"Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, he returns to his earth; in that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God, who made heaven and earth, The sea, and all that is in them; who keeps truth forever, who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD gives freedom to the prisoners."
- Psalm 146:3-7
Friday, January 6, 2012
C. Michael Patton over at Parchment and Pen posts about his depression, nearly two years later. Below is an excerpt:
Two years later, there are still times when driving down the road, playing a video game with my kids, or drinking a Coke out of a bottle that I notice that recovery is chronic. “Oh, yeah,” I say to myself. “That is what it is like to be notice good things.” During these times I want to call out to God and say, “Time out!” Whatever made me realize again what I took for granted before needs to find its way to the shelves of the store.I encourage you to read the whole thing, and also his original post on the brokenness of depression from April, 2010.
Two years later I know there are places I cannot go in my mind. Two years later I look through the peep-hole in the door of my emotions before I let anything in. Two years later I long for a glory that knows no tears in a way I had not longed before. Two years later I am stable but scared. Scared that it might happen again. Two years later, my heart does not know how to respond to others who are groping for hope in a dark mind. I want to grab their depression by the neck and kill it, burn it, smash it, and choke it. I hate it.
Many end these type of messages with the “But I am glad I went through this” type stuff. My sister says that she is glad I went through it. Okay, fine. Gotcha. Neat. But I don’t know if I am. I think I would rather not live with the haunting memory of that time. At least not now. To know that this actually exists in this world . . . Really? That? Torture, hunger, blindness, poverty, even holocaust are things I gawked at before. But depression is from a planet I could not imagine existed. A dark planet. A cold and lonely planet that no telescope can see, no pictures can describe, for which no analogy of being can be found. It only exists in theory before you have been there. But I think I would have rather seen it through the telescope. When I returned from that world, a part of me was left behind. I think I would have rather not had that passport stamped.
But I serve a God who is sovereign and does not have the word “meaningless” in any dictionary signed by him. In this, I suppose, you can pull my teeth until I say “Okay, it was good for me to go there. Better to go to the house of the morning than the house of feasting. Okay. Yeah, okay.” In glory, you will not have to pull my teeth to say this. But for now, you still do.
There was a time in my life when I thought that the "blues" and times of slight hopelessness and small despair that I sometime experienced could be called "depression". Then I experienced depression second-hand in the lives of people I love, and I realized that I didn't know what I was talking about.
It's hard now to express what I think of this terrible condition. At least not in words that are fit to print in a family blog. I think C. Michael Patton said it well, above: "my heart does not know how to respond to others who are groping for hope in a dark mind. I want to grab their depression by the neck and kill it, burn it, smash it, and choke it. I hate it."
When Christ's kingdom is fully realized, depression will be a thing of the past. It will be cast into the lake of fire along with our enemy and all the other curses of fallen creation.
If you are currently suffering from depression, or in that baffling, helpless state of trying to help and encourage someone you love dearly who is wearing the dark sackcloth, my heart goes out to you. May the mercy and rescue of God be yours in abundance, and may joy truly come in the swift-approaching morning.
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Comments on "A Retrospective on Depression":
2. Manders
- 01/06/2012 10:25 pm CST
Beautiful post. Thanks for sharing.
It's been almost seven years since my own depression almost made me take my life. As awful as that moment was, I thank God for it, because it was there that I think the gospel finally broke through to me, and it's been a long healing and road to joy ever since. I occasionally have days when the darkness will not lift, to quote John Piper. But it's those days when I've learned to run to the cross. And if I can't run, I crawl. And if I can't even crawl, I've learned that Jesus will come get me anyway.
3. Bill
- 01/07/2012 8:35 am CST
And if I can't even crawl, I've learned that Jesus will come get me anyway.
Praise the Lord, and thank you Manders. That's beautiful.
4. Roy
- 01/07/2012 12:13 pm CST
If not regenerate, then either depression or denial. (Really? That simplistic? Yeh. Hell is coming. An inescapable reality. That *ought* to depress! But folks deny it.)
If regenerate, then either submissively joyful or rebelliously sinful. (Really? That simplistic? Yeh. Pretty serious to tell your Saviour he can't or won't or didn't. Meditate for a bit on how God responded to Israel's wilderness complaining, where they doubted he would deliver them=called him a liar.)
Manders got right: when the Gospel broke thru, it *was* the good news we can trust one who holds onto us rather than trusting in our holding onto him.
5. Weekend Fisher
- 01/07/2012 7:40 pm CST
I don't normally post links, but this sermon is good, for when people have given up on life. It's a sermon based on Naomi, when she went back home blaming God for all her problems, having given up on a good life ... It's from a Lutheran pastor who knows how to preach the gospel.
http://areasonforhope.net/mp3/rfh-20120101-1038CL.mp3
Take care & God bless
Anne / WF
6. Lars Walker
- 01/09/2012 9:53 am CST
There are some Christians who believe that no Christian can ever get sick, because Christ is our Healer. There are other Christians who say no Christian can ever be depressed. I say both kinds are legalists who lay burdens on others' shoulders without putting out a finger to help them.
I was abused constantly throughout my childhood, so that all confidence and optimism were systematically crushed within me. I've had to do my life pretty generally (not entirely) without human love. The evidence of God's grace in my life is that He has given me strength to just go on living. If that's not enough for some people, let them try to bear my burden a while.
7. Karl
- 01/09/2012 10:32 am CST
I'm sorry for what you've been through Lars. People who suggest that someone with depression will recover if they'd just grasp the truth of the gospel don't understand depression and would be better off remaining silent.
As with cancer or any other serious illness, remembering the truth of the gospel may enable someone to hang on and endure the suffering. But suggesting the depression either (a) was caused by some spiritual deficiency, sin, failure to realize a spiritual truth etc., or (b) can be cured by remedying some spiritual deficiency or realizing some spiritual truth . . . that's a load of garbage. At least in most cases of true clinical depression. Well meaning but ignorant Christians can do a lot of damage to a suffering fellow believer in those instances.
8. MDD
- 01/12/2012 10:54 am CST
Depression has been a real battle for me. So much so that I've been hospitalized on occasion. I've found its something thats almost impossible to share in the church unless the person has some kind of experience of having dealt with it in themselves or someone close to them. I know that people are well meaning when they give advice. If i was just feeling the ho-hum run of the mill sadness that people fall into some times it might even be good advice. But when your in the grips of a crippling depression there is no good advice there is only prayer and the healing that will come in time. My advice if you know someone going through this is pray with them try to encourage them to hang in there and keep your advice to a minimum.
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Thanks for posting this, Bill. We need more openness about and awareness of depression and mental illness in the church. In our 18 years of marriage my wife has twice undergone lengthy (more than 6 months) life-stopping bouts of that kind of depression. The last one ended a little more than 5 years ago but I can still relate so much to the words in that post re. feeling " like a glass that has been broken and glued back together". Now, five years out, life is good and we are experiencing joy that we doubted we ever would see again. But we aren't the same, either of us. Some of the changes have made us better, and are of the deepening variety that only profound suffering brings. Others are more akin to the ptsd ways a vet who saw heavy combat is never quite the same. Life is rich and good and we are blessed in many ways, but we still live with the usually unacknowledged but never wholly forgotten "sword of Damocles" over our heads, wondering if we've seen/felt the last of it, or whether it will return. Those who haven't experienced severe clinical depression or walked closely with someone who has, have no idea. And those who try to spiritualize what is in most if not all cases a physical illness, can do great damage and lay an additional burden of guilt and isolation on the already-suffering.