The Day She Could Not Will Herself to Move

I remember February 13, 2002 very clearly. I came home from work, and Cynthia was still in bed. She was not sick. She said she just did not feel like getting up. I did not know what to do. I only knew that something was seriously wrong.

The next day, the two of us went to see a psychotherapist.

That is easy to write now. It was not easy then.

Years before that day, I was working on a large campus for a large corporation, designing computer chips. In one of our well-attended meetings, a woman stood up and talked about counseling. She said she and her family had benefited from it. She was surprised by how much it helped, and she wanted the rest of us to know that we might benefit as well.

I did not understand what she was talking about. I had this fear that counselors could rewire a person’s brain, and I could not see how that would be a good thing. If you were not around in the early 1990s, it may be hard to appreciate how counseling was viewed. If you needed that kind of help, people thought you were a wing nut. They wanted to keep their distance. I filed her comments away as something that happened to other people.

Then I walked into our house on February 13 and found Cynthia still in bed. Whatever I thought about brain-rewiring machines suddenly mattered a lot less than the fact that my wife could not will herself to move. We made an appointment.

I remember leaving that first session feeling relieved. The whole process was talking. There was no machine. We went back every week. After about eight weeks, I could see that Cynthia was benefiting from the work. She was starting to function again. Then I started to see her thrive in a way I had not expected. That is when I decided I had some work to do as well.

Before it was over, everyone in our family had gone to counseling. That stretched over about three years. At the end of those years, we had changed so much that I do not think I would recognize the man who walked in the door on February 13, 2002.

I am telling you this because some of you are living a version of that day right now. Maybe you came home and found your spouse still in bed. Maybe you are the one who cannot get up. Maybe you are watching a parent or a child and you know something is wrong, and you do not know what to do.

A house in that kind of trouble picks up a lie very quickly. The lie sounds responsible. It sounds faithful. It says that if we were strong, we would not need anyone. It says that if we were faithful, prayer would have been enough. It says that if we were good people, this would not be happening.

That lie is not true.

Depression can pin a body to a bed. That is not laziness. It is not a failure of will. Asking for help is not the same thing as being broken. For a long time, shame about counseling was just part of the culture. That shame is an old story. It is not a diagnosis.

Here is the part I did not see at the time. I needed that woman in the meeting years before I needed the therapist. I was not ready to take her seriously. I thought I would never need what she was talking about. Readiness, in this case, was not eagerness. Readiness was simply this: I had already heard that help exists. So when I walked in and found Cynthia still in bed, I was not starting from nothing. I was afraid. I also knew there was an office we could call.

That is close to what Jesus is doing in Luke chapter 12, in the story of the servants who keep watch with their lamps lit.

He tells them to gird their loins and light their lamps. He tells them to be like servants waiting for their master to come home from a wedding feast, so that when he knocks they can open the door right away. He is not asking them to build the house in the dark. The house is already there. The door is already there. What he is asking is that they be ready to open it.

In that world, girding your loins meant tucking up a long robe so you could do hard work without tripping on the cloth. It is not a glamorous picture. It is a practical one. You prepare before the knock, not after.

We tell ourselves a different story about mental health. We tell ourselves we will get ready on the day we finally feel ready. That is not how it worked in our house. We got ready because a woman I barely remember had already said, out loud, that counseling helped her family. Years later, when Cynthia could not get out of bed, those words were still available to me. I did not have to invent the next step from scratch.

I am a Catholic deacon, and I am also a counselor. I do not set those two things against each other. The Church has always known that the soul and the body are not separate projects. Confession can tell the truth about sin. Confession cannot, by itself, lift a depression that has taken over a person’s body. A good therapist can help a family talk. That talking does not replace prayer. It does not replace the sacraments. It does not replace the people who will sit with you after Mass. You do not have to choose one and throw the other away.

If you are the one who cannot get up, the next faithful step may be an appointment. That appointment might be with a priest. It might be with a counselor. For many people it is both. You do not have to feel brave in order to make the call. You have to let one other human being into what is happening.

If you are the one who walked in from work and found the bed still occupied, you do not have to invent the help. You have to make the call. On February 13, love looked like this: I put my theory about therapists to the side and I drove to an office I did not trust. The theory was wrong. The talking was not a machine. The marriage on the other side of those three years was not the same marriage that walked into that first session.

And if no one in your house is in crisis this week, there is still something you can do. Tell one trusted person where help lives. Name a counselor. Name a priest. Name a clinic or a phone number. Do it before anyone is desperate. That is what the woman in the meeting did for me. I thought I would never need her. Years later I came home to Cynthia still in bed, and I still had that woman’s words. I knew there was such a thing as help.

That is what it means to keep the lamp lit. When the knock comes, you already know which door to open.

Drawn from Deacon Robert's homily first preached in 2022. 

This is a pastoral reflection, not clinical care and not a substitute for it. If you or someone you love is in immediate danger, call 988 or local emergency services.