“The past is your teacher. The present is your opportunity. The future is your reward.”
Because it is such a true statement, I thought this quote by Canadian author Matashona Dhliwayo made a perfect lead-in for this topic.
In Fresh Hope: Living well in Spite of a Mental Health Diagnosis, Roy Lessin states on page 13: “But God has promised to restore the things the enemy has stolen from our lives:…”
Indeed. As I’ve read and re-read Lessin’s insightful “God is a Restorer,” I have pondered the occasions when I felt defeated in life and in my career, all the disappointments, and the good things I missed when I was wallowing in self-pity or suffering from a lack of self-esteem.
While I was not diagnosed with a mental health diagnosis until I was unemployed in my early 40s, depression and anxiety have reared their ugly heads for most of my life. When you’re a boy and not good with your hands, not coordinated enough to help fix a car, throw a football very well, or hit a baseball (at all) my school-age years were extremely hurtful. With a low self-image, I had few friends, and much of the time I was lonely, sad, and with little direction as to what I could do well. There were no aptitude tests in those days. Life was trial and error, and I mostly failed.
When I read Mr. Lessin’s “all the years of lost joy, all the times of frustration and defeat, all the moments of regret” – wow, I thought. I can sure relate! The occasional regrets about the girls I never asked out, the joy I lost over my poor social life as I never went to school dances. I also recalled the frustration and defeat over my lack of motor skills, which left me on the sideline when classmates were picking sports teams, or teasing me when I couldn’t climb a rope in gym or build a tabletop wagon in woodworking class.
After high school, and as I also wrote about in my book, Climbing Out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness, things got even worse. I had no ambition and little idea what I wanted to do in life. Completely unmotivated or passionate about anything, it was no big surprise that I was frequently out of work. Finally, with the local economy in the toilet, and inspired by the smart friends I met late in my high school years and who were doing well in college, I finally enrolled in the area community college at age 23. This proved to be the first of many steps on the road to an improved mental state. I got good grades, met new friends, and I found out I was a good writer, which was often a prequisite for college success regardless of the major one chose. I had some self-esteem at last! Later on, not aware of my undiagnosed mental health challenges, I had a lot of work problems, but I thought they were mostly just about being in the wrong job, As I said, it was many years before I sought psychiatric help.
Even today, those of us who have been diagnosed and sought help, understand we cannot do anything about some of the pain and regrets in our past. But much more importantly, Fresh Hope members believe that God will restore the things stolen from our lives. Here are just a few of the examples I could name, some of which appear in my book.
I know that my mental state and thought life are clearly better than they were in the past. I worked as a newspaper reporter for ten years, and even then, I found meeting and talking to new people difficult. I did not understand at the time that feelings of isolation and problems forming relationships are common traits of depression. Today, as the more self-confident and positive person I had longed to be back then, I can yak like a magpie in public and chat with just about anybody.
Further, advancing from reporting to editing later on proved difficult, which hurt my already shaky self-confidence and left me wondering if I should give it up and stick to writing. I was even told as much in some poor work reviews. As the ultimate restorer, God had a better plan. As it usually unfolds when God is the teacher, it takes time and patience, but I learned years later that the Almighty was at work. In 2010, ten years after being told I wasn’t good at editing, I became the editor of a magazine for an international employee assistance association. After getting past the initial jitters one has in any new endeavor, I developed positive work relationships and became friends and acquaintances with people from around the world. I even traveled to the association’s conferences in major cities in the US such as Denver, San Diego, and others! It was another BIG boost in self-esteem!
Not every second chance needs to involve something big. While in college, I had an internship at a local TV station. I was never on the air, but that was ideal because I would have been terrified to be in front of a camera. In much more recent times, I had the opportunity to chat about my published books on podcasts and local TV shows. I was not even nervous, let alone scared! I wonder how many other positive opportunities that myself – and others with a diagnosis of depression or other mental health challenge – have missed out on because it was easier to crawl into a shell than to be talkative and engaging.
But even more important than my professional life was God’s role in redeeming and restoring my unhappy and lonely personal life, especially the years of lost joy when I was single and living in an apartment. As I explained in my book, with no social media, Internet or smart phones in those days, my personal “life” was about as interesting as watching wet paint dry on a wall. I was so lonely I’d often cry myself to sleep. And yet, four years later, while out of work (again), I was invited to a Halloween party where I met the young woman who would become my wife! In probably the best example of God’s restoration in my life, the roughly thirty years of lost joy when I was terribly lonely have been replaced by more than thirty years of happiness with my wife!
While looking back to appreciate how far we’ve come can be very positive, focusing too much on the past is not a good thing either. As Pastor Brad Hoefs states, “Every day that you’re ‘stuck’ in grief and remorse, you are missing one day of living.” And so, learn from your past, take advantage of the opportunities you have today, and recognize that tomorrow will be God’s reward for following His purpose for your life.
God is a Restorer “God’s purpose is not to destroy us but to restore us. The enemy is the destroyer, but God has promised to restore the things the enemy has stolen from our lives: all the years of lost joy, all the times of frustration and defeat, all the moments of regret, all the pains of lost opportunities, all the hurts of broken relationships. God is building His kingdom with you – a kingdom of joy, love, peace, righteousness, victory, redemption, and right relationships.” – Roy Lessin
“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten – the great locust and the young locust, the other locusts and the locust swarm – my great arm that I sent among you. You will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, Who has worked wonders for you. ..”
Joel 2:25-26
Mike Jacquart is the author of “Climbing Out of Darkness: A Personal Journey into Mental Wellness,” available online at https://www.amazon.com/Climbing-out-Darkness-Personal-Wellness/dp/B0BQ58KJH4 He dedicates this post to his late Fresh Hope co-facilitator, Mike Gutho. A retired magazine editor, Mike enjoys sharing his story of “pushing through” on blog posts, podcasts, and other presentations. For more information, contact him at michaeljacquart8@gmail.com.
Share this Post:
