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God and Depression

“Does God care about me?”

“Why do I suffer so, Jesus?”

“Please help me, God”

“Where are you? Do you even exist?”

People suffering from depression ask these questions in the silence of their hearts. They cry out to God just as others have for millennia when faced with great sorrow:

“My tears have been my food day and night.” Psalm 42:3.

Beyond therapeutic and psychopharmacological bromides, we all seek loving comfort. Sometimes we get it from others – – sometimes we don’t.

We’ve reached our limit to cope, to keep it all together. We’re worn out by the battle.

We’re searching for answers: “Why me?”we ask. Even when we get answers (e.g. it’s “biochemical” or too much negative thinking) from others, the pain may not abate. And so we ask more existential questions about the nature of our suffering.

Barbara Crafton, an Episcopalian Minister and depression sufferer, writes in her book, When Jesus Wept: When Faith and Depression Meet, about this mystery:

“In several ways, above and beyond the genetics, family upbringing and “slings and arrows” of our existence that has brought us to this point in our lives, there is a real mystery to suffering. Why do some people suffer tremendously while others not so much? Why do some people with a certain makeup come down with depression while someone with a similar history do not? It’s a mystery. Often, while people who get treatment and help come to find out some of the reasons that they’re depressed, it often isn’t enough. The answers don’t always heal us.”

Abraham Lincoln, who struggled with depression his entire life, was quoted in the book Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled his Greatness:

“I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”

Much like Lincoln, we can feel powerless to stop our depression. It is BIG and we are small. Anything other than the crushing experience of depression feels unreal. We’re not in the normal stream of life that everyone else is swimming in: we’re drowning.

I had never encountered any pain greater than depression. Other types of pain I could deal with and recover from: a burst appendix in college and blown out ligaments in my knee years ago. But depression? There wasn’t any surgery I could have, no caste that could be fitted. I felt like I was dying. In the book Unholy Ghosts: Writers on Depression, writer Susanna Kaysen captures this experience:

“The worst thing about depression – the thing that makes people phobic about it – is that it’s a foretaste of death. It’s a trip to the country of nothingness. Reality loses its substance and becomes ghostly, transparent, unbearable. This perception of what’s outside affects the perception of the self, which explains why depressed people feel they aren’t ‘there.’”

So in the face of so much pain, we look for power outside of ourselves. We place our hope in Someone bigger than our depression – – God.

It’s tough to pray when we’re depressed

Praying when in the throes of depression is a challenge. We might not be able to muster the energy, feel like it isn’t making a dent in our depression; or, worse yet, our faith falters and we stop believing.

We grow despondent.

We give up hope.

We give up on God.

We want salve on our wounds, but depression just keeps throwing salt in them. We yearn so badly for God’s direction (“Show me the way out of this darkness”), but it always doesn’t come.

Barbara Crafton writes:

“It makes every bit of sense for a person to whom faith is a matter of importance – even one who doesn’t think that all human sorrow can be magically prayed out the window – to hope that it will somehow illuminate the darkness of depression. We understand that nobody ever promised us a rose garden, but could we perhaps have a little light?”

Depression is a terrible liar

In a sense, depression is a temptation. It calls us. It whispers in our ear that all is lost and that we’ll never find our way back home. It’s a terrible liar, really. It spins the yarn that we’re worthless and there’s no point in living. And these messages repeat themselves over and over again in our minds and souls. And they all seem so true and unchangeable.

John Piper wrote in When Darkness Will Not Lift: Doing What We Can While We Wait for God – And Joy:

“…We should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others’, that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.”

Who do You say I am?

One of the most powerful scenes in the Bible is when Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Who do you say I am?”

I like to imagine Jesus standing across from me. He’s looking directly into my eyes. I reach out to Him. and say, “Lord, who do You say I am?” It clearly isn’t what my depression judges me to be. Jesus is always affirming, always loving, always telling us just how precious we are. THAT is the voice we need to listen to and embrace.

A Light in the Darkness

Mother Teresa once wrote:

“If I ever become a saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness,’” After her death, Many suggest that she suffered from clinical depression and long periods where she sought to understand God’s absence in the face of so much inner pain.

Therese Borchard writes:

“I spent a week with Mother Teresa and her Sisters the winter of 1994. I stood beside her for about two hours as we distributed Christmas gifts to orphaned children. I sensed sadness in her. But her light overshadowed it. Unlike a person wrapped in severe depression, wearing the expression of despair, she exuded light and hope. When she prayed, her deep love for God was visible, even contagious.

This saint of darkness has much to teach me about how to live with inner anguish.

First of all, I should stop referring to my depression and anxiety as the “Black Hole,” (singular and capitalized), and call it, as Mother Teresa described her difficult places, the “dark holes.” Because the darkness is never black, or without any light at all. Her legacy is proof that hope and faith and love prevail, even in the dark night.”

A few years ago, I composed this prayer.

Dear God,
I am on my knees, because I don’t have the strength to stand up.
My strength is gone. I can’t deal with my depression by myself any longer.
I am lonely.
I call on You.
I have faith that Your strength is bigger than my depression,
that Your mercy and healing white light will show me the path home.
I am not alone.
You’re rod and staff comfort me as I walk through the valley of the shadow of depression
and there is nothing I shall fear.

Amen

So don’t lose hope. Don’t lose God. He’s working somewhere in the pain to heal you.

As Pope John Paul, II wrote:

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

By Daniel T. Lukasik, Copyright 2015

Six Ways to Cope with the Limitations of Depression

Blogger Therese Borchard writes, “Living with chronic depression demands an acceptance of one’s condition and a willingness to learn to live around lasting symtoms”. Find out her six tips about how to do just that. Read the Blog

Seeds of Hope

Reverand, Susan Gregg-Schroeder writes, “I now know that depression affects all aspects of life, including our spiritual well-being. It strikes at our very soul, making us feel cut off from ourselves, from others, and from our understanding of God.” Read the Blog

Losing Faith, Finding Hope: A Journey With Depression

Monica A. Coleman, Ph.D. is an AME minister, seminary professor and author of the book Not Alone: Reflections on Faith in Depression. She blogs on faith and depression at www.monicaaparker.com.

Many people describe depression as a kind of intense grief. It is a deep sadness. It’s like heartbreak, agony and despair all at once. I think depression is worse than grief. Grief usually has an identifiable cause. There are stages. People understand why you are sad. It eases with time.

I find that depression is more like death. In every depressive episode, something is lost. Sometimes it’s the belief that I’m not that sick. Sometimes it’s a dream. Sometimes it’s a concrete plan or goal. Sometimes it’s who I desperately wanted and expected myself to be. Sometimes it’s a harmful lie I’ve told myself, or that someone told me. Sometimes what dies, needed to go. Most times, it seems I would have been perfectly fine without the loss. I would smile more. I would know how I spent the hours in my day. I would see fewer doctors. When people ask me how I am doing, my response of “fine” would only be a lie thirty percent of the time. Like most people, right?

I have lived with a depressive condition since I was a teenager, although I didn’t have a name for it until my 20s. I don’t know how many lows I’ve had — excluding the two suicidal bouts. I don’t count how many times I’ve been sad and desperate for months. I don’t make a list of what I’ve lost.

I do, however, remember when I lost my faith.

Like many people who are raised in a religious environment, I was taught to believe that God loves me and protects me. I was taught that God punishes sin, and rewards those who are faithful. I learned about my religion by studying Holy Scriptures. I prayed. I worshipped. This was supposed to strengthen my faith. It was supposed to make me happy.

For many years, it did. I cherished Sundays spent in church — singing, kneeling and feeling inspired by the words of the preachers. My friends were made up of the other people I met in church. We volunteered at Vacation Bible School for the children, the food drive and tutoring programs.

Meanwhile, I prayed for peace. In my sleepless nights, I asked God to save me, help me and rescue me from my sadness. Just make it all better. I also heard the messages that my faith told me about depression: that I was be too blessed to be stressed; that depression was a lie from “the enemy”; that suicide is an unforgiveable sin. Somewhere between my unanswered prayers and the realization that I could not worship myself into happiness, my faith died.

I kept going to church. I kept saying the words of the prayers. I still sang the songs. I’m a minister — I have to. But I was a fraud. I stopped talking with God. What could I say to the One who was not delivering me? What praise did I have? I could list my blessings, but I could not feel gratitude. I hid my faithlessness like a bobby pin in an updo. Everything looked composed on the outside, but I was barely holding it together. I was not faithful or pious. I felt abandoned and alone.

As my depression worsened, I learned more about it. I read books. I found doctors who understood my condition. I stopped fearing medication. I met other people who struggled like me. We learned to hear sorrow in one “hello,” and how to sit with each other without words. I began to believe that depression was not a personal weakness or failure. By accepting it, I began to manage it. When I felt joy, I appreciated it all the more. I started to trust the healing process. But I missed my faith in God, religion and worshipping community.

Oddly enough, death is the purview of the religious. We call chaplains into hospital rooms. When someone dies, we go to the altar. Mourners bend their backs and wail. The spirituals express deep sorrow. We gather together with large meals. We don’t pretend like people aren’t in pain. In those times, we understand when people cannot praise God. We only ask people to be honest with God. And we don’t leave them alone. This is exactly what my depressed self needs: tears, music, good food, raw honesty, community. The same faith that demonizes my depression also teaches me how to have faith in the midst of it.

I lost the faith I once had. I stopped believing that God only loved me if I was happy and peaceful. I also gave up on the idea that depression was punishment or isolation from God. I can’t enjoy the same songs. I cannot bear the same sermons. That faith is gone. Just like the hours, weeks or months I lose to melancholy. And my incomplete plans. Or the image I’d like to have of myself.

In these moments when death prevails, I appreciate that so many religions have an understanding of life after death. Regrowth, reincarnation, resurrection. They all understand that there is a finality to death. We don’t get back what we lost. We get something or someone new.

My new faith is a deep trust that God is present with me and understands how I feel — especially when no one else can. I no more blame God for my sadness, than I credit God for happy days. This faith tells God how I really feel knowing that an offer of my true self is worship. I appreciate songs of sorrow more. I dance only when joyful. I am upheld by church community that can linger in pain without moving to fix it.

This faith is different than what died. But it’s just as holy.

This article first appeared in The Huffington Post on October 13,2012.

Is Depression Dark Night of the Soul?

In Catholic circles, there’s something known as the “dark night of the soul,” a type of despair known to have afflicted Mother Teresa. But is this experience the same thing as clinical depression? Do they share anything in common? Read the Blog

When Crap Befalls Decent People

How can we continue to believe in God when good people are beset by bad stuff and tragedies? Read this excellent blog from Beyond Blue sprinkled with wise insights from Rabbi Harold Kushner

Christmas

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together

A Christmas Curmudgeon

Driving home yesterday, I spilled my large cup of Starbucks all over my lap causing me to swerve slightly, it seemed like inches, into the lane of a grouchy driver to my right: an eighty year old guy with a face like a overdone waffle wearing thick glasses who rolled down his window and let out a shrill scream, “Merry Christmas to you too, buddy!!” Wow, I guess he had a tough day at the Mall! I had a good laugh telling my friends about it later.

Mark Twain, who must have crashed into a few horse-drawn buggies in a dirt Yuletide parking lot, once wrote:

“The approach of Christmas brings harassment and dread to many excellent people. They have to buy a cart-load of presents, and they never know what to buy to hit the various tastes; they put in three weeks of hard and anxious work, and when Christmas morning comes they are so dissatisfied with the result, and so disappointed that they want to sit down and cry. Then they give thanks that Christmas comes but once a year.”

The Holidays are tough for many people.

While Christmas and the New Year come but once a year, it’s really a month long reverie of parties, music, eating and spending time with friends and family. During this stretch of time, Christmas isn’t so great for lots of people and there are good reasons for it.

Despondency is common during the holidays for many. The most famous example of this is none other than George Bailey in the timeless classic, It’s a Wonderful Life. I believe so many people relate to George because he’s the archetype of a good man who is befallen by undeserved tragedy – the prospect of financial ruin – and learns through an angel what his life would have been for others if he’d never been born. George develops a new found appreciation for what’s really important, the love of family and friends. He leaves his guardian angel, returns home only to find his family heartily welcoming his return and, because George has helped so many in his lifetime, they come through by helping him with enough money to solve his financial crisis.

Maybe most of us aren’t on a precipice of financial ruin, but there are many parties, celebrations and gatherings that require the spending for food and drink. This creates the need to put the hands deep in the pocket, both for gifts and to pay for the restaurants and bars. The temptations such as food, the cocktails, purchases and gifts is high and leads many people to feel stress for the consequences of their actions (gain more weight, headache, depression, overdrafts). These effects remain after the end of the holidays and cause even more stress and depression.

Everyone who struggles in today’s economy is George Bailey; stressed and wondering if they can support their families and provide a happy Christmas. This can take a toll on many.

They may be lonely, whether surrounded by loved ones or not. For those struggling with depression or just profound loneliness, Christmas can be so tough. They’re expected by others to be Merry and when they’re not, they are prodded to “Cheer up.” That’s one of the confounding things for those who have never experienced depression: that you could possibly feel so down when surrounded by circumstances that appear, to those with no reference point to understand, so great. But, there it is. Even when not told by others to snap out of their funk, folks who are lonely and depressed feel this way because the holidays trigger some memory of loss, of loved ones not there that should be there or their inability to pull themselves out of a down mood.

There can also be family turmoil during the holidays. Usually people want to gather the whole family together for Christmas, but everyone has plans and sometimes there is conflict because people prefer to spend the holidays in their own home. There is also the possibility that people have high expectations these days from other people. People might expect perfect conditions with expensive gifts and positive response by all. This is not usually the case and this increases the chances to feel disappointed and the risk of sadness and depression are increased.

People are too pooped to party. One of the main reasons that the holidays bring with them intense stress is that suddenly there are many requirements and people have to do many things in a short period of time. Even when the activities are basically pleasant and enjoyable, they are a change from the daily routine that people are used to, and this situation is pushing the person to do more things than it can normally do. Shopping, the need for finding gifts, participation in various social events and obligations, the preparation of Christmas dishes and other sweets all create stress and fatigue.

The Spiritual Dimension of Christmas

While there are a lot of things that can bring us down this time a year, we all need to remember that, just like an elevator, there are plenty of things to bring us up: small kindnesses that fall on us like snow throughout a day: children with wool caps on running across the street with mittens while a volunteer crossing guard swooshes them along, someone says “Thanks” or “You’re welcome” and really meaning it, a Christmas song plays and takes you back to a sweet childhood memory of the holidays or you just plain old feel the ineffaceable lift of your spirits being part of the a time during the year where there’s some sort of fellowship, a sense that we all are part of God’s family, and wish each other well.

Because I am Catholic (a very liberal one, mind you), the holidays offer another gift to me – a sense of Joy. I have always found the month leading up to Christmas enjoyable, what my church calls Advent, in some sense a salve on the short days and chapped skin from too much cold wind that hurdle through Buffalo salt covered streets.

I am never preachy about my faith (I don’t care for it when others do so about theirs’) because I feel there are many paths to God. But I do feel it’s important to seep yourself in whatever your spiritual tradition leads you to be a better, more kind and decent human being.

In my faith, Christmas is a month of anticipation culminating in the birth of Jesus; the seminal event in human history where God intervenes in human time to send his only Son to save a broken and lost humanity from itself. This belief is expressed so beautifully in the Old Testament by the prophet Isaiah who writes:

“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.”

My parish priest, captured some of the mysterious dimension of Jesus’ birth when he wrote:

“Contemplate, with me, the mystery that is Christmas. Like all mysteries, it bears innumerable levels of meaning and of presence. The core truth is that God, in person of Jesus, takes a specific place, Mary’s womb, and time (c. 4 B.C.E.), and becomes one with humanity. It stretches the imagination to think that God would so choose to be identified with us that a transcendent/immanent communion issues forth through a simple woman, Mary, as “the Christ,” the anointed one. Nothing in the story of human creation before this event/birth, a recorded history of c. 6,000 years and an unrecorded history of probably 500,000 years, prepares us for this wonder.”

Thousands of years have passed since Isaiah’s psalm, we all still walk in darkness and all are in need of a “great light” to illuminate our steps as we walk through life. There’s a yearning in all beings to be guided by something or Someone bigger than their limited self.

For me, the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, brings a profound sense of hope into the world; hope that we all can grow as a people and know what it is like to feel the light of God’s love.

Coping with the Holidays

Be Generous and Mindful of those less fortunate to you. It is funny how years later particular events stick in your mind. One Christmas Season, a homeless man well-known to hang out in front of a coffee shop I used to go to, came inside. He would do this on occasion and ask for money in tattered clothes and mangled hair. His name was Wesley.

I later learned that he was a Vietnam veteran who suffered from PTSD. I had given him change on occasion, but didn’t feel like it that morning. He asked, “Do you have any money?” I said, somewhat brusquely, “No, I do not.” He then paused for a moment, a look of kind concern in his eyes, and said softly, “Do you need some.” This man with so little offered me what little he had and in doing so taught me the true heart of Christmas.

Remember the holiday season does not banish reasons for feeling sad or lonely. There is room for these feelings to be present, even if the person chooses not to express them. But like all feelings, they pass. It might just be that the holidays, with all its high expectations of happiness, intensify these feelings. Just hang in there.

Have a little faith in the goodness of life. We can all get weary from the drubbing we get at Christmas in our too materialistic, too focused on stuff society. But let that not dampen your spirit too much because beneath it all, there’s simply too much goodness in this world to appreciate all around you.

The humorist Garrison Keillor wrote:

“To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word. What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.”

God bless you all and have a Merry Christmas.

I’ll Be Eating Humble Pie on Christmas

Bow, stubborn knee — Shakespeare

I walked into an old church downtown yesterday. Its edifice was old and craggy, its stones walls worn by a century of wind, pelting snow and acid rain. I walked through its medieval-like doors, the smell of melted wax, a dollop of frankincense and recently fallen snow wrapped around my newly chapped face.

No one was there. I sat in a well-worn pew near the front. I looked up at the vaulted ceiling full of stars, angels and saints. I thought of the tens of thousands of souls over the past hundred or so years that had worshipped here, sought answers and sought peace. Now here I was.

A conundrum of faith is that we never really know. That’s why we must rely on faith, I guess. It seems like we’re given just enough light to see our next footstep in life, but never full illumination to see the entire journey ahead of us. It’s not reason to despair; it is reason to feel humble before the mysterious grandeur of all we don’t know.

It’s okay to have doubts. One of Jesus’ disciples, a guy aptly known as “Doubting Thomas,” had his for sure. But the opposite of faith isn’t doubt – it is fear. We’re all on some kind of existential thin ice wondering if and when it’s going to crack and our lives fall apart. It isn’t odd or strange to feel this way. It’s part of the human condition.

Henri Nouwen wrote:

“As we look at the starts and let our minds wander into the many galaxies, we come to feel so small and insignificant that anything we do, say, or think seems completely useless. But if we look into our souls and let our minds wander into the endless galaxies of our interior lives, we become so tall and significant that everything we do, say, or think appears to be of great importance.”

We have to keep looking both ways to remain humble and confident, humorous and serious, playful and responsible. Yes, the human being is very small and very tall. It is the tension between the two that keeps us spiritually awake.

I think real faith, is humble faith. To be otherwise is great hubris; a belief in one’s certitude to the exclusion of others.

Sister Joan Chittister writes:

“The opposite of humility is arrogance, something we are all guilty of at one time or another. Arrogance corrodes our awareness of the power of interdependence and leaves us to die incomplete. It reduces the creation of others to dust. It makes it impossible for us even to see our own knees.”

Many, many people around the world – good folks – have no one, are alone or are living under very difficult circumstances. They are the poor, both in body, spirit or material goods. A man seeking a donation in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol, says to the grouchy crank:

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. … We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

We should feel humble before such a reality; cognizant of all the blessings we’ve been given and maybe determined, perhaps for the first time in a while, to share our blessings with others in want as we speed toward the New Year.

The bible is usually tough for me to read. I don’t get a lot of the historical facts and how they play into what I am supposed to learn from the teachings. Maybe it’s in admitting that I don’t really know much that I become more open to everything. The Zen call it “beginner’s mind;” a state where we let go and empty ourselves of ourselves. There is something authentic in our coming to life on our knees rather than our heads that try to figure everything out. As U2’s Bono wailed, “If you want to kiss the sky you’d better learn how to kneel.”

It’s when I meet real people who have lived these words that I feel a greater sense of the reality of the in the bible – it’s the reality of word made flesh. That was the whole point about Jesus, wasn’t it? It wasn’t enough for God to send prophets with plumes of grey hair firing out of their heads and scary wooden staffs. No. God had to crank up the volume loud enough so we could hear. And the message was intimate and personal. He sent Jesus into our troubled world so “. . . that the people who walked in darkness [could] see a great light.”

In my own brokenness, sometimes I listen too closely to the voice of depression; the sad parrot on my shoulder that tells me I will always feel crummy and never really feel good about myself. Then I think about that part in the bible where Jesus says to one of his followers, “Who do you say I am?” The disciple replies that he is the Christ, the savior. Similarly, I think we can all ask Jesus “Who do you say I am?” The response is surely not the one depression would con us into believing. It’s a loving and authentic voice, one that says we are cherished and belong.

Jesus’ birth was a humble birth, indeed. As Thomas Merton once wrote, “There were only a few shepherds at the first Bethlehem. The ox and the donkey understood more of the first Christmas than the high priests in Jerusalem. And it is the same today.”

Sister Joan writes again:

“It is our need for one another that teaches us our need for God. It is our down-deep incompleteness that cries out all the days of our lives to be complete – by those around us, by God. We must pray for the humility it takes to find our wholeness in our littleness.”

Beyond the gifts, the feasts and the holly and the ivy, remember to be humble. It is this humility, this lack of ego that allows us to be part of the healing mysteries at Christmas time.

As for me, I’ll sit around my Yuletide table. And after the turkey and mashed potatoes, eat some humble pie.

Climbing Out of the Well of Depression

Depression feels like falling into a well. We’re trapped at the bottom with no way out. We look up and see light at the well’s entrance, but it’s so far away. It turns the soupy darkness surrounding us into a sluggish grey.

We long to feel the sun’s vitality again, a sense of motion in the rhythm of life. It becomes clear that we won’t get out of the well by our own efforts. We’ll need help – serious help.

Out of the darkness above, a ladder appears. Others might not see it, but we do. It’s a ladder meant only for us, as if it were crafted with knowing hands. Its railings and steps bring hope, a passage to another place above us. Yet, we must climb each step ourselves, one at a time.

God drops ladders into our wells all the time, but we’re often not aware of them. Sometimes they’re big, sometimes they’re small. Sometimes they’re a new medication that brings solace to our pained bodies; sometimes they’re in moments of mercy like when we share the shy smile of a stranger on the street.

We often can’t see these ladders because we’re on our hands and knees looking for a key to get us out. But a key won’t work. We don’t need to turn a lock so much as to rise from our knees. We can surrender our sadness, our weight as we go aloft. “Come to me all you who are burdened and I will give you rest” said Jesus. And in the depths of our depressed souls, that’s what we deeply thirst for – rest.

People with depression feel like it’s their constant companion. In such a relationship, and it’s a relationship of sorts, we need not destroy depression. We need to transcend it. We do so by letting go of our relationship with depression and embracing another sort of relationship.

Yesterday, I went to Mass. Often, I feel like such a dullard in those worn wooden pews. I understand some of the readings, but much of it I don’t. But, I often feel a quality of peace. Maybe, on occasion, even a peace that “passeth understanding.” I can’t explain this experience, but I appreciate it. It’s a Mystery which calls to all of us by name. It seeks to give us a new identity and loosen our grip on an old one. It asks us to let go of all the ways we limit our daily lives because of depression.

Jesus once asked Peter, as he asks each one of us, “Who do you say I am?” I always understood this question one way: it doesn’t matter what others say about “who” Jesus is; it only matters who we say he is to us.

I now see another way of understanding this passage.

It’s just as important for us to ask Jesus, “Who do you say I am?”

For those suffering from depression, the illness usually responds to this question. It tries to tell us who we are: worthless, weak and undeserving.

Are we willing to turn away from depression’s voice? Can we surrender it to find our true value as seen through the eyes of God? He sees us as worthy and precious beyond measure.

Are we willing to trade the noxious tirades of depression for the soothing and life offering voice of God?

As we climb the ladder, let’s leave the voice of depression at the bottom of the well. It’s voice becomes faint as we leave it behind. As we near the light, it infuses us with a true sense of our true value. We are precious in His sight. We can finally rest.

When we leave the well of depression behind, perhaps we find a different sort of well and a different kind of falling. Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun and author of the little book, “The Breath of the Soul: Reflections on Prayer”, writes:

“The purpose of prayer is the process of falling into God. As the mystics say, we are beginning to learn that God alone is enough. The truth is that none of us really knows where we are going and must never take it for granted that we do. We can plan our lives but we cannot guarantee them.

When our prayers are not answered, we know one thing for sure: The challenge of life now is to live it differently. And it will be through prayer that we discover how to do that. Seeing Jesus being driven out of town, we come to understand that we cannot expect more. Seeing Jesus depressed is not the loss of faith, it is the moment of faith. Seeing Jesus lose favor with the authorities, we learn that authorities are not the final measure of our lives.

Then we come to prayer free of the desires that bind us, free to live life in God, free to choose trust over certainty — which really means free to choose God over self.

The CEO of Depression

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I’ve read lots of books and articles about depression. What’s strikes me about most of them is how redundant they are. It’s as if there is a place called “Depression Town” where a lot of these authors live and reach consensus about what should be in these books

Most of the books I’ve read didn’t particularly help, some did. Yet, I felt compelled to keep buying them. I would show up on a regular basis at my neighborhood Barnes & Noble looking for new self-help titles or troll Amazon hoping –just hoping – that there would be a depression book written especially for me. During the worst of my depressions, I didn’t read the books so much as use them as emotional tourniquets.

The titles would usually be great – “10 Was to Stamp out Depression for Good”; the content not so much. Many of the books were boring. How could this be true, I thought? How could they be writing about depression – one of the most God-awful experiences you can imagine – and bore me? Most of the authors seemed never to have suffered from depression. If they had, they didn’t say. If they had, I wished that they had told me so. Maybe I would have felt a greater connection to what they were trying to say.

I think it’s easy to get lost in so much advice. And we’re all seeking pearls of wisdom; nuggets of truth that we can take back to our nest and ponder. I think the best wisdom not only deals with the particulars of depression, but also connects us to the larger human condition and all humans search for meaning within suffering.

Sister Kathryn James Hermes, author of the book, “A Contemplative Approach to Depression”, writes that prayer and contemplation help us to deal with depression in a larger spiritual context:

“Both of these practices lead to vulnerability – the learned powerlessness of the truly powerful who can simply be: simply wait, simply be present, simply wonder, simply trust that much larger hands are holding us and knows for whom we work in view of a much larger plan that we cannot as yet understand.”

Absent this, I think many of our efforts to get better may fall flat. Without such nurturance, advice becomes just another self-improvement project. Not much really changes. Oh, it might for a short while. We feel better, and then one of the wheels of our lives starts to wobble as we try to traverse our days. We feel like that is something about ourselves that needs fixing, and we get to it. Yet, there’s something very isolating and lonely about these Oprah-like projects to remake ourselves. Often, it involves rejection of some important element of who we really are.

That being said, we may come to the conclusion that depression is bigger than us, but it’s not bigger than God. A God –however you define Him/Her, who “holds us in His/Her much larger hands.”

When the turbines of depression were really churning in my life, dealing with it felt like a full time job. I had two jobs really – working as a lawyer and trying to get better. This often, in retrospect, would take on a grim earnestness that wasn’t very constructive. Sometimes, or so it seemed, God would drop these moments into my life to remind me not to take myself or my depression too seriously.

My then 5 year daughter would say, “Daddy works for the Depression Company.” As I tucked her into bed at night, and looked into those magical eyes that all small children possess, I said, “That’s right honey. And I’m the CEO.”