Crucified Hearts

I began to write and then begin to move…

One thing I’ve learned in my studies: I’ve known more truth than I have been able to live, by quite a bit actually. Of course this raises the question that if you’re not able to live the truth do you really know it? For the kind of knowledge we’re talking about is a knowledge born of experience, an intimacy with truth that can only come through connection, not merely through observation.

I believe the only truth we can truly say we own as ours is the truth we live from day to day in the quiet moments of our life, and no one else is present to applaud or to condemn.

As you know by now the truth(s) that matter most to me are those about God and myself, about my relationship with him.

I say all this while still living in a state of depression. I remind you of that so that you can understand the context and my thinking.

I’m speaking to about my depression as a mental illness, including the chemical problems in my brain, as well as the faulty wiring of my thinking patterns. I am not ignorant of what’s happening but at times I feel quite helpless. I cried today after listening to two men talk about their own depressions in recent years. I didn’t know how much I needed to hear someone else acknowledge that only if you experience do you understand it. If you’ve never been depressed, I don’t mean feeling low, I mean being really depressed and anxious, then you really don’t understand, not through experience.

And because of that you need to be careful so you don’t make matters worse when you’re with someone who is depressed or when you think you’re trying to help them.

Knowledge doesn’t become wisdom until it’s been tested by experience, not only tested but proven.

The wisdom that comes through suffering is one of the most valuable things on earth.

We see this at the cross. Theologians of the cross see things as they are, said Luther. As much as our sufferings teach us something, if we are listening and willing, there is no greater teacher than the sufferings of Christ at Calvary… But only if we enter into his sufferings because we cannot let him go. We only know the truth of his suffering if we suffer with him, the wisdom of suffering that comes through a knowledge proven by experience with the cross. We cling to him because he clings to us. The bond between us is blood, blood from his body shed by our hands. We abide with him in life because we abide with him through blood. The Life is in the blood.

As He said, “Except you eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no life in you”.

So faith says…”…that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
— Philippians 3:10-11