the seen and the unseen

Today I realized that the unseen realm is scary. There are 2 realities that go on and some people live in one and others live in both.
One the one hand, there is life. With jobs, cars riding down the streets, dinners in the oven, kids that need to go to school(or be homeschooled), groups that meet for Christ, groups that meet for homeschool, groups that meet for recovering folks, there is facebook and phone calls, and bustling life.
Then there is another reality, the one that some people can't see or understand. A friend checked him/her self into an institution today because the depression got so dark, all they could see was the gray. And I realized that we live on 2 realms. Yes, this person could have had all the normal life that goes on each day, but the unseen was too much to bear. I know that with me it is a lack of a chemical in my head that causes life to turn gray. I just went through something like that myself. At one point I told my husband that it was getting too much to bear and I might not be around much longer. Fortunately there is an ebb and flow to the unseen and the despair passed.
The unseen realm is "easy" for most Christians to talk about because we know that Christ is good and if He's in the unseen, then how can there be darkness? But it's just like this world, there is good and bad. It's so much harder to accept that there is a scary dark thing out there that we humans call 'depression.' I know that some don't accept this. I met people in the first church I ever went to that accepted the good heavenly realms with Christ, but not the darkness that people go through too.
Today I am going to have a hard time homeschooling, exercising, cooking, baking, and seeing Sisters because I know that while all this goes on, there is someone I care about sitting in a hospital fighting the darkness. I don't understand why some people have to fight off the gray bland-ness of depression, but I hate it.
For those of you that read me, but don't understand the difference between normal stress/life induced sadness, and depression... here's the difference in my life. Sadness is feelings. Depression is uncontrollable thoughts of dying along with bouts of despair and absolutely no hope that life will ever be good again.
A very good friend of mine just helped me through my downswing of depression. One of the most helpful things she kept telling me was that it would end soon. Because in this other unseen reality, I couldn't see that it would end. In the "gray world" it seemed like it would go on forever and the only end to it would be death. Chris and I are so grateful to her for not making me feel crazy and reminding us that it would get better.
I was shielded from the "seen" world and from anything else that felt crushing. If I didn't have someone to do that, I would have had to check myself in somewhere.
I know that my blogs have been dark lately. I'll perk up soon enough and start writing again about homeschooling and organic crap, but I am in this place. I also know that there are those with depression who read this, and maybe they don't feel so alone.
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Jackie