Depression Compounded by Culture

This morning my small women's Bible study came here for our Beth Moore study. This weeks lesson was on goodness, and I don't remember hearing this particular tape last year. She had some wonderful points in her session, but the things that stood out to me most were the ideas that the increasing incidence of depression in our generation seems to be a direct result of our self-absorbed culture and that the practice of goodness, or acts of benevolence, can counteract that spiral into depression. It made a lot of sense to me.

T and I have had many conversations about how these days it seems like every woman I know has at some point either needed antidepressants or considered asking for them. Depression seems to plague our generation and I'm afraid we are passing it along to our children in record breaking numbers!! Why is this? Did depression exist like this when we were growing up? According to my mother it did not. But consider these things. When I was growing up, moms stayed home. I know about three moms in my neighborhood with kids in school who stay home. And of those moms who stay home, their days are filled with activity!! Going to the gym, taking kids to gymnastics, the library, ballet, out to lunch, the zoo, etc. It's rare that we are all home on the same day at the same time. When I was growing up, it just wasn't like that! Moms could call the other moms during the day, have real conversations with them, lay out in the sun together while we all ran around in the sprinklers, or had tea parties or just played together! Some like Utopia, but I guess not to our generation of moms!

Consider this: one point that Beth made was that we live in a generation of wealth, prosperity, where everyone has their own stuff. We grew up in a generation of sharing - bedrooms, clothes, toys, and any new things were age appropriate. Do we teach our children to give and share or do they have to have their own stuff, do we perpetuate the "mine" generation? This Christmas, T and I had to decide what to give the girls for birthdays, Christmas and also from his parents. We tried something new, mostly because I remembered as a child getting gifts that were for all the kids. We bought them the Leapfrog Explorer's Globe, and they LOVE to play it together. It's a challenge and a reminder to me to be deliberate about making my girls share things. They don't always need their own.

Our generation is relationally challenged, probably by the advent of cable TV and the internet. We feel "connected" to the world by these things, but it does not require anything from us. We are not "pouring ourselves out" for anything or anyone, and that's what God had intended for us. He blessed us with all His good creation so that we could glorify Him with it. Are we answering that call?

The last point that struck me from Beth's lesson was that recovery, while it is necessary, is not an end. It should be the beginning of our outpouring of ourselves. In AA, once you have made it through the program they require you to invest in someone else's recovery. It is this act of goodness that brings us out of our self-absorption. If you don't believe it, maybe you should try it!