Psalm 17

I call upon You, for You will answer me, O God; incline Your ear to me, hear my words. Wondrously show Your steadfast love, O Saviour of those who seek refuge from their adversaries at Your right hand. Guard me as the apple of the eye; hide me in the shadow of Your wings, from the wicked who despoil me, my deadly enemies who surround me. (verses 6-9)

This passage from Psalm 17 is really the heart of what it's all about. The subtitle that my devotional Bible has for this chapter says "Prayer for Deliverance from Persecutors." As I've mentioned before, I don't have anyone who is actively persecuting me among the human beings on this earth, but there are definitely supernatural forces at work which seek to actively persecute, oppress, and attack all Christians.

It can be a situation where one is tempted to sin. It could also be being tempted to turn away from God totally. It could be some kind of physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual affliction that causes the Christian to fall into despair or just makes it so that they are unable to do the work God has set for them to do. In very serious cases, when a person is already dealing with a non-spiritually caused physical or psychological illness, it could even cause death if the person loses hope and neglects caring for the illness. Satan loves to kick us when were already down.

I've definitely been through that with depression and PTSD. Fr. B told me a few weeks back that he believes that my depression has both psychological and spiritual causes that are at the root of why this episode has hung on for so long. I agree with him completely. Depression is something I've dealt with for 28 years on and off in episodes, but none of the episodes has even begun to approach the intensity, severity, and duration of this one. There have been a number of other things about this episode that have been markedly different from previous ones too and looking back on those moments and symptoms, I can see a spiritual element in them.

As I've mentioned before, there has been some healing going on in both the psychological and spiritual areas of this for me. Spiritually speaking, the very fact that I don't immediately want to throw my Bible across the room upon reading the passage from Psalm 17 quoted above is quite a bit of progress. Passages like that -- that is to say, ones that are imbued with such hopefulness -- have been something that I haven't been able to stomach reading, much less actually believing, for nearly three years.

I'll be honest, as much as I can read it now, I'm still struggling to truly believe that He will hide me under His wings and keep me as the apple of His eye. I want to believe that He does hear when I call on Him, but I'm not totally there yet. There's still a part of me that snorts inwardly with disbelief upon reading passages like that. I am still very much wounded and weak. That's where trust comes in though. I have to trust -- at least cognitively -- that what His word says is true.

I'll admit, I'm still a bit of a hard sell. It's a process that involves lots of tiny steps forward and quite a few backward. Right now, as much as I want to be moving forward in that, I find that I feel as though I'm moving backward a bit. Even if, for now, it's not the direction I want to be going, at least I'm moving and that's something.

Until next time....

Pax Christi!