Okay

My dad asked me last night how I was doing and for the first time in a long time, I heard myself say, “I’m doing fine. I’m really okay.” I never thought those words would come out of my mouth again. What was so strange was that I actually meant it. I actually feel good.

Bill mentioned in one of his sermons a few months back that medications for stress and depression were the number one medicines that doctors prescribe these days. He named about three anti-depressants and then drove the point home by saying (more or less) that all stressed people really need is the Bible. Ever since I heard that, I have doubted whether or not I truly need to be on medication and I even felt guilty for taking it. I’ve thought that if my faith was strong enough, I shouldn’t need it. But even I knew that my faith and walk with Christ wasn’t what it use to be. I was ignoring Him. But I also felt like I was in control enough to handle the situation. I shared these thoughts with my counselor last week and she quickly disagreed with me. She told me, first of all, that God created me just the way that I am; there is not a single person on this planet that has the same identical physical features that I do; nobody has the same genetic makeup that I do; no one has the same personality, habits or quirks that I do…at least not all these things in one body, but you know what I mean. So when a person experiences a loss (she keeps calling it this and I am so glad to be able to put a name with “it”), the chemical makeup in the brain changes. The medication helps ease the serotonin, and whatever else those chemicals are called, back to the levels they need to be in order for the physical body to function again. In other words, the whole depression thing is out of my control! God made me that way! And what’s even more intriguing is that He knew all of this was going to happen anyway! He knew about the chemical part because He made me. He knew that I would need help getting those chemicals in my brain back in line and He knew all about how the situation would unfold so that I could get the medicine I needed for those chemicals in my brain. I can honestly say, “Thank God for drugs!! (legal kind, of course!) Wow! I can’t tell you what a relief it was to finally have that guilt and worry off me! Looking back, I would like to think that what Bill actually meant my the statement he made was: 1) stressed/depressed people who don’t know Christ need to read the Bible and not try to cover up the situation with prescription drugs, 2) stressed/depressed people who aren’t walking with the Lord as they should need to read the Bible, and 3) stressed/depressed people who have really experienced something in their lives should seek help from a physician. Those explanations are a lot easier to swallow than my first impression of, “You shouldn’t need anti-depressants. The Bible is all you need.” I’ve been tempted to ask him myself, but I am too chicken to do it. That’s all I need is for my pastor to know I’m on drugs!

I tried to think of a story in the Bible when someone was sick and needed medicine. I thought about in the Old Testament, that most of the time when a person was healed, it reads, “God healed him” or God “opened her womb.” In the New Testament, most of the time, the sick people came to Jesus or a friend or family member brought the sick person to Him. I would like to think that the friends of long ago are the medicines we find today. They are the cure-all that helps us find the Great Physician.