Good Friday and the narrative of the Lord’s passion will always be connected to the story of the hemorrhaging woman in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) for me, because just as I yelled out to God in the Garden of Gethsemane of my depression, “Why (the bleep) have you forsaken me?”, I got to touch the robe of Jesus and begin to heal.

A year or so into my most severe depression–after I had tried twenty medication combinations, five psychiatrists, and a seven-week hospital program–I began to wean myself off all my meds because nothing was working, and the New-Age doctor I was seeing believed that my depression was the result of core issues I hadn’t yet addressed in therapy.

“I must accept the fact that I may never want to be alive again…that death might always seem the only repose,” I told myself. “So I need to get better at faking happiness, and devoting myself to helping others. At least then my days will be worth something. And maybe, just maybe, God will show mercy and take me sooner rather than later.”

Any chance of medication working, or traditional treatment relieving my pain seemed as probable as the pope ordaining women, or Mother Angelica replacing Richard Simmons on an exercise video. And I had exhausted every kind of alternative method–from yoga and acupuncture to Chinese herbs, from Craniosacral therapy and Tibetan meditation to wearing magnets.

My deepest hope–to want to be alive–was dwindling with every month of my depression.

I had promised Eric that I would meet with a team of doctors from Johns Hopkins Affective Disorders Clinic–that I would give traditional psychiatry one last chance before surrendering to my disabled condition, and possibly moving into an assisted living home, a halfway house, or arranging for consistent outside help.

The morning of the Hopkins consultation, my friend Susan, who agreed to watch Katherine so that Eric and I could drive to Baltimore, handed me a copy of “O” Magazine.

“You should read the article about medication before seeing those doctors,” she said.

The piece, entitled “Valley of the Dulls: Taking Antidepressants,” included several interviews with people who claimed that antidepressants zapped their creativity, sex drive, passion, cognitive ability, and zest for life. It was the type of thing that might be authored by Tom Cruise–sure to freak out a hypersensitive professional worrier on her way to a psychiatric evaluation with a team of brain experts–and enough to extinguish the last embers of hope within my heart.

“They’re right,” I thought, “meds aren’t the solution–they just suppress emotions. Only my thoughts can heal me, and for some reason I am unable to master them. My pain is all my own doing, so I need to live with the ugly death thoughts, and just hope that one day I might be strong enough to change them.”

We hadn’t even found a parking place before I started to shake and cry in the car, calling myself a disgrace of a human being–God’s most pathetic creature for giving into this illness. I hated myself, loathed every muscle and organ in me after reading that article, which to me was like Judas’ kiss heralding my ominous fate.

As we tried to find the right building, Eric held my trembling arm and guided my steps as if I were his frail grandmother. My pants hung loosely from my hips, due to the twenty pounds I had lost in the year, and I looked as fragile as all the elderly folks we saw with canes and in wheelchairs–all making the pilgrimage, like us, to the Land of Oz in search for their cure.

A curse hung over me that morning–the same darkness that had seeped into every pocket of my life within the year–blinding me of the beauty in my world, and drowning out the whispers of life around me with a loud, menacing drum, a kind of infatuation and terrifying obsession with death.

That was my Garden of Gethsemane: I could no longer smell a rose or feel a kiss–I was numb, and repulsed by life. Anxiety was munching away at the vital cells in my being like an aggressive cancer, poisoning all my places of vulnerability, and fear held me tightly in its grip. I succumbed to it with every twitch in my body that I couldn’t control–like a possessed woman–and every sob that I wanted so badly to contain.

Then I saw Jesus.

In the lobby of the Hopkins’ Billings Administration Building is a 10-and-a-half foot marble statue of Jesus, a gentleman in a robe with arms extended toward those in desperate need of healing. The inscription, written in capital letters on the pedestal, read: “Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).

I couldn’t move for what seemed like twenty minutes. I just stood there, in front Jesus, tempted to touch his robe, but scared to.

The hemorrhaging woman of Mark’s gospel gets her miracle after bleeding for twelve years, after visiting many physicians and spending her fortune on treatments. Did her doctors, like mine, listen more closely to the cute pharmaceutical reps coming by for signatures than to the patient asking why the heck she needs three kinds of antipsychotic drugs if she’s not psychotic? Did physician number two, like mine, instruct her to go home, get more sleep, and check back with him in a month?

How did she move beyond her fear, past the suffocating darkness, into hope? By simply touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak, this ailing woman was healed of her disease. Her faith was that great.

I’ve never wanted anything so badly as I wanted health that morning I saw Jesus.

“I believe, Jesus,” I said to the statue, imagining myself touching the hem of Jesus’ real robe, “I believe.”

And I wept at his feet.