Dear TEAMS,
Our wonderful family friend Amy E. asked me last week for
some help. She will be teaching at their
Home Group next month and was asked to teach on depression. You all know Amy well, and she really has
never been through depression, so she felt a little lost and wanted to reach
out to others who have been through it so she could put together her
teaching. Here is what I wrote to her:
Depression Sucks
It is hard to describe to someone what it feels like to be depressed. It's more than just feeling "blue" or "down" or "sad" and it's not the same as grieving. It's an overwhelming feeling of despair and being convinced there is no hope, and believing to your utter core that even if you died, this feeling would never stop that there is no purpose to life and that existing is a painful waste. It consumes you, and every act of service you offer others, eating, or going about life is an act of faith that it matters...but you're pretty sure it doesn't.
If you've read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (it's part of the Chronicles of Narnia), there is a dark place the Dawn Treader sails to that your nightmares come true. They pick someone up who is adrift in the waters who relates to them where they are and describes the problem with this place is that people become so consumed with fear and avoiding the beasts that are now a part of their reality, that they don't believe they can ever get out. Fear, anxiety, and horror are a part of their every waking moment, but if they fall asleep they will only dream bigger nightmares, so sleep brings no relief and in fact worsens their situation. And as with most nightmares, death never comes to bring them relief.
Once the crew hears this, they have to do a major overhaul on their thought life, but suffice it to say that some bad things get through from memories of nightmares past and the ship narrowly escapes that place. That describes perfectly my episodes of depression, and how God has brought me out from them. I have recovered from my episodes both by using medication and not, but the one thing that remains the same is the changes to my thought life I had to make. I literally had to take every thought captive, examine it, compare it to Scripture to see if it was true, and then let go of it if it was not. It is a hard, humbling, scary place to be, because if deficits existed in the circumstances of my life, sometimes my self-pitying thoughts were my only comfort that someone cared. If my self-pitying thoughts were lies, I had to have the courage to believe that God had something else out there for me that would provide me even better comfort.
It is hard to describe to someone what it feels like to be depressed. It's more than just feeling "blue" or "down" or "sad" and it's not the same as grieving. It's an overwhelming feeling of despair and being convinced there is no hope, and believing to your utter core that even if you died, this feeling would never stop that there is no purpose to life and that existing is a painful waste. It consumes you, and every act of service you offer others, eating, or going about life is an act of faith that it matters...but you're pretty sure it doesn't.
If you've read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis (it's part of the Chronicles of Narnia), there is a dark place the Dawn Treader sails to that your nightmares come true. They pick someone up who is adrift in the waters who relates to them where they are and describes the problem with this place is that people become so consumed with fear and avoiding the beasts that are now a part of their reality, that they don't believe they can ever get out. Fear, anxiety, and horror are a part of their every waking moment, but if they fall asleep they will only dream bigger nightmares, so sleep brings no relief and in fact worsens their situation. And as with most nightmares, death never comes to bring them relief.
Once the crew hears this, they have to do a major overhaul on their thought life, but suffice it to say that some bad things get through from memories of nightmares past and the ship narrowly escapes that place. That describes perfectly my episodes of depression, and how God has brought me out from them. I have recovered from my episodes both by using medication and not, but the one thing that remains the same is the changes to my thought life I had to make. I literally had to take every thought captive, examine it, compare it to Scripture to see if it was true, and then let go of it if it was not. It is a hard, humbling, scary place to be, because if deficits existed in the circumstances of my life, sometimes my self-pitying thoughts were my only comfort that someone cared. If my self-pitying thoughts were lies, I had to have the courage to believe that God had something else out there for me that would provide me even better comfort.
I know to someone
who is not depressed that seems really obvious, but when you have spent years
thinking one way, you're pretty sure it's true and so it's quite a
transformation and huge leap of faith. The battle for our minds is waged
every day in the Spiritual realms, and the amazing thing is that we have the
deciding vote as to how it ends up. I try to take that seriously every day
so I can stay healthy, and it brings me to the Father because I forget
frequently how much He cares and loves me.
As a Christian, shame and guilt for being depressed accompany this sickness. After all, if I love God and trust Him with my life and know I'm spending eternity with Him, why should I be depressed? To make a gross generalization, this is one place that I feel the world has more compassion for those suffering than the church does. A Type II diabetic may have gotten to his situation by not eating well and taking care of himself, but once he's there, Christ followers accept him where he's at and work gently to get at the core issues that caused him to abuse his body in the first place and hopefully turn the diabetes around. Depression is not viewed the same way, although the pattern is almost identical: someone didn't have the tools to make wise decisions and so made a series of bad ones and suffers physically for it. I try to help people understand that a depressed person needs counsel straight from the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate "Tough Love" administrator, and that anyone who loves Christ has that Spirit in them to offer consolation.
As a Christian, shame and guilt for being depressed accompany this sickness. After all, if I love God and trust Him with my life and know I'm spending eternity with Him, why should I be depressed? To make a gross generalization, this is one place that I feel the world has more compassion for those suffering than the church does. A Type II diabetic may have gotten to his situation by not eating well and taking care of himself, but once he's there, Christ followers accept him where he's at and work gently to get at the core issues that caused him to abuse his body in the first place and hopefully turn the diabetes around. Depression is not viewed the same way, although the pattern is almost identical: someone didn't have the tools to make wise decisions and so made a series of bad ones and suffers physically for it. I try to help people understand that a depressed person needs counsel straight from the Holy Spirit, who is the ultimate "Tough Love" administrator, and that anyone who loves Christ has that Spirit in them to offer consolation.
Love,
