about faith in me, that was my trusting in Him to not abandon me (even though I felt abandoned). The reality is that He didn't and He won't and that is what I must cling to when all seems lost.
Until tomorrow....
Pax Christi!
