Yesterday, we left Cherry coming out of her depression, only to discover that getting well herself didn’t mean that everything around her had healed, especially her relationships with her children.In all personal relationships, I look at healing to come in the way of “Five Simple Steps.” And I put “simple” in there to be entirely silly. Because kid-to-momma relationships are anything but “simple,” of course.

Healing, in any arena, whether it is healing the person or between persons, deserves a biopsychosocial approach. What’s happening biologically? In Cherry’s case, she is getting well. Medically. Biologically. She is healing. Okay. So, she’s getting money back in her bank and she can now spend on those she loves, so to speak.

But her psychosocial self has been unwell too for some time. And just when you cast a broken bone, and it knits together, the important atrophied muscles don’t automatically jump to “Hup! Hup!” when you take the cast off. So, when coming out of a terrible depression like this, there are secondary losses, survivors of the trauma that is depression to an underbelly of the parent-child.

And spiritually, well, God never left Cherry, nor her children, who were, by the way, also grieving the loss of their father and the emotional disappearance of their mother. But Cherry hadn’t done the things that she used to do spiritually for a long time now. She hadn’t been praying like she used to. She wasn’t reading her Bible. And face to the wall, she wasn’t looking at Jesus at all.

You may be wondering when I’m going to get to the five steps to healthy relationships, and I will, but first I want to remind you about Elijah.

Elijah was a prophet in the ninth century BCE in the northern kingdom of Israel. During that time, Israel had abandoned God for the worship of Baal under the rule of King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.

Elijah had a great win for God one day at the showdown on Mount Carmel and was riding high. He, in humor, sarcasm, and challenge, got to participate in the humiliation of the Baal prophets when God openly chose his sacrifice. The Baal prophets got nothing and watched as God burnt up Elijah’s sacrifice, dried up all the water in the moat around it, and scorched the rocks. I don’t tell the story as well as 1 Kings chapter 18 does, so read it there. It’s really good.

You can imagine that Elijah was considered a pretty great prophet by then. Maybe he even thought of himself that way too. I don’t know, but I think he might have.

The worst is when you are riding so high, and then face-plant though, right? And shortly after this huge win, Jezebel says to Elijah, “I’m going to kill you, and kill you good within 24 hours!”

And what did Elijah do? He plummeted emotionally. One could say, “He swung.” And dropped into his own terrible anxious depression. He ran away from Jezebel then for a full day. He asks God to take his life and falls asleep. An angel awakens him and gives him food and water. Elijah eats and goes back to sleep. The angel awakens him a second time and feeds him again.

But the real question is, what did God do?

He stayed right beside Elijah. When Elijah stopped running, God fed him and let him sleep. He didn’t say, “Hey, Elijah! You dud! You just had that win in your hand! What are you doing running away!?”

No. God didn’t say anything about Elijah freaking out. He stayed with him. He followed him. He supported him with basic needs stuff that no one else was able to offer.

And then when Elijah awoke, did Elijah say thank you? No. He did not. He got back to his business of running away. He ran and he ran without as much class or dignity as Forrest Gump. Forty days of running, and he surfaced in the story in a cave at Mount Horeb.

What did God do? God speaks to Elijah. He nurtures him some more and reveals Himself. Elijah came to see that God was with him not because of Elijah’s performance, but because that is who God is.

He loved Elijah, good behavior or bad behavior. Good emotions or bad emotions. God was His constant self. Who loved without transaction.

Elijah had done some damage to God’s reputation by running away. (I’m inferring here…) He’d misrepresented God’s character to the Israelites and acted like Jezebel had more power than God did. And rather than act out in the power He had to set the record straight, God quietly stayed while Elijah needed him, and God understood.

So I looked at Cherry and thought about God who stayed with her, not because of her good behavior, but because God loved her without transaction. Here she was like Elijah, surfacing from a depression, and God was still with her.

“How can I fix this?” Cherry said.

I felt the shame curl around her like sinister music. Cherry wanted to say that her kids didn’t understand. That she had good reason. That she was victimized by the universe itself in taking her husband. And she was holding on to her rightness while bemoaning her condition.

She did make allowance for her children’s distance on one hand, saying they, of course, were going through it, suffering, grieving, had been abandoned by her. But also there was that hand behind her hip. It gripped the reasons.

Cherry, in any relationship, both sides are always subjectively right. Because their truth and reality is defined by the perceptions of their own mind.

“How can I fix this?”

Tomorrow we’ll start in on our five points to healing relationships. But for today, remember that God attended to Elijah’s physical, emotional, and spiritual needs before addressing his vocational responsibilities.

Our self-care tip is to see who’s staying with you, not because you deserve it or for anything you give in return. He stays because He loves you so much!

Question: Have you ever not been able to do what you knew you were supposed to do because you were too depressed or anxious? Please tell us your story.

Keep on!