Lindsey Gendke

Eighteen weeks pregnant, settling into a new house in a still new (to me) state, mothering a twenty-month-old, and wondering what to say after so much blank space. I should say “incredibly blessed,” because I am. It just doesn’t roll off my tongue, or leap through my fingers, like I wish it would.

I guess it’s a good time to talk about this stage of life–my Melancholy Mom stage–unbecoming as it is on a Christian (and one who wrote a whole book about overcoming depression, nonetheless). I’ll write about it, because it is the foremost thing on my mind and heart in this season; it is the thing that follows me and torments me and troubles my marriage and drives me back to prayer, because it shows me my heart is not right with God.

I just read a post by fellow blogger and new mommy (of twins) Kate, and I felt chastened by how grateful she is for the whole motherhood experience. She waited years and years to get pregnant, suffered infertility and miscarriages, and finally was blessed with two healthy babies. And she is not taking one moment for granted. I feel like I take almost every moment for granted.

I complain a lot. I nag my husband a lot. I have to apologize for hurtful words a lot. I think many negative thoughts. I want a babysitter a lot. I have a lot of anger. On a daily basis.

What sense can I make of this? I need to make sense of it…for the sake of my marriage, for the sake of my babies, for the sake of my soul.

I stood before a crowd of about thirty people on Saturday night and gave a talk about how I overcame depression a few years ago mainly through prayer and reading and memorizing God’s Word–it was a powerful experience and well received–my first time publicly speaking for a crowd about my conversion experience–and then I came home and snapped again at my husband and struggled to rein in my negative thoughts and struggled not to be angry that I was so tired and I had little help and saw no end in sight to my exhaustion and unpacked boxes and, well, just everything. I knew that the message I had just “preached” was one I needed to attend to personally. God is the answer. I know he is. I know he will deliver me from this melancholy stage, this angry stage, as I submit to him. The trick is figuring out what submission looks like in this season.

God delivers us from our struggles (internal, if not external), when we seek him. I wholeheartedly believe that to be true. And I don’t feel like a fraud for giving that message to those thirty-something people on Saturday night, because I experienced it six years ago, when God delivered me from thoughts of self-harm and not wanting to live and not even wanting to try.

So what sense do I make of this stage–this Melancholy Mom stage–that looks so unChristian, and feels so sinful (because it is)? Well, it’s my next mountain. Depression and suffering–that was my first big mountain. And now melancholy, anger, and sin–this is my next mountain with God. And I’m just being honest about it, because if Christians ever think they are done with mountains (hypocrisy)–well, that might be the most unattractive thing about Christians.

I told my big brother, Kyle, who visited from his mission work in Thailand last week (and who lined me up to speak to that audience), that my first memoir was about coming face to face with the roots of my depression (and then overcoming it, praise God), and my second memoir will be about coming face to face with my sinfulness through motherhood. “Staying at home with a young child puts me face to face with my sinfulness every single day,” I told Kyle. Do you know what I’m talking about, readers? Every single day.

In an earlier stage of life, I was the victim, and I didn’t care that Jesus had died for my sins, because I wasn’t a sinner; I was the one who had been sinned against. So Jesus’ entry point into my heart wasn’t the fact that he had died for my sins, but that he had suffered as I had (read all about it in the book I co-wrote, The Hidden Half of the Gospel).

But now, I can’t blame anyone else for my anger, for my melancholy, for my stinkin’ thinkin.’ I’m just a sinner, and I admit it. I don’t want to die, kill myself, or give up the daily battle–as I once did. But I want to complain about it. And that’s my current mountain.

I don’t have a lot of time or energy to write about it right now, and maybe that’s for the best. But anger, melancholy, sin–that’s what I’m thinking about, praying about, and living right now. Another book is brewing, and more answers from my Creator, in this stage of life. One thing I am excited about in this stage is to see how this mountain ends, to see how God delivers me as I submit to him. And he will. Because God is into happy endings.