My "Audacity of Hope"

So I've officially entered my annual depression cycle.  I think yesterday marked it's arrival for certain.  I've been irritable with my boss the past two days, and last night going home Allison and I were talking cheerfully when it suddenly turned insidious ... and it was certainly my fault. 

Like um-teen million of other Americans, I generally get depressed through the holiday season (even though this is my favorite time of year!).  I guess there's something about cold weather that makes partially-healed wounds sore all over again.  I find myself having to resist anew feelings of emotional pain -- from both my childhood and adulthood, from dreams that never materialized into anything other than wisps of imagination, from unrealized expectations that have been crushed beneath the unrelenting hammer of reality.  And I ask myself, "Why do I continue to re-live these things?"  Paul talks in Philippians about how he is "forgetting what is behind and straining forward" toward the prize of being like Christ.  I "strain forward" so much I do it to a fault; but still I cannot forget the past.

And the reason is because I cannot forgive.  I think C.S. Lewis spoke incisively when he wrote that the most difficult aspect of following Jesus is this whole business of forgiveness.  I'm not sure that any of us do it very well; but I cling to grudges as if they were a security blanket.  I don't understand why being angry, critical and unforgiving feels connected to solace, when in truth it is exactly the opposite.  The path to joy, peace, and comfort is found in letting go of my perceived "rights."  I want to forgive; I really do!  Yet, as Paul intimates in Romans 7, there is something in my members that stubbornly holds on, demanding to have the flesh satiated, the ego massaged,  and  self worshipped.

A couple years ago, as I felt the annual depression coming over me, I decided to place my focus on being thankful, instead of being critical.  And while it didn't really make the depression cycle any less intense or shorten its duration, I think I felt Christ's presence through the valley.  I guess the lesson this year is forgiveness.  I don't know who I need to forgive, but perhaps the Holy Spirit, in His ever-present grace, will show me and will accomplish the work of forgiveness in my heart.  And I have hope that yet again I will know Christ's presence this season in even further depth and power.