As a former captive of mental illness who's only just been set free... I hear you.
My condition was not confined to depression, but most definately included it in droves...
I didn't want to be healed myself, because I'm quite bent on not receiving things that I don't deserve. Unfortunately it just so happened that God loves me and willed me to be healed and I could do nothing to change that!
Finally surrendering to that was the smartest thing I have ever done...
Yes, getting better means more responsibilities... but you're only presenting half the truth there. It also means BETTER ABILITY TO COPE WITH RESPONSIBILITES. And greater ability to enjoy what comes with them!
The best analogy I can think of is that it's like growing up. Throughout life our responsibilties increase *constantly* - but we barely notice, because it's matched by the growth God blesses us with.
I'm eighteen and am surviving my first year of university. The work requires effort, but is not impossible, and it's rewarding and even downright *fun* at times. I'm very glad that I'm here.
When I was about fifteen, my sister started her uni and I heard about how much she had to do. I *freaked*. I developed a massive complex about how I was doomed to fail university because there was just no way I could handle all this stuff that sounded so scary.
I was half-right. If, at fifteen, I'd been plucked out of my country town, shifted eight hundred kilometres and dumped into my own living space for the first time, told to work from my own motivation, take notes in lectures where they don't stop to let you copy down the OHT, write essays, do pracs, and learn to navigate the city... I wouldn't have handled it. I'd probably have broken down and cried in the fetal position for a good three days, because I simply wasn't ready for it.
But what I'd failed to take into account was how much I was to grow in the meantime. All of those things really *were* expected of me and *did* happen; but I had three years of maturation and spiritual growth under my belt, and I handled it. At times I even love it!
In depression it's so easy to do the same thing. My vision was this: the goal I set for myself was at the other side of a deep chasm, so far away the distance seemed almost infinite. There was no way I could simply leap it, I would fall to my death. I was so focused on this that I failed utterly to realise was that there were steps all the way along, close enough together that I could hop along. Effort was still required... but it was *possible*! I just had to take it one step at a time, at a pace I could handle, and not hurl myself blindly into the chasm at speed....
And I'm doing much better than anybody expected of me, period! The mere fact that I'm not in a psychiatric hospital right now is already far, far more than was ever expected (or medically possible for that matter). And God has by no means stopped there - He is calling me to develop a ministry of prayer. It *will* require responsibility that I just plain couldn't handle when I was having my breakdown nine months ago... but He has strengthened me to enable me to handle it, and is continuing to do so!
I hope you will be encouraged... God really does set people free of this junk. Free to actually *live* again. Even when we can't even remember what living is! And when you've been freed, He will bless you richly and ive you an abundant life, and make you the salt and light of this Earth (which... freakiest thought of all... you actually are already in ways you don't recognise!).
Your brother in Christ,
Andrew
