For most of my adult life I’ve had problems with the holidays. You know, Thanksgiving and Christmas, etc. Actually it started around Hallowe’en and continued through the middle of January. I would get horribly depressed, often to the point that I had a hard time getting out of bed, and it would be hard for me to blink and breathe.

Interestingly, however, in the last couple of years, God must have been healing me on the sly, so to speak, because all of a sudden I realized I wasn’t experiencing the usual horrible, soul-killing depression over the holidays like I always had.

What sweet relief! To know I won’t have to go through that yearly, terrible, mack-truck depression again fills me with joy and a deep, abiding peace. I can’t even describe how wonderful it feels to know I won’t have to go through that again! The only problem is, now God seems to have moved on to another set of issues.

Rats!

While I didn’t think I was completely done with healing, I thought at least He might give me a little respite before He started in on the next issue.

Not so! Silly me for thinking that! Ever onward with God!

What I’m experiencing now is the same kind of depression, only not to the same degree, around Mother’s and Father’s Day. When each of these celebrations comes around I start feeling all jumbled up and fragmented inside, like I did when I was multiple. I’m not losing time or anything like that. I think more than anything I’m just feeling sad.

Everytime I hear some DJ or radio commentator or news journalist talk about how wonderful and amazing fathers are, or how important and special mothers are, I want to yell at them that they don’t know what they’re talking about. And then I feel horribly depressed and sad for hours afterward.

In the middle of all this Mother’s and Father’s Day folderol I found a verse from Proverbs in an email from RZIM,

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother. ~ Proverbs 1:7-8, DRA.

DRA is the Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition of the Bible, for anyone who wants to know.

I read that passage and thought, this is what I was supposed to get from my parents, but didn’t.

For whatever reason, I don’t feel jealous of other people’s happy childhoods. I just feel sad because of what I missed out on, sad and lonely. It’s probably the only time I’ve ever felt lonely, because I like being alone most of the time. When I was a kid the only time I was safe was when I was alone.

My mom used to say that the best way to punish my sister was to isolate her, and the best way to punish me was to spank me. She knew she couldn’t isolate me, because if she did I would actually welcome it, and then go off and read a book for hours on end.

It was during that period that I became a voracious reader. I could read a book and get lost in the story, thus escaping the chaos and confusion of whatever was going on in my family. It still works for me to this day. Reading is the most relaxing thing I do, except for petting Lily, my cat.

I would make a great hermit, because I don’t feel alone, even when there’s no one around. I can feel God’s presence with me all the time. Please don’t think that makes me a spiritual person or anything like that. I think it’s a gift God gave me to help me during the difficult times of my childhood. At the time I didn’t know it was God, and it wasn’t until just the last five years or so that I’ve realized that He was there all along.

I am SOOO GRATEFUL to know that God has been sustaining me throughout my life! I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God is faithful and trustworthy, and that He will never, ever leave me nor forsake me. I know this because His Word promises He won’t, but I also know it because I have the proof from my childhood. He sustained me and kept me alive throughout, regardless of how bad it got. He saved my life a number of times when I would have died if He hadn’t been there.

So regardless of the fact that I didn’t have parents who cared about me, I still had God, and I think this is a season of healing that I’m going through, where I may feel depressed around Mother’s and Father’s Day, and whenever I think about issues surrounding mothers and/or fathers, as I did around Thanksgiving and Christmas for many years. Thank God I don’t experience what I used to feel around those holidays anymore, so hopefully this Mother’s-and-Father’s-Day season won’t last very long.

God is SOOO GOOD!!!