Depression isn’t a dragon
That overtly threatens
And awakens
Vanquishing knights
Inside ourselves.

Rather,
It is a silent enemy
That infiltrates
And becomes part of the landscape,
Assuming more and more prominence
Until takeover
Is accomplished.

To mount an insurrection
We must develop
A vigilant network
Of counter-spies
Snooping through the mundane,
Sniffing out each plot,
Shoring up
The sagging bulwarks
Of equanimity.

---

Sorry, I can’t help you with that.

I wrote this poem about the dragon of depression in 1992, shortly before we moved to Iowa. We’d had some rough financial times just after I’d recognized that this dragon still lived downstairs in my cellar and kept trying to burn down the door and come upstairs. I continued to keep him locked up, thinking that it would always live in my house. Finally, I realized that by thinking that way, I was giving a foothold to the devil and his minions by merely locking this dragon in the cellar. Now, the Holy Spirit gives me the discernment and the power/authority to kick him out of my house. He keeps trying to return, but he doesn’t live here anymore.

Meanwhile, others that I love deal with this same dragon and are developing their own ways of coping and kicking it out of their lives. In a conversation with a daughter about this in the kitchen, I remarked about a conversation I’d had. I told her someone had asked, “Is this all there is to life?”

Without her usual prompt, Alexa interrupted in her bland voice, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you with that.”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

Then I laughed for 15 minutes. It takes more than a computer. It takes consistent work, a willingness to change your thinking and habits, and the support of other people to defeat the dragon. To kick him out of the locked room in the basement, it takes God.