One week you wake up, crawl out of bed, pour a cup of coffee, enjoy it, and realize that you feel ok. You remember the follow-up you were supposed to do at work. Your grocery list is complete so you don’t have to run back five times for all the items you forgot. When the kids scream at each other about a Hotwheels car for the twenty-seventh time, you keep your voice down and help them work it out.

You think maybe, just maybe, you’ve reached another milestone in your recovery. Another level of darkness lies behind. Onward and upward. And all that jazz.

Then, one morning, the weight is back. The coffee doesn’t get your rear in gear. That familiar low-level panic settles into your gut again, making even the simple task of changing bedsheets appear insurmountable. You forget to sign school forms and return homework, the grocery cart must have a hole in it because you swear you grabbed an item but it never makes it home, and you join in the screaming when the kids light into each other. Or you cry. Or you hide under the covers, hoping they’ll just quit on their own.

And you realize it’s back. The same old same old. It isn’t behind you, after all.

Strung along.

Like the bad boyfriend who shapes up just enough and for just long enough to keep you hoping he’ll turn out to be Prince Charming after all.

I’m sick of the back and forth, up and down, on again off again.

But how does one break up with depression? I haven’t found a witness protection program that will allow me to run away and hide.

So I’m fighting it. I’m choosing to get out of bed anyway, pray anyway, sing along even when the words dissolve into tears.

And I’m screaming at the dark, “My God is faithful.”

I will choose it when the sun is shining. I will scream it in the dark. You are faithful. You are faithful. When you give and when you take away, even then still your name is faithful.. You are faithful. And with everything inside of me I am choosing to believe you are faithful.