climbing out of an abyss

Depression sneaks up on you. At times, I feel like I fall into an abyss, like I run up onto a sink hole in the middle of the road at 80 miles per hour with no time to make a correction. Suddenly you find yourself into something...sinking deeper and deeper. Panic takes over, your mind knows it wants to think...you try to stop the panic and the fear. You want the reason and the logic to bring you back to what you know you believe. You try like hell to remember the faith that guides you and the Love that you so strongly believe in...and yet like a stun gun...the fear and anxiety paralyzes you and keeps you from struggling or even thinking. It's like it brings you to the point where you cannot move...it's a mental paralysis of the will. Confidence seeps out of you like blood from a wound. And with it flows the energy and the peace that is the foundation of a sane life. It's like sanity becomes illusive and out of reach. You don't know where you are relative to where you were when you could think and act and not quake in fear. It's like being in a prison. there are no locks on the doors, but you still can't leave. What is happening?
Why does this brain operate this way? There's got to be a drug, a therapy, an exercise, something that brings us back to reality...I'm not talking about a reality that is based upon the smoke and mirrors of this world's values... I'm talking about the reality of truth that surpasses the made up value systems our society has concocted.

Most of all, I just want to escape the overwhelming fear and anxiety that can grip me and drag me under. No longer can I believe that there is no power in the forces of our mind that bring us into depressive states. But I must know what can be done to bring me out of this and to escape the undertow that seems unrelenting in its pull. There has to be hope in a salvation from this way and this path. There is hope. Escape of the grip of this horrible power. I preach that God can do all these things. It just isn't obvious to me how His salvation comes in the midst of these horrible places.