Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Foreword
Introduction
1 Over the edge
2 Learning to ride on a bumpy road
3 A hidden dip
4 Arriving at the precipice
5 Captive in rough terrain
6 Meeting Despair
7 ‘I’m a Christian – get me out of here!’
8 Sustenance in the wild
9 Risking escape
10 Stumbling with excess baggage
11 Moving on

Appendix 1: Supportive contacts
Appendix 2: Love-languages Grid

Postscript: Looking back from a different place

Introduction

Does God know our limits? Will he let us be tried beyond what we can bear, or will he provide a way out so we can endure our suffering? Even in my darkest moments, I never doubted that God was with me. Yet in some ways this made me feel worse! Why would he not rescue me when I knew he could?

When our ten-week-old daughter suffered a cardiac arrest, I instantly felt pushed beyond the edge, where I became lost and cut off by the fog of anxiety and severe post-natal depression. There I experienced deep, passionate emotions, which forced me to face questions I would rather have ignored. This book is about my struggle to leave that rough terrain behind while confronting deep spiritual issues.

Until my descent into depression, I had always been able to sort out my theological questions by listening to the teaching in my church services and through housegroup Bible study and personal reading. Struck down by a postviral illness many years ago, I was able to rely on God by ‘journaling’ my prayers and by sensing the presence of God in the absence of immediate theological answers. However, when I encountered acute anxiety and post-natal depression, all these things became inaccessible to me.

So how do you maintain your faith when you are suffering from an illness that removes all clarity of thought and demolishes any chance of feeling the hope of your faith, or sensing God? You hang on to what you know to be true, even though you do not see or feel it personally! This was what kept me trusting God and practising my faith throughout my anxiety and post-natal depression: my knowledge and experience of God before my illness. Thus, when the grim voice of Despair offered me the path of suicide, I knew God had not planned that route for me. Even though I could not see it, there had to be another way out. However, I needed sustenance to maintain that stance, something I found through medical help, family, friends and prayer, to mention but a few.

Through this book I long to pass on to you what I have discovered: not a formula for instant escape or a prayer guaranteed to get you out of your messy place, but rather my belief that ‘God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond that you can bear, but when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it’. The way out may seem totally obscured by the fog of your anxiety or depression, but nevertheless I believe it is there.

However, even after we have left our depression, the way forward may seem unrecognizable, overshadowed by darkness. Injuries from my wild place meant that I was unable to climb to all the lofty heights of my desires and so, initially, I struggled to walk along the path that was accessible to me. Again, I was visited by Despair, who tried to entice me onto his path of destruction. However, as I now look back from a different place, I am so glad that I did not follow him but kept travelling in pursuit of God.

It is my hope that through sharing my story you too will see that, no matter how bad you feel or how wild and messy your life is, all is not lost: God can bring new life out of rough places. Often I have asked him, ‘Why have you given me the opportunity to write my story? I am not a model Christian.’ To which he has replied, ‘Because your story shows that I remain faithful, even to my prickly, wounded people "beyond the edge".’

Hazel Rolston