Cultural Death- Depression Stage

Depression (Loneliness):
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect themselves from things of love and affection.

Example - "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die . . . What's the point?"; "I miss my loved one, why go on?"

This is probably one of the hardest stages for a missionary, if they reach this point. My wife seemed to pass through this stage much more than myself. I do remember times near the end of our second and third years on the field, when it was about a year to six months before we returned on furlough. At these times, I would have overwhelming feelings of nostalgia. I would remember my family, friends, with great fondness. At times I would like to sit and think about all the wonderful things of the past, and could feel quite lonely in our new home. The hardest part at this time was the language barrier. Our first term we learned very little of the local language. I remember times that the depression came because I felt that I was going to live the rest of my life in a bubble. I could see people, but I felt that I could not contect with them. It was very lonely at times, and as a missionary the person feels as if they might spend the rest of their life that way.

For the most part, I did not deal to greatly with depression or loneliness, but for my wife it was another matter. Patty, has grown up her whole life with very close friends. She has been best friends with one since pre-school times. She has passed through elementary school, junior high, high school, and even college with a strong support base of friends. Then we moved to Ghana. For the first time in her life she had no frineds, and no way to communicate with new people. It was very difficult.

In Ghana, more often then not, men are educated before the women, and if a choice has to be made in the family about which child is to be educated, it is always the boy first. For this reason many more men speak English than women. This fact made it very hard for my wife in our first church.

The first church that we worked in held very strongly to the idea that the services and work of the church should only be performed in English. This meant that I had a number of men to fellowship with, but almost no women for my wife to fellowship with. We did have grown women that attended the services, but most of them just came with their families and children, but did not understand a word of the preaching or teaching. When services ended the Twi speaking ladies would form their groups and enjoy their conversation, but this left my wife out. She would try to speak with them, but the conversations would not pass much beyond the formal English greetings that they knew, and the little broke Twi that my wife could speak at that time. Needless to say, my wife felt quite alone. (We praise the Lord that this has changed, and in our new church, my wife has many friends and can speak freely with the ladies in Twi and some of them in English).

My wife is quite a strong lady, and does not complain, but there where times that it was very overwhleming. There where many nights that we would talk, and Patty would tell me that she felt very lonely. She used to have so many friends, but now she had nothing. She felt like she could not make friends, and that she was going to have to live the rest of here life with just surface relationships, but nothing deeper. It was difficlut, but it drove her to the Lord.

I believe that God used this time to brake Patty and make himself more real to her. Patty final gave her rights to the Lord. She told Him that if He wanted her to have friends, than that was fine, but if not, He would be her true friend. There had to be a dieing to self, before peace would come. Patty has passed through this stage and no longer suffers from depression and loneliness. A missionary needs to know that they will suffer times of great depression. Our friends in Poland have confirmed this, as well as many books that I have read about missioaries.

Hudson Taylor states in his journals that there where times as a early missionary where he walked through very dark days of depression in China, but as he followed the Light of the world the darkness began to leave, and slowly victory over the depression came. James Frazer, a famous missionary said that at times in his early ministry with the Lisu of the High Mountains, he would be so depressed that he would think of throwing himself off the mountains to excape. But, these men of God knew that these feelings where just a stage and a weakness of the flesh. These feelings are just the emotions that come when the flesh refuses to die. But, when a person looks to His Savior and hope comes depression will melt away.

Some missionary will stuggle with this stage more than others. I suffered with anger much longer than depression, where as my wife suffered with depression much longer than anger. But we must all pass through the stages, and let God use them to work in us. The joy of it all is to learn more about oneself, and more about the Savior. And if someone will pass thorugh this stage, then they can finally reach the last stage of all, which is ACCEPTANCE!