For my friend, Teresa McCloy, who challenged me to just start writing and see what God wanted to do, and to Nick Pavlidis for cheering me on to start this book and helping me navigate the beginning steps of bringing this book to life.
To the Morgan James Publishing family for believing in this book and helping me navigate all the ins and outs of bringing this book to the world, especially David Hancock, Jim Howard, Bethany Marshall, and Bonnie Rauch.
For my editor, Aubrey Kosa, and your diligence to make sure I crossed all my Ts and dotted all my Is. Without you, this book would still be sitting in my computer with way too many run-on sentences and poor grammar. You are an amazing and talented woman.
And to all those who dare to fight the darkness of depression. This book is for you. Remember, you never travel alone.
Foreword
If you find yourself with this book in your hands, it is not a mistake; it is not happenstance. It is a divine intervention. The God of the universe sees your pain. He is pursuing you and seeking to make you whole.
“And the God of all grace … after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.” (1 Peter 5:10, NIV).
You have suffered a little while, and now God has determined it is the time for you to become strong, firm, and steadfast. Sadness is loss. Depression is hopelessness. To varying degrees, we all experience this. When you believe things are hopeless, your body and your brain take you into a depressive state to protect you from the continual pain of a shattered dream. God Himself is seeking to restore you and replace your shattered dream. Through Daring to Fight, Victoria will powerfully comfort you with the comfort she has received (2 Cor 1:4 NIV).
Many of you will never have the privilege of meeting Victoria. I remember meeting her when she was bruised and beaten, fighting through the confusion and haze that is depression. This is not a book written by a dry “professional” who personally has never been through this kind of fight. This is not a book written by a counselor who has never actually experienced depression. This is a book written by a fighter, a conqueror in Jesus who has personally fought and overcome depression and anxiety. If you take these pages seriously, you will find freedom. Fight the good fight. Be bold and courageous, just as Victoria was. Throw off everything that hinders, including the lie of hopelessness. Because hopelessness was abolished on the cross of Jesus Christ.
Lynn Schwenk, M.A., LPC
Restoration Counseling
CHAPTER 1
Victoria’s Story
I remember as if it was yesterday. Light streamed in through the living room windows, lighting the space inside our home. I could hear my husband quietly moving around: washing dishes, starting a load of laundry, feeding the dogs, and putting them out for the day. The children were already on the school bus, yet another task he had attended to earlier that morning. Patiently, quietly, he moved from one room to the next as I lied there on the couch. While I could see the light coming through the window and feel its warmth, the sun’s rays struggled to pierce the darkness that seemed to fill my world.
It had been three months of lying there on that couch, drifting in and out of sleep, struggling to push through the long hours of the day. Nights felt even longer. The days passed like a silent black and white film on repeat. Very little seemed to pierce the grayness of those hours. As I look back, I can so vividly see myself lying there, as if I were an outside observer, seeing my physical body from an outside space. For a brief moment, I feel sad for her. That shell of a woman I used to know. A woman who had taken on too much with too little margin. Whose heart longed to serve, but broke under the weight of it all.
It’s funny how depression comes sneaking in. Months prior to my time on the couch, I would have never imagined myself in such a place of hopelessness and despair. Living in a world gray and unfeeling. Looking back, my depression had been building for a long time. But just as an earthquake can hit without warning, so did the darkness.
Into the Darkness
It was early November, and I was painting a house. I often picked up side work to help make ends meet for our growing family of six, while my husband worked as a pastor along with a full-time job at a construction company forty-five minutes away.
I had been painting this house for weeks. First the front, than each side, followed by the back of the house. Finally, only one corner remained, accessed by a low shed roof that sloped towards the ground only feet below.
As I stood on that roof, rhythmically painting one board after another, I listened to the quiet of the woods that surrounded the low-slung country farmhouse. It was a house that I had come to intimately know from weeks of painting the same box. The birds called to each other, as if to declare that winter was not yet here with its icy grip. Yet, I was already feeling the chill of something bigger than winter deep inside.
The truth was, those days of painting gave me a lot of thinking time. The last ten years of life had taken their toll. The start of the deeper struggle was losing our business to bankruptcy during the 2009 housing crash. It was a blow that few saw coming, and we were unprepared for it like so many others. Just months before the crash we had we relocated our family to a beautiful mountainous town about forty-five minutes outside our hometown. We were answering what we had discerned as, along with our church leadership, a call to pastor a small church plant in that area. This pastoral call had come to us two years prior to the crash, when our business was thriving and supporting us well as a family. The original plan was to support ourselves with our business while planting this new church. It seemed that God was orchestrating the perfect plan for us to run our business and pursue this ministry call. But it was not to be. Instead, we started our first years of church planting on shaky ground as we tried to process the extreme loss of our business, altered relationships, and what felt like a darkened reputation in our previous community. Those were hard years, ones with a lot of questions from ourselves and from people who didn’t understand the magnitude of our loss. Their harsh criticism of my husband and the ongoing gossip about our failed business weighed heavy, even though my husband did his best to shield me from the cutting words of others. Now, like so many, we were looking for work in a hurting economy, struggling to rebuild a life in a new place, and, at times, questioning God in it all.
Besides the loss of our business, I was also trying to figure out my new role as a pastor’s wife, working to get a small business off the ground, finding my footing in a new community, and mothering our four little girls without the help of family, who had always been nearby. All the while, I was hoping and praying to build meaningful and healthy friendships with the women around me. Those first years in a new place were hard and full of firsts. There was so much to focus on and tackle, but I felt up to the task and wanted to do all of it—well.
On the Enneagram personality test, I fall squarely in line as a two. Twos are helpers by nature and, being an Enneagram two, my natural helper personality was fitting for all the roles I was trying to fill in that season. I didn’t know it then, but I’ve since come to find out that my helper personality, while it can be my superpower, can very much be my kryptonite. I grew up on a dairy farm in northern New Mexico. And, like any farm, there is always work to do. From an early age, my parents taught me the value of hard work. If there was something to be done, you did it until it was finished. And my little Enneagram-two self thrived on getting stuff done and helping others. My heart ate up the praise that came from doing and helping. I loved when my parents received compliments on my helping behavior. Oh how I would shine at that praise.
Fast-forward to my adult years, where hard work was still important, in particular for a pastor’s wife, fledgling business owner, and mom of four. There were always things to do, roles to fill, and people to serve. Honestly, my heart thrived in that place—until one day it didn’t.
Somewhere in all that “hard work” and “doing,” I forgot the most important