Living with A Depressed Spouse

By Gay Ingram

Have you or someone that you're close to ever been depressed? Author Gay Ingram chronicles the way her life was affected after her husband became seriously depressed. In Living With A Depressed Spouseyou will see one woman's amazing journey of survival and understanding as the devastating repercussions of her husband's illness set in. Believing everything that happens in a Christian's life has God's purpose behind it, Gay turned to God, drawing strength and perseverance from her faith in His loving concern. Amidst periods of isolation and feeling abandoned by society, God led the author to take specific actions, make those decisions necessary for her own survival. Like a voice crying in the wilderness, Gay Ingram shares her hard-earned knowledge about living with a depressed husband. She gives the reader insight into this debilitating disease that affects an estimated 18.8 million people who struggle with it in any given 1-year period. Mental illness is the second leading cause of disability in the U.S. But mental illness affects not only the individual but everyone striving for a relationship with that individual.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gay Ingram
• Release date: Dec 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386380801

Gay Ingram

Gay Ingram writes from her cabin in the piney woods of East Texas. For over thirty years she has been entertaining and informing readers either through her novels or by way of articles for national publications. Her articles on writing have appeared in Writers’ Journal, Fellowscript, and other publications and in 2010, she self-published Some Write Thoughts, a compilation of advice for writers gained through her experiences. Her first novel,’Til Death Do Us Part released in 2000 and she has since published an additional dozen novels. Her most-recent release is George Washington, From Boy Surveyor To Soldier, the first in a series of biographies for Young Readers.

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Copyright © 2018 Gay Ingram

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of non-fiction.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version ®, Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

This book is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the specific subject matter covered. This information is given with the understanding that the author is not engaged in rendering legal, professional advice. Since the details of your situation are fact dependent, you should additionally seek the services of a competent professional.

Interior Book design by Champagne Book Design

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Data

Ingram, Gay.

Living With A Depressed Spouse / Gay Ingram.

Emotions—Self-help2. Depression—Mood Disorder—Self-Help3. Emotions / Family and Relationships

www.pineywoodsbook.com

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Books by Gay Ingram

Epigraph

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two

Part Three

Bibliography

Appendix A

About The Author

Excerpt from George Washington, From Boy Surveyor To Soldier

‘Til Death Do Us Part—2000

Troubled Times—2005

A Stirred Pot—2010

Some Write Thoughts—2011

Twist of Fate—2012

Walking In His Shoes—2012

Revealed Treasure—2012

The Basement’s Secret—2012

Why Mr. Manning!—2012

Beginning of Tomorrow- 2012

Second Time Around—2012

Morgana’s Revenge—2013

Tracks On The Sand—2014

Not Bound By Blood—2016

George Washington, From Boy Surveyor To Soldier—2017

Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Isaiah 43:19

Looking back, I see the year of nineteen-eighty as a beginning and an end. But perhaps I should start with how I came to be at this point in time.

I grew up in a small New England village where everybody knew everybody. Being the eldest child in a large family that didn’t have much, growing our own food and making do was how we made it. Marriage transported me two thousand miles away from everything familiar. The first fifteen years were spent coping with a suburban lifestyle, a series of short periods located in one or another of Dallas, Texas’s several bedroom cities as we followed my husband’s career moves. In the 1970’s, the counter-revolution with its emphasis on living simply caught my enthusiasm. More than anything, I wanted to move away from the urban commotion of Dallas with its run-to-keep-up mentality and find a small town similar to what I grew up with.

Being a city boy, my husband wasn’t as enthusiastic about adopting that kind of lifestyle. But he promised to do whatever it took to fulfill my dream of a more laid-back way of living. In 1980, God answered our family’s prayers and met our desire to escape the city and to live in the country. But little did we know what the next twenty-five years would bring. When a job opportunity beckoned in East Texas, I saw it as our first step to that dream of back-to-the-land living. Our two boys had been born ten years apart. At this time, our older son would soon be leaving for college and our younger son anticipated entering first grade.

We settled into a rented house temporarily and every week checked out for-sale ads in the local newspaper. Our future home would have to satisfy several requirements. It needed to be within the twenty-five mile driving radius of my husband’s place of employment with at least fifteen acres of land, part wooded, part open meadowlike. I hoped for a source of fresh flowing water like a stream and most importantly, somewhere on the property there needed to be a southwest facing slope of at least 20 degrees. Because we planned to eventually build an earth-sheltered home, this was a must-have.

One day, at a dairy where I bought my milk, I read a note tacked to the bulletin board that said, Seventeen acres for sale in Big Sandy. A telephone number accompanied the note. We made the call and got details. Located five miles north of the center of a small community, the property was just a short distance on an oil-topped road from a major highway. I still recall that first time I set foot on the property. I stood in the middle of a dirt track left by logging trucks that had harvested the mature pines a few years previously. I closed my eyes and felt the land wrap itself around my heart.

Wandering about, I came across a huckleberry tree in full fruit. Someone once told me having a huckleberry tree on your land meant good fortune. Some time after we had been settled for a few years, I spent most of a fall day tramping through the brush, up and down the rolling land, until I located that huckleberry tree once again. By then, the high bush had grown to tower over my head.

We rejoiced when God moved on the seller’s heart and he agreed to hold the note for us instead of his original intent to sell the land outright. Then in a nearby town, we found a fifty-year-old house for sale to be moved and God convinced a relative, as an investment, to underwrite the costs of moving and renovating this building. By doing all the work ourselves, we felt we could afford the materials needed to make this house a suitable home; at least, until we could get our dream house built.

The basic repairs included replacing both the plumbing and electrical wiring in the house. It was like starting from scratch with just a shell. My husband insisted the bathroom be renovated before we occupy the house. Sections of that room’s flooring had been damaged by flooding in the past; that old-fashioned cast iron bathtub had to come out. What a monumental task for my husband to wrestle that tub out of the house and back in again by himself.

While he taught himself the rudiments of plumbing, I concentrated my efforts on tearing out the decrepit carpeting and refinishing the pinewood floors with a rented floor sander. As the moving-in day drew closer and it seemed the house would not be ready, we received help from our church family. A group descended upon us one Saturday for a workday, to paint and install molding and complete other projects that needed doing.

Once we had moved in, the rebuilding of the kitchen headed our to-do list. With some of the non-supporting interior walls removed to give the house an open feeling, we now gutted the kitchen space. Imagine our surprise upon discovering a section of the wall completely eaten through with dry rot damage and daylight poured in behind where the kitchen sink had stood. With radial arm saw set up where the dining area would someday be, my husband spent the next thirteen months of his evenings and weekends fabricating cabinets and building the open upper shelving that I wanted. He even taught himself how to install the Formica counter tops and back-splash.

Sawdust was a constant companion during that period. A make-shift kitchen consisting of a counter-top oven, an electric skillet and a two-burner camping stove became my temporary kitchen. While I washed dishes in the bathtub, my husband measured, cut and hammered.

During those beginning years, the physical demands of our project were more exacting than anything we had ever undertaken previously. But, we had a common goal and determined to do whatever it took to realize