This my first attempt at a blog, hope I don’t screw it up.  I used to be in an online support group for people with mental illness. The thing  that most impressed me was that people really got it. Ididn’t have to expain what a magor  depressive  disorder  was like, people got it. This was like “at last somebody  really does understands”  Even mental health proffessionals don’t really get it. I once was trying to tell my psychiatrist about how much pain I was in because of my depression. God bless him he said he had read about how the pain associated  with depression  is.  He in point of fact did not get it. It is such a relief to again be with a group of people knows within the marrow of their bones what  the crushing darkness of depression is like. When I was in college I found a paasage in Ephesians 2nd chapter that says “It is God himself  who has made us what we are and us new lives from Christ Jesus; and long ages ago he planned that we should spend these lives in helping others”. This the Living Bible version. I would never had caught this in thKingJames version. Two things jumped out at me, spend these lives(my life) in helping others and that God had long ages ago had done this. My personal mantra since that Epiphany was to spend my life in helping others. This was thrown way off course by my life and death struggles with depression. Fortunately now I am feeling much better and have much more thought as to how to really get back to trying to spend my life in helping others. After all Jesus spent his life on the cross for all of us, this spending of his life demands I what I have in helping others. I know the valley of the shadow of death that we often find ourselves in, I understand what I call the 800lb gorilla in the room that puts crushing pressure us to take our own lives. I once had a pastor tell me that suicide is not an option. I was quick to let him know that it was an option I faced every day. Within my experience the clergy of  christian denominations do not get it and that applying traditional christian platitudes do not help when we are deep in death struggle with depression. This particular pastor spoke of his depression of having the blues. He did not get where I was living with. To his credit he was holding a meeting to get people in his church aware of depressed people in the church and could be done to help them.  For me now my way of spending life in helping others is as aChristian offering an understanding ear and heart without the platitudes.