The Lost Lodestone: Find Your Way Through Depression

Do you feel you’ve lost your “lodestone” and the darkness of depression removes all hope?
My story on finding my way back to True North.

Do you lost your lodestone and can’t find your way?

Sometimes, life is a misty valley of dripping, mossy branches and slick, sharp rocks.

You crash and stumble, gathering blood and bruises, until finally, you huddle down in a heap of shivering, quivering fear.

Too afraid to go on.

Too lost to have a goal.

Tons of regrets weighing you down.

The Emperor’s Lodestone.

Back in ancient times, like 2700 BC, a nasty rebel with his little renegade band kept giving their ruler trouble.  Like a gnat, he kept nagging away.  The ruler always managed to chase the rebels into a certain foggy valley, where they would crash and burn, every single time.

The little band had no lodestone, and the emperor did.

The king knew exactly how to master the mists and fogs.  He always carried his “magic” rock, hanging on a rope, that always pointed the right way.

His lodestone gave him the victory over his enemy time after time.

A Lodestone is not magic.

Lodestone is a piece of magnetite or other naturally magnetized mineral. They are naturally occurring magnets, that attract pieces of iron.  Only a small amount of the magnetite on Earth is found magnetized as lodestone. Recent research has found that only a variety of magnetite with a particular crystalline structure, a mixture of magnetite and maghemite, has sufficient coercivity to remain magnetized and thus be a permanent magnet.

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That’s the geology behind lodestone.  It took years before scientists invented a workable compass.

Sailors in Europe may have been using crude magnetic compasses… as early as 1000 A.D. A 13th-century writer… wrote “when in cloudy weather they can no longer profit by the light of the sun, or when the world is wrapped up in darkness of the shades of night and they are ignorant to what point of the compass their ship’s course is directed, they touch the magnet with a needle, which is whirled round in a circle until, when its motion ceases, its point looks direct to north.”

Source

A Lost Lodestone: Sinking Into Depression

If you’ve ever struggled with depression, you know what I mean when I say it feels like you’ve lost your lodestone.

Oh, the goals of your life are still there. You have your job.  You have your family. Life’s responsibilities haven’t changed. But you are devoid of hope and fail at even the small things of life. Your energy level is zero. The needle is spinning and it never stops.  You can’t sleep or eat like usual, so your health gets compromised. You literally feel as if you’re stumbling in circles in a God-forsaken, foggy valley with no way out.

When I lost my Lodestone and my hope.

I still don’t like to talk about this point in my life. It happened over thirty years ago, but the anguish of that nightmare time still gives me goosebumps.

Life was supposed to be awesome. Newly married, I was deeply in love and standing by my man. This meant I moved to a new country, became part of a new family and a new Church group.

Which was all something I wanted to embrace.

Then, we got robbed.

Someone broke into our house and stole gifts my husband and I had given each other, and also gifts we received at our wedding.

Ultimately, this was the straw that broke me.

My new husband was at a loss when he’d come home and find me hunkered into the sofa, sobbing and soul-less.

Then my body rebelled and I felt excruciating pain.  I couldn’t turn my head left or right.  My whole body hurt. I went to a chiropractor.  He asked if our marriage was okay.

What??  How dare you!!  We’re newly married and very in love, thank you very much!!

I looked at him, back in thought, then asked him, “Could this happen when your house gets broken into and you feel violated and vulnerable?”

The doctor kindly agreed that it likely was that.

Empathy gave me hope and power in the midst of depression.

I hadn’t been able to admit how deeply hopeless I felt.  I didn’t get it that events could affect a person’s physical health. So when I was able to admit how deeply hurt I was, and get it all out there, I could begin to sort through the fog. The doctor gave me strength simply by showing support to the reason for the fog.

And as I began to heal, I saw my Compass was still there.  I had felt as if the Lodestone was gone but I found He was there all the time.

While I was so weak and undone, I couldn’t feel Him.  But as strength returned, I again saw how much God guided and cared for me all through that grinding journey.

How to find your way through depression and regain hope.

When you feel deeply depressed and without hope, do not believe the inner doubts and fears that yell at you: God went away, vanished, chose to take Himself out of your picture.

Even if you turn your bitter back on God, and accuse Him of sending hard things, He is still there.

He is in the shadows… holding the needle to the lodestone, waiting for you to still, until once again you can see True North.

When your strength returns you get just how much God did for you down there in the fog.  If you need meds to get your strength back, get some.  Being depressed too long can become a chemical imbalance and thus a physical illness.  The sooner you get help, the quicker you can heal.