Hopefully I will be able to find a clip off of youtube that i like enough to put above this post. I have listened to quite a few of them today to find the right one but it's possible that it hasn't made the internet.
A year ago my mom was blessed enough to go see Chonda Pierce in concert with a few friends of hers. They had a wonderful time and when she heard that Chonda would be performing on Upper Marlboro this last weekend she immediately thought of us girls. She asked us if we would like to go and who would turn a night of laughter down? I left Sam with his daddy and we headed up the road to see the funny lady. And she was funny! Boy was she funny... this woman when I closed my eyes reminded me of Dolly Parton crossed with Ellen and then some. She is a smart southern lady with one heck of a sense of humor and I just know that God has used her to touch many many women throughout the years. The first two hours my jaw hurt so much just from smiling and laughing then came the last two hours... do the math that is 4 hours!!!! we were sitting in pews... my butt hurt and I thought that it was going to fall off or something. But the last bit was really nothing to joke about. I don't know how I feel about it or not. If I knew that it was going to be the way it was I might not have been so excited to come. It was a little preachy rather than funny and a few times I couldn't help but think to myself... "I'm not laughing... shouldn't we be laughing?" I think the thought crossed my mind because I was getting a little uncomfortable. Chonda is a funny lady who suffers from clinical depression. Apparently last year it was so bad that she had thoughts about taking her own life. That wasn't what her message was really about though. She had grown up in the church the daughter of a pastor and to be blunt she had a really screwed up childhood. She said at one point that she felt as if we were always trying "protect" the church from things. There are things that you just don't bring up n church, things that you just don't admit to. You never want to make the church look bad or give christians a bad name. The point was that the church is God's bride and He is big enough to "protect" the church if it needs it. She goes on to talk about her depression which finally led to her checking into a mental wellness hospital. She said she hated it and it was the best thing that could have ever happened to her. She talked about her experience with "group" how they called it "checking in" where they would sit in a circle and tell their story. And the person that was running it would thank them for their honesty and their authenticity and ask the next person to go on. And it helped. She also talked about medication and how some people don't believe in it and think that our faith is wavering if we should take the medicine that will help us feel better. I am not very apt at recapping but she was very moving.
I hate to admit this because I know that it will make me sound like a jerk, it will make me sound very cold and very ignorant but I'll admit it anyway. Before last night I had a very different outlook on depression. I had a very different outlook on people who claimed to be depressed or who took medication for what I thought was just a so called illness. I've never been much for medication of any kind... though that sort of ended when I had Sam... but even now I will wait out a lot of things before even taking a Tylenol. I admit that I haven't been there for friends that have been going through some bad stuff. Now if I could grasp what they were going through I was as "there" for them as I knew how to be. But when it came down to depression I just didn't get it. Somehow in my mind it just wasn't real. I thought that it was an excuse some of the time and sometimes I just thought that they weren't trying hard enough. I realize that this sounds horrible. It's not that I didn't believe that it existed I think I just didn't think that it was as big of a deal as it is much less an actual disease. I was talking to my mom about this last night and about how ignorant I have been. We talked about Chonda and how her nasty childhood probably didn't help her depression but I got to think about the people that i know. The people that I grew up with and where I do not know what goes on in everyones home I know that I grew up with some people who were pretty happy then and are going through a really rough time now. I can't imagine how bad it would be to be going through something like this and having no idea why... I mean it's one thing when you have a "reason" to feel crappy but what if you don't and you still feel depressed. I think that would have to make it worse. i can understand why it might be hard to take and hard to try to understand God.
Chonda's message is a light in the darkness. She is reassured that Christ loves her and that he is with her no matter how dark things get for her. It's an amazing gift that she has to relate to people. I pray that the rest of her tour goes well and that the people who really need to hear her words are just brought to the concert. Also I thank her for opening my eyes and I apologize to all the friends I have that I haven't been there for. There have been many.
