In the last two days, two people have asked me the same question: “On the worst day of your struggle, when you didn’t think you could go on one more second, what saved you? What pulled you through?”
“Faith,” I replied, with hesitation or time to consider all the tools in my recovery box.
Because I know, for absolute certain, that I would be dead without my faith.
I remember the day I issued God an ultimatum, the afternoon I sat in my car with a bag of drugs next to me, ready to ingest, my arms wrapped around the steering wheel, as if to take me to a magical place away from this world. I demanded that the Creator show me a sign that I was to hang onto life, or else I was out of there. And I meant business. That afternoon I was closest to taking my life more than any other moment.
I had just flunked out of the seven-week outpatient program at the hospital. They told me that they couldn’t help me anymore … that I was going to have to seek further treatment somewhere else. Running six miles a day wasn’t doing anything. Or therapy. Or gratitude lists. Or cognitive-behavioral work. Or a diet full of Omega 3 fatty acids. Or constant prayer and medication. Or support group meetings. Nothing had worked and every second was a fight to stay alive.
I got my sign that day. When I went to retrieve the mail, I found a letter from a woman named Rose, and inside was a medal of St. Therese that was a perfect match to the one I carried with me in my pocket ever since the depression set in.
I knew, at that moment, without a doubt, that God was with me. I have never been so sure in my life. And when my anxiety creeps up and my depression tells me I have no use in this world, I remember that afternoon, and I squeeze my medal.
Andrew Solomon writes in “The Noonday Demon”:
Religious belief is one of the primary ways that people accommodate depression. Religion provides answers to the unanswerable questions. It cannot usually pull people out of depression; indeed, even the most religious people find that their faith thins or vanishes during the depths of depression. It can, however, defend against the complaint, and it can help people to survive depressive episodes. It gives reasons to live.
Much religion allows us to see suffering as laudable. It grants us dignity and purpose in our helplessness. Many of the goals of cognitive and psychoanalytical therapy are accomplished by the systems of belief that underlie the world’s primary religions–the refocusing of energy outside the self, the discover of self-regard, the patience, the breath of understanding.
Faith is a great gift. It provides many of the advantages of intimacy without being contingent on the whim of a person, though God too is, of course, famous for his whims. There is a divinity that rough-hews our ends, shape them thought we will. Hope is a great prophylactic, and faith in its essence offers hope.
If anything keeps us alive, it is, indeed, hope. And faith can provide that hope.
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