Take Your Time

Michelle is a young lady, a holy soul, who is now keeping the seven Noahide laws. Michelle was raised as a Catholic, but she got to a point where she knew she couldn’t do it anymore, so she became a Noahide. There are no other Noahides in her community, so since she’s made the switch, she’s been quite isolated and alone, with no-one to really talk to who understands her, and where’s she’s coming from.

She’s read all of the emuna books, she’s listening to the emuna CDs, and she has a strong belief in the Creator of the world. But Michelle is suffering from a big problem: she has bouts of severe cyclical depression. For six months of the year, Michelle can function perfectly well, work, raise her kids or keep her home. Then for the next six months, she’s depressed and crying all the time, and her family has to take care of her.

Michelle has been taking psychiatric medications for years, to try and stay out of her severely depressive cycles, and they’ve been helping her. But now, she’s made a decision that she doesn’t want to take the meds anymore; she wants to stay depression-free using the power of emuna alone.

Michelle has been doing personal prayer for a year, but she’s still just starting out. When you’re going against a chronic psychiatric illness that you’ve had for the last 20 years, it’s usually going to take more spiritual stamina than you can build up even during a year of solid personal prayer.

Michelle contacted me, guilt-ridden, because she knew that “people with real emuna” don’t take medicine – but she was starting to really struggle to stay out of depression without her medication. I told her to give herself a break; she’s got kids, she’s only been doing personal prayer for a year; she has a big mountain to climb. G-d didn’t want her to go back to being severely depressed!

That didn’t mean that Michelle should tell herself that she’s got an incurable disease, and resign herself to being on meds for the rest of her life, or that the meds are the only solution to her problem. They aren’t. But it takes time for a person to build themselves up spiritually, by talking to G-d every day. If she continues to talk to G-d for an hour a day, I have no doubt that Michelle will get to a point where she can stop taking her medications, and not fall back into her depressions. But not now. Not yet.