THE BATTLE BEGINS

When I agreed to speak at a women's conference out West on the topic of contentment, I had no idea I'd be battling depression. If I'd known, I would've thought twice about committing.

Choosing a topic for a bunch of strangers is tricky business even without depression. It's even trickier when a coordinator wants me to announce my topic months before I'm ready to pick one. I've actually received publicity brochures in the mail detailing my talks long before I've written them. I'll read the descriptions and think, Hmm, I'd like to hear that.

I love connecting with women, but when I land at a retreat, I'm typically going in blind. I'll stand at the podium and look out over the sea of unfamiliar faces and think, I wonder what they're all retreating from. Would they tell me stories of cruddy jobs or cranky spouses? Would they tell me how tough it was just getting away for the weekend? Or would they tell me it's a great day, and they're ready to celebrate the good things in life, like caramel lattés and girlfriends?

What kids?

One thing I can count on, though, wherever I'm booked to speak, the moment a topic is chosen, I know I'm going to get worked over by it, just a bit. It's God's way of keeping me real and giving me something worthwhile to say to the strangers who are obviously not strangers to Him.

And it happens every time. If I'm speaking on the topic of contentment, I suddenly have none. If I'm speaking on discernment, I can't figure anything out. If I'm asked to address the power of self-control, I become the kitchen magnet that reads, "Lead me not into temptation, I can find it myself."

A few years ago, for instance, my kids were driving me crazy right around the time I was asked to speak at a moms' event at a large contemporary church. I sat at my computer trying to come up with some sort of outline that would inspire young moms, but all I could come up with was:

1. Don't have any more kids.

2. Quit while you're ahead.

3. Bigger kids, bigger problems.

(Let's close in prayer.)

Depression can show up very quickly, usually after a crisis. But for me, depression crept up almost imperceptibly, generously offering a front row seat to the world of discontentment. All the things that used to bring me pleasure suddenly offered none. I'm not even sure I knew what hope was until I lost it. Before then, life was full of possibilities.

Then one day, while he was home from college and grabbing milk from the fridge, my son suddenly stopped and looked at me and said, "Mom, you gotta get a grip."

That's when I realized I'd been crying for six months. Maybe I did have a problem.

This Could Be Trouble

Not that a person needs to be depressed to feel discontent. For me, though, depression and discontentment fit together beautifully. They bonded instantly. Depression became rocket fuel for my discontentment, exposing every unsatisfied inch of my life. Then, to make matters worse, guilt showed up. I knew I should be grateful. Clearly, I had more than some. But those thoughts didn't help. They only irritated me more.

It was all very unpleasant, but I will say this: going through the process taught me something very interesting about unhappy people. Like it or not, we can be extremely self-absorbed. Discontentment often signals an unhealthy preoccupation with one's self (although that preoccupation can be a good thing if it helps us recognize areas of our lives that need improvement).

After my depression lifted, I went through a kind of honeymoon period where nothing seemed to bother me. Life was good. I felt immune to problems. It was like the rush of new love — the kind I watched a boy have for my daughter right around that same time.

One evening, braving a particularly treacherous snowstorm, he appeared at our front door shivering from head to toe. The poor lovesick kid. He was in school full-time and worked lots of hours, but somehow, he was always at our house. I'm not sure when he slept. As he kicked off his shoes, I felt compelled to warn him that my daughter had been nursing a head cold. She was a walking petri dish. It wasn't pretty. She'd been carrying around a box of tissues with her all day … wandering from room to room, infecting every doorknob.

But the boy only smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I don't care." Then he bolted down to the TV room, leaping three steps at a time, where he found my daughter wrapped in a quilt and blowing her nose.

I stood there for a moment wondering what becomes of those delirious days of new love. After thirty years of marriage, when my husband or I catch a cold, we stack enough pillows between us to reach the ceiling. I'm not sure of the science behind it, but we figure if we can't stop the germs altogether, maybe we can disorient them.

When my depression ended, I became the emotional equivalent of a star-crossed newlywed — all sweetness and smiles. But eventually I sensed the honeymoon coming to an end. As life came back into focus, I found myself counting the cost of what I'd just been through.

Maybe I'd need to rethink this thing called contentment, even though I'd been speaking on it for years. Maybe I'd need to revisit the Bible verse I'd always wanted to believe: "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4 ESV).

What did that even mean?

I suddenly realized how weary I'd become of platitudes and promises that felt empty. I'd grown skeptical of altar calls, emotional conversions, and, yes, self-help books. Those things may work for some but never have for me.

I was finding emotions to be highly unreliable. When stretched to the limit, they can make us see things and feel things that aren't even real. In contrast, the faith I was discovering in Scripture was deeper than that, grittier, and meant for the long haul. It was levelheaded and bolstered by reliable standards, like cutting-edge research and Harvard studies.

I'd already moved past the gaping hole that atheism had created in me, along with the nagging suspicion that if God was there He probably didn't care. Still, I wanted to be clear about what I could expect from Him in terms of contentment. And what did He expect from me? Because even on our best days, when we're not facing divorce, job loss, or bankruptcy, life can still be tough.

Programmed for Problems

If we want to clear a path to a lasting contentment, figuring out why we struggle in the first place becomes really important. We need to see the obstacles before we can clear them. Sometimes the reasons are obvious, like searchlights in a black sky pointing out a potential shipwreck. Other times the reasons are subtle, slithering quietly into...