Category Archives: despondancy
The Melancholy of Edvard Munch
December 2, 1863 – January 23, 1944, he was a Norwegian painter. He is regarded as a Symbolist and a forerunner of expressionism. He focused on themes of fear, anxiety, melancholy, and death. He did not believe in heaven, or other Christian themes or doctrines, as far as I know. My intention is to introduce you to [...]
Growth in the Troughs of Life
This post has been floating around in my head for almost two weeks now, and I had fully intended to post it here at Broken Believers last weekend, but just didn’t get it done. In retrospect, learning of the great trough our dear brother Bryan is going through, I realize that either I should have [...]
The Hopelessness of Mental Illness
I’ve seemed to have settled down into a blackness that defies all explanation. I’m dodging being hospitalized, and they can’t put me where I don’t want to go. Hopelessness swirls me around and I feel like a bug going down a drain. Thoughts of suicide are becoming more concrete and despair is becoming a frequent visitor. [...]
Untangle Me, Again
In recent weeks I’ve gone through a time of profound confusion. My grip on reality has been tenuous at best. I’ve had a struggle with a depersonalizing sense, I seem not to “see” reality as I used to. Everything seems increasingly odd, and disjointed. I see myself outside myself. I have had bouts with this [...]
Wrestling with Pythons: Clinical Depression
“I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word ‘madness’ to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. …’Madness’ is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its [...]
When Your Name Gets Changed
“So Naomi and Ruth went on until they came to the town of Bethlehem. When they entered Bethlehem, all the people became very excited. The women of the town said, “Is this really Naomi?” Naomi answered the people, “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very sad. When [...]
In Pursuit of Happyness
By CARONAE HOWELL, From the New York Times, dated July 20, 2009 I’m the kind of woman who spends entire days thinking of nothing but birds: woodcocks, goldfinches, kingfishers. I look for loons everywhere I go. Sometimes I find herons in Central Park and they are mysteries. There is one thing in this world that [...]
Washed and Waiting
In the past, some of you were like that, but you were washed clean. You were made holy, and you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. 1 Corinthians 6:11, NCV But we are hoping for something we do not have yet, and we [...]
The Scary Part of Depression
“Must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you All through my life? –sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing–oh, worst of things!–the same head?– And, when I feed myself, feeding you, too?” Edna St. Vincent Millay The critical issue we face is the reality of living with ourselves through an acute episode of depression or mania. I [...]