Many days I fall into unexpected deep depressions. They blind side me. During those times, I put a sheet over my head and pull my covers completely over my face and listen to songs like Whiter Shade of Pale and N.U.M.B.

It’s amazes me that I don’t suffocate. Unstoppable tears pour from my eyes for hours. It’s so dark in my mind. I neither have the will nor desire to climb out of those pits when I tumble into them.

My wish to escape my life becomes relentless but I fear taking my own life. Actually, that’s not true. Some inexplicable force prevents me from swallowing the pills stored in the bookcase within my hand’s reach. It frustrates me. I want release from my torments.

However, these spells break as suddenly as they occur. A gentle “voice” speaks to me each time. I hear “You are loved,” “I have not shelved you,” “Your life is not your own,” and so on.

I snap out of the mire strengthened and cleansed. It’s an odd way to convince me that my life has purpose. I get discouraged so easily until, I remember all the tortured victims in this cold world. This compels me to continue fighting to help bring an end to human trafficking.

It also causes me to thank the one who I call God for all the agony. I can once again say with conviction that I would not trade my life with anyone else’s.

None of us should feel that way. Regardless of what we experience – the good, bad, and ugly of life, there must be a reason. Sometimes I believe in order to identify and help others, we need to suffer.

I can’t say that I enjoy my pain, but I am grateful for it in an explainable way. And I am thankful for those dark times for in them I learn.

“Soldiers may be wounded in battle and sent to hospital. A hospital isn’t a shelf; it is a place of repair. And a soldier on service in the spiritual army is never off his battlefield. He is only removed to another part of the field when a wound interrupts what he meant to do, and sets him doing something else… No soldier on service is ever “laid aside”; he is only given another commission, sometimes just to suffer (we are not told yet the use of that), sometimes, when pain and weakness lessen a little, to fight among the unseen forces of the field. Never, never is he shelved as of no further use to his Beloved Captain.”                                              Amy Carmichael