Once
the goals I chased and the confidence I had to do things my way disappeared, I
invested in depression. I sold all my possessions and good things for an autumn
sweater of depression, holey, familiar. Once it’s on it didn’t come off. YES!!
My sweater and I watched film reels reliving my life so that I was the central
figure, what a different take on reality. After we cozied up, I found a
matching ratty old hat to enhance our mood. It was booze. I started wearing
this baseball hat night and days off. It stunk, was discolored, and got uglier
each day. This hat changed my head. I liked reeling under its bill. My
personality perked up wearing that autumn sweater and ratty hat. I became the
funniest person in the room, I could mock to myself for hours.
I caught on fire one morning, like
that sweater was made of kerosene. Really, I was hungover, asleep behind the
wheel of a cigarette. The cherry of my smoke burned my cross-stitched cuff.
Numb and hung over the flames didn’t wake me, the heat didn’t take me. “Jesus!”
the Spirit did wake me. I smelled my flesh fry; my sin peeled away. I escaped
through the flames only to find the prize of my life’s work in a pile of ashes.
He took my sweater in that fire. As I wept around the ashes, thumbing through
them I noticed I was not in pain. I was weeping but not in pain, just sorrow at
the empty-brokenness of me.
Without getting up, on my knees I prayed -like an
old jug hoping to be filled, I prayed. It was the blood of Jesus I asked for,
the forgiveness that runs through His veins. The cleansing flow took my
sweater, my sin and birthed me in His Holy Spirit; Presented me outside of time
in the heavenlies where I met my perfect heavenly Father running out to embrace
me. Many angels hollering “Praise the Lamb another one’s saved.”
I was hungover
the day Jesus revealed Himself to me. He met me in my autumn sweater and I
haven’t been depressed since. I was holding my ratty hat in my hands and He
asked me for it. This was the start of repentance, Christ in me. But I wasn’t
letting go of the hat, it was my feel of 2 years now.
