Vindication

Vindication    vin·di·ca·tion   : to show that (someone or something that has been criticized or doubted) is correct, true, or reasonable

            Very early in 2003, my daughter in law suggested I read a talk given in the 2002 Women’s Conference. When I got the book, it was very exciting because Stephan Robinson, a respected Professor at BYU described what was happening to him. He was putting into words, what I couldn’t, .His words were describing what was happening to me.

                I found out what it was like to lie on the bottom looking up and to pray for deliverance only to feel the floor give way and to fall into a hell deeper and more awful than the one from which I prayed to be delivered. I know what it is like to be defeated by the task of calling the Bishop on the telephone, or to be unable to make it from the hall way back into my bedroom or out into the living room, and to pray to God for help and be told, “Not yet.” 

                Grief, despair, guilt, and depression can be caused by spiritual sin. But grief, despair, guilt, and depression can be caused physically by hormones and by body chemistry. If our depression is caused by sin, no amount of prayer or fasting or faith or scripture study will make it go away. 

                Depression , body-caused depression, not spirit-caused depression, is not the result of failed spiritual tests. It is the test.

                Your body can make you feel guilty! And your body can make you feel responsible for everything in the Universe! There is some comfort in understanding that. It doesn't make the pain go away, and it doesn't even really lessen it, but to know that this is chemistry and not rejection by God makes the pain much easier to bear.

                …the word long-suffering is given us in the gospel as a virtue. That's a horrible word. We are to cultivate the virtue of long-suffering. In other words, some of our limitations, some of our pains, some of our weaknesses will not be quickly removed from us. If we are given weaknesses and pains for our own sakes, then our lot is to accept them in humility and obedience . God gives us weaknesses to teach us to rely on his atonement, his grace, for the perfection that we seek.

                                                 Stephen E. Robinson,With Healing in his Wings

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            This was a wonderful moment.  At last, it just wasn’t me with these terrible feelings.  He explained that he was five years into the problem, with little hope for recovery. By this time, it was also nearly five years for me.