Freedom From Depression In Less Than A Month: One Christian's Transformation Through The Power Of God

Freedom From Depression In Less Than A Month

One Christian’s transformation through the power of God

By David P. Dowling

Copyright 2013 David P. Dowling

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

All scriptures used are from the New International Version unless specified differently.

Credit for design and use of cover photo goes to: Gerd Altmann at http://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2013/05/11/08/28/person-110305_150.jpg

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Acknowledgements

Above all else if would like to thank and dedicate this book to my wife Gail and my children, Sarah, Jeremiah, Joshua and Caleb for all their support and love through my sickness both mentally and recently physically. I would also like to thank my immediate family and my church family for all their encouragement, and especially the Lord God Almighty the rescuer of my soul.

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - Hope From Who We Are

My Story

Getting Stronger

Looking Back

My Journey Downward

The Beginning Of The End

Not The Case

Trapped

Chapter 2 - The Calling

Summer Institute

A Glimmer Of Hope

The Battle Continues

Let’s Talk It Out

Coming Home

Chapter 3 - Bringing The Blur Into Focus

Frustration

Rage

Revenge

Depression

Chapter 4 - Finding The Root

The Root

The Long And Short Of It

Photographs Of The Mind

Exposing The Hurt

Chapter 5 - Kicking Off The Bottom Of The Pool

The Things You Did At First

The Tunnel Of Love

Chapter 6 - Almost There

Surrender

The Event

God Was There

Chapter 7 - The Forgotten Art Of Forgiveness

Forgiveness Is For You

The Bank Robbery

Refreshment

Chapter 8 - Finalizing Your Forgiveness

The Letter

The Elder Meeting

Finally Final

Making Contact

Chapter 9 - Celebrating Your Recovery

Trophies

Party Time

Not To Worry

Chapter 10 - Establishing Your Beachhead

God’s Success

The Boardwalk Dollar

Choose Life

Building A Filter

The Checklist

Act Or React

Shrink Your Box

Forgive

Prayer

Committing

Bedroom Shadows

Chapter 11 - Reaching Out To Others

I Could See It

Keep Your Eyes Open

Identify With Them

Gone Fishin

Listen

Don’t Let Them Go

Final Thoughts

Other Writing By The Author

About The Author

INTRODUCTION

This book is a story about my journey through and out of depression. The journey lasted over two years, but the recovery took less than a month once I discovered God’s plan of healing for my life. It took me coming to rock bottom to find it, and now my desire is to share that hope and plan with you, so that you might find the freedom from your own depression as well.

Let me start off with a disclosure to this book right from the beginning. Although I have seen the plan that God led me to follow work for myself and many others as well, I feel I need you to know I’m no quick fix depression guru, nor am I a licensed counselor. Although I was credentialed in ministry, I do not claim to have any training specifically for counseling or any medical degree, or practice medicine or offer any medical advice.

Although I believe God can heal anyone, this book is not designed to be a cure all for any disease or sickness either physically, emotionally, or mentally. Its design is to allow you to follow my real journey out of depression, and to offer you the steps that I took as I followed God’s plan.

Even though I have seen a good many people (some of whose stories you will read about in this book) find healing by following God’s plan laid out in the chapters to follow, everyone is different and I cannot or nor will I guarantee anyone’s success in finding freedom from depression. This is a book of my story and other successes as well. I know firsthand that depression is a horrible sickness that requires a great deal of energy to deal with and to become free from. Each person’s success or failure in beating it is dependant not only on their own efforts, but also their motivation, as well as a host of other things beyond my control or the scope of this book.

With that said, I offer to you my story, a timeline of events as best I remember them happening. May the depression you struggle with either in yourself or a loved one be replaced with the joy of driving it out of your life forever. I offer the story of my success as a sign to never give up. I believe there is hope right around the next corner when it comes to depression, only it is hard to see because of the darkness in our mind. But I am living proof that God is still performing miracles and still cares about and deeply loves His children.

May this book renew your hope in God and your resolve to free yourself from depression once and for all. There is light at the end of the tunnel, my hope is that this book might help you find it.

CHAPTER 1

HOPE FROM WHO WE ARE

Hope! It is a small word with such big worth. So much so that people whether lost at sea, facing divorce or struggling through the diagnosis of cancer all look for it. The fact that you are reading this book right now also makes you one of the many seeking its ability to change the bleakest of circumstances into the brightest day. Maybe you’re reading this book to learn its truths, truths that you hope to offer a friend or family member battling with the beast within, the beast of depression. Maybe those truths you seek are not for them, but for you. Either way hope wants to greet you with the longing of its love and offer you the freedom that comes from embracing it. In your mind right now hope may be only a shadow of the past, reserved only for the healthy. Hope may as well be a million miles off in space with no way to bring it back. Yet hope is still calling your name, it has called you to read this book, to give it one last chance before you give up on it altogether, and it is that one last chance at the point of desperation that can give hope the opportunity to not only make all the difference, but to make you whole again.

It may be that right about now you are saying to yourself How can he proclaim to others so lost and hurting that there is hope when they feel so hopeless? Well, let me start by saying that I once was like the many fighting the beast within. Day after day I lost valuable ground with the beast until it took me to a place where I no longer wanted to go, and to a point where I no longer wanted to live. My marriage was on the rocks, I isolated my children and friends from myself by driving them away. I would spend hours laying on my bed in the afternoon crying, only to face a darker day in the morning. Hope was a million miles away in my mind. Yet hope was right next to me, but because of my pain and my hurt which ran so deep I was unable to see it, let alone know how to make it part of my life.

I, like so many, was so confused. How could someone like me, a Christian, someone who believed, followed and had given my heart to Jesus Christ be so lost? I might have been able to understand it if I were just pretending to be a Christian. Someone that was playing the plastic Jesus game, but in my heart I really was trying to honor, serve, and love the God who I knew loved me and sacrificed so much for me. But where was He? Where was God in all my hurt and confusion? WHERE WAS HE?

I felt so alone. Nobody could understand my pain. I didn’t even understand it myself. All I knew was that I was no longer the man I once was, strong, confident, sure of who I was and who God was. In just a short amount of time, a few months, my comfort zone, which was normally the size of Cleveland, had now been reduced to the size of thimble. I was lost, but how I got here or how or if I would ever get back out remained a dark mystery to me. I brought pain with me wherever I went. It flowed out of my being the same way joy once did. For those who lived with me it was like walking on eggshells wondering when the next one that broke would send me into a fit of rage, or have me shut down closing the door to everyone around me.

Although I could not see hope back then, I cannot only see it now, but embrace it as well! In that lost darkness there is little that is recognizable. But nonetheless hope was still there, and looking back I also now know that hope traveled every dark day, caught every fallen tear, and understood when nobody else could.

Standing now on the rim of the deepest canyon that almost swallowed me, the pit of mire that almost consumed me I have finally come face to face with hope and His name is Jesus Christ. Not the Jesus I thought I knew, but the real Jesus the one I now call HOPE!

My struggle with the horrid beast of depression raged within me for two and a half years. It broke my strong will like a toothpick and crushed me like and aluminum soda can under the weight of a giant. Yet when I reached the place that was my lowest, the spot where I could go no deeper I cried out to God! The God that I had deserted, the God I left behind, the God I had forsaken, the God who I was angry with for allowing this to happen to me, but who had still not forsaken me. I cried out to Him and said God I can’t do this one more day. I begged Him to help me, to somehow rescue me! Little did I know that by the end of the next two weeks God would somehow, someway break through the chains that bound me and restore me to the person who I once was only with a new resolve, and miraculously he did it without continued counseling, and without medication.

A true miracle took place in my life and my being, but since the time of my healing I’ve seen this miracle performed time and time again in the lives of others as they were freed from the beast. A miracle I believe is available to those facing the beast of depression, especially those that call themselves Christians. My healing is why I take the time to write this book. To proclaim to you that there is hope, His name is Jesus Christ and he is right around the corner.

If you are like me you might be tempted to skip ahead to the back section of this book looking for the answer to beating the beast within. Unfortunately there is more than just one component to finding true healing and being whole again. You reach a state of depression through a process and therefore need to beat it through the same. I unlike others that talk about depression cannot only sense your desperation, but also can honestly say I know what you are feeling. But I would strongly encourage you to follow my journey step by step through the course of this book, that you might have a staircase before you with no steps missing, putting you and your steps up from the pit on sure footing. So read on!

MY STORY

I was born in 1959 and raised in Staten Island; New York. I grew up with two older brothers Larry who is seventeen years, and Ed who is fourteen years older than I am. So I was not only the baby of the family, but pretty much an only child as my brothers were off either working or going to school while I was still little.

In many ways I would say my family was like most families in America at that time, stable in some areas and fractured in others. Unlike today where we are finding more families fractured than stable. My mom and dad did their best in trying always to give to us the best they could. I remember my dad taking days off to drive me to the mountains to go skiing all day, or taking me fishing. Although neither of these things were his thing to do, he would still take me and read a book or newspaper while I got to do something I loved. On the same token I was also close to my mom. Being my dad worked many evening she would many times take me out to the Chinese restaurant (which I really enjoyed) for a special night out together.

I remember Sunday mornings when my parents would let me know that it was time to go to church. The only thing was they would be staying home in bed while I walked the 7 or so blocks to the Catholic Church in our town. When I returned I was usually greeted by a breakfast of hard rolls and butter and my Sunday morning TV shows like Flash Gordon and F troop.

When I was only a year old my folks bought acreage in