For a long time now I have wanted to write on depression, but the Lord had not given me the words. I know from private emails I receive, that many readers struggle in this area. Many also experience prolonged periods of Spiritual dryness; I believe this is distinct from depression, but what I say here may also help those going through that season. I pray these words bring glory to Christ and help to those who are suffering. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” Psalm 19:14
PERSONAL HISTORY WITH DEPRESSION
Looking back, the first time I believe I was seriously, even “clinically” depressed was sometime during my first year in America. I was 9 years old and I was undergoing heavy culture shock and a major identity crisis. It was nothing like our move from Iraq to Greece—that was a change in country but still within the Mediterranean region which had a similar strong near-Eastern feel. My move to America in 1978 was a major life event because at a vulnerable age I was making a shift from Eastern civilization to a Western civilization—quite a bit of fall-out comes from that sort of social and philosophical shift. Beginning at that time, I experienced episodes of deep depression which continued on and off a few times a year until the spring of 2009. Yes, that’s 30 years. Thirty years where several times a year I was clinically depressed—I believe the professionals call it recurrent depressive disorder.
As anyone who suffers from depression will tell you, each and every episode seems horrible at the time. However, some episodes are objectively of greater consequence than others. In 2003, in the middle of my law school education, I went into a depression that was so disabling that I had to leave school, and under the care of a Christian doctor and counselor, I ended up going on prescription medications. A year after that was when I first read Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ Spiritual Depression, and the Lord worked through it to eventually bring me out of that period to a point where I could be medication free. That experience has kept me aware of the real need for medical and pharmaceutical intervention for depression under some circumstances, though I believe that such measures are overused these days.
Again, between July of 2008 and sometime in late April or early May of 2009, I was heavily depressed, for the entire 9-10 month period. It was one of the worst episodes I can remember. During that time, I re-read Spiritual Depression, and during the late spring I read another two books back-to-back that God must have wanted to use on me mightily, because I have not been seriously depressed since (though I still experienced a post-partum bout with it after my last child in 2011). Those two books are Tim Keller’s The Prodigal God and John Piper’s When the Darkness Will Not Lift. It was at this time that I started to think differently about emotions, behavior, mental health, and spiritual well-being. It took another year and a half or so for these thoughts about spiritual well-being to finally bloom into actual spiritual well-being, so none of this was a lightning quick change.
BIBLICAL DESCRIPTIONS OF EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL STATES OF BEING
What I am about to describe has been helpful for me, but I don’t claim it to be a solution for everyone. I came to see, through the grace of God, that the spectrum of socially acceptable emotions and mental states has become very narrow in our day (despite our professions of “tolerance”), and anything outside of what we deem “appropriate” is branded with a label. In other words, we are given a set of boundaries, and then we are told that these are the states (mental and emotional) which “we” have defined and established as healthy. While we are careful not to call them “wrong,” which would be judgmental, we are quick to call anything outside of these boundaries a “sickness,” “disease,” or “disorder.” The rationale behind this kind of labeling may be an attempt to be gentle and therapeutic, but I think taking on these labels makes it more likely that those affected will remain outsiders, because labels tend to be stable and “sticky,” rather than restorative. To me, this didn’t seem to jive with the Scriptures.
When I looked in God’s Word, I saw that the Lord allowed his people a fuller more robust spectrum of emotional and mental dispositions. It seems to me that if David was alive today he would be labeled “bipolar,” and would be put on drugs. Yet this king, this man after God’s own heart, this sinner, is not afraid to say things like:
“O Lord, how many are my foes!
How many rise up against me!”—Psalm 3:1“Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am faint;
O Lord, heal me, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in anguish.
How long, O Lord, how long?”—Psalm 6:2-3“Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
rise up against the rage of my enemies…
My shield is God Most High.” —Psalm 7:6,10“I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart;
I will tell of all your wonders.
I will be glad and rejoice in you;
I will sing praise to your name, O most High.”—Psalm 9:1-2“Why, O Lord, do you stand far off?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?”—Psalm 10:1
And this is only within the first 10 Psalms. It’s not just David, though. Many of God’s people struggled, really struggled: Abraham was a chronic liar, Elijah prayed that he might die: “I have had enough, Lord, take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” (1 Kings 19:4) Hannah was depressed about not having children, and suffered such derision from Peninnah, that she “wept and would not eat.” Elkanah, her husband, sought to understand: “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad?…” (1 Sam. 1:8) I’m sure whole studies can be (and probably have been) done about the range of emotions the Biblical characters have exhibited throughout Scriptures.
These emotional states and their expression are common enough in the Bible that we should really expect that they are part of normal human experience. Moreover, they are not condemned as sin. God deals with his people in and through these emotions; he does not postpone his plans to “heal” them from these “diseases” before going on to use them back in “normal” life. Sadness to the point of doubting God can look like unbelief, and God’s people at times are called to repentance of unbelief, but not every deep sadness is sinful unbelief. Sometimes it is just part of our ongoing conversation with God, and he is working all things together for good.
THE EFFECT OF A BROAD EMOTIONAL AND MENTAL STATES SPECTRUM
Something happened to me when I expanded my range of acceptable emotions, feelings, and reactions, etc. Some of the fear and anxiety over whether I was “sick” with depression (again) vanished and I was able to see Jesus better in the midst of sadness, disappointment, loss, and even elation. Being able to use all types of different words for my emotions (overwhelmed, lost, afraid, downcast, anxious, disquieted, frustrated, angry etc.) has kept me from feeling like I have two choices to my mental and emotional well-being: “depression” or “normal.” I have embraced the liberty to say, “how long, O Lord?” and even “why have you forgotten me?” (Ps. 42:9), recognizing this as part of my conversational wrestling with my Savior, and without labeling myself as a reject or an unbeliever. So I’ve expanded my spectrum and the terminology. I have been able to say without fear or shame to my husband: “I’m angry,” “I’m very sad,” “I’m scared,” “I’m agitated,” “I’m lonely,” and so on and so forth, sometimes digging even deeper into the language of the Psalms. It doesn’t stop me from being sad or discouraged, etc., but labeling emotions, which are manifestly transient, is different from labeling diseases and disorders, which tend to become part of one’s identity. (It is worth noting, though, that in the Bible, even those afflicted and marked with “incurable” diseases and the associated ostracization and public shame could be cured by our God.) So, it has given me the freedom and grace with myself to have those emotions without being those disorders, and slowly, with my husband’s help, to pray and rely on the Lord in a palpably different way.
Disclaimer: I am not a psychiatrist, nor a psychologist. I am not giving a diagnosis. This is what is working for me and the story of grace that Jesus has worked into my life.
UPDATE: I did not mean to imply above that chronic lying is not a sin, in my discussion of Abraham. The issue I was making in that paragraph was that the people in the Bible were real men and women who struggled with a range of emotional and mental states and a range of sins for that matter. In a later post I plan on discussing sins that may lead to depression and sins that may flow from depression, and of course the non-sin depression.
UPDATE: PART TWO IS HERE
Thanks for this, Luma. I went through depression for a time fifteen years ago, and I wish back then I’d had Lloyd-Jones’s Spiritual Depression. What got me through was attending a bible study where I was able to see my wrong thoughts. Oh, how we need to rely on His Word to see clearly!
When I finished the last line of this post I said, “NO! Don’t stop talking!!” I wanted to read more! I’ve been Blessed to know you and worship and fellowship with you for six years now. I have learned so much about me through being with you. Your struggles help me examine my own as I compare and contrast how we experience and work through things. I admire you, which I have told you off and on for years, just as you are. Thank you for this post and I can’t wait to talk to you more about it!
You’re welcome and I’ll give you a hug next time I see you to go along with it.
Words AND hugs are good.
This was so good, I didn’t want it to end either! I love your point about naming the emotions instead of allowing the “diagnosis” to become part of your identify; that has been very helpful to me as well. It’s not who I am, it’s just how I feel. After the birth of my (now 8 month old) third baby, I wound up with postpartum depression and I just didn’t quite know what to do with that spiritually. I’m currently on medication, but I would like to be medication free soon, so I think I will definitely have to print this and keep it close by.
You have been able to write the words which I have not been able to gather into cohesive sentences! It has been many, many thankful years since I have been ‘depressed’ and during this reprieve tears come to my eyes reading your post! Since it’s been quite a while, those who have met me since then would say I am quite expressive in joyful qualities. I suppose they would say they know me to be ‘well.’ I AM well! And if I should find myself in that ‘unwell’ state again, I will have gone back to the scriptures to study the ‘unwell’ people described there, as well as read the books mentioned here well in advance of any such episode. I am well! God has not left us to the likes of Freud and others!
Thank you for this informative post!
This is such an important subject and your transparency is helpful. Depression is real and, as a recent commercial reminds us, it hurts. Depression must be treated with care and sensitivity. But why has there been such an explosive growth of depression in our culture? Perhaps our expectation for gregariousness is unrealistic. Is it possible in some cases that we’ve been led to believe that there is no place for sadness in normal life?
Is it also possible that (in some cases) we’re misdiagnosing normal sadness as depressive disorder because we do not understand the differences between them?
In, The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sadness Into Depressive Disorder, Alan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakelfield suggest that standard criteria for diagnosing depressive disorder does not adequately distinguish intense normal sadness from biologically disordered sadness. They offer a critique of “over-expansive psychiatric definitions of disorder.” They offer helpful insights for distinguishing “sadness due to internal dysfunction” from “sadness that is a biologically designed response to external events.”
Their chapters exploring the anatomy of normal sadness and the failure of the social sciences to distinguish this kind of sadness from depressive disorder should be required reading for all medical and psychiatric professionals. Although distinctions between normal and disordered sadness are not always easily discernable, efforts to make them should lead to more holistic care. By holistic, I mean care that respects the multi-dimensional way God made humans.
I personally believe (as do the authors) that many people have been greatly helped with antidepressant medications. I have recommended medicinal aid on many occasions and I respect those who are willing to try this path. When depression becomes a debilitating reality, medicinal aid is the right and necessary way to counter it. But medication alone is not sufficient. We are more than physical beings with neurological needs.
Based on my counseling experience, I believe that sometimes medicinal aid is a temporary need until life-circumstances and personal responses become more healthy through the assistance of godly counsel and other supportive structures.
As one more trained in theology than physiology and psychology, I offer an important consideration. God created humans as multi-dimensional beings. We are physical beings with bodily needs; social beings with community needs and spiritual beings with spiritual needs. Treatment and care that is holistic must look at each dimension in relation to the others.
As sinful beings living in a fallen world, we must expect hardships. Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33). He also said, “Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34).
Expectations for uninterrupted gregariousness ignore this truth and lead to greater struggles with discouragement and despair.
Steve Cornell
Senior pastor
Millersville Bible Church
Pastor Cornell, thank you for adding to the conversation with this insight. You hit the nail on the head when you said that we are multi-dimensional beings. Indeed, we are. And I agree with your assessment that modernly we seem to overlook the place of sadness. Sometimes the sadness is profound, and yet it is sadness nonetheless.
Luma, what valuable insight. Thank you for sharing these words. I have never struggled with depression in this way, but love enough people who have, and your words are helpful to better understand/counsel them. I can, however, relate to what you’re saying about being free to share what you are feeling. I think that we try so hard to portray a “happy Christian witness,” that we become plastic instead of real.
And along with what Steve just added, I am currently reading “Blame It on the Brain?” by Edward Welch, which does a great job of discussing the connections and dynamics between the physical and spiritual aspects. Even if it is a completely physically caused disorder, it is still spiritual because the person is suffering.
Amy, it was wonderful to read that you don’t have this struggle. Praise God! I’m glad to read you are there for others that do. One of the things I always suggest to those who ask me about depression, is to find someone who is on fire for Jesus and get discipled by them—this love is contagious and I know you have it because I saw it all over your face when I met you at TGCW12.
You’re absolutely right, no matter how physical it is or can be, there is always a spiritual dimension.
Why does Luma believe that pharmaceuticals are over used these days? Why do I read that statement more often than not in articles about depression? To me it implies that only an elite, narrow group of sufferers should really have access to this kind of relief….and everyone else….the unwashed masses can go hang. Today, thankfully, more people have medical treatment available to them, so of course pharmaceutical use would increase. Why is that seen as a bad thing? I thought that was part of the goal….that suffering people can get help. Who hasn’t walked through the valley during the death of a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend, divorce? The list of depression causing events in this sinful world are endless. To restrict treatment is just wrong. Maybe Luma meant abuse instead of over use.
I hesitate to speak for Luma but I took her statement about over use of anti-depressants to infer that medication is prescribed ad lib without caring discernment of real needs. I have seen this attitude in medicine. No one is saying restrict care but rather a call for heartfelt care vs “here take this pill you’ll feel better, now move along” care.
Yes, this is exactly my intent. You did a great job answering for me.
Thank you, Karen, well said.
Thank you for sharing your heart and what God has done and is doing in your life. I resonate with you regarding identifying and being ok with a wide-range of emotions, even the hard ones. I remember distinctly hearing from God when I went through my divorce several years ago. It was impressed on me to walk through the pain and to feel the emotions, not to numb them with anything. The phrase that helped me was that these feelings are painful but they in themselves will not kill me and God helped me walk through them. I had a very narrow range of emotions most of my life. Not too happy, not too sad and God freed me to feel so much more. Sometimes it feels like a burden but mostly it is a good thing. What He taught me a few years ago that really helped as well was that it is ok to hold opposing emotions in tandem. I don’t have to squash one emotion and let the other one reign. I can feel scared and excited at the same time. I can be happy about one thing and sad about another. I don’t have to push down the sad and hide it to only feel the happy. And I don’t have to minimize any happy feelings b/c there may be some sadness there too. It seems to me in general that what you wrote about emotions in an acceptable range are ok but anything outside of that is wrong or a disease, etc. I struggle with both sides of that coin. Sometimes wanting to restrict those that have emotions too big for me to be comfortable with and yet also wanting to be free to express the emotions I have without restriction (as long as it isn’t sin of course). It is a work in process to allow freedom within and to others as well. Praise God that He isn’t finished with me yet and for the grace He pours out so abundantly on His children. He is good.
Thank you for sharing your story. Yes, the Lord is good!
This is a very interesting article, I’ve never seen this angle before. This explains my experience at the age of seventeen, and I hope it will be a pointer to helping members in my congregation where I serve. Thank you, for sharing.
In Christ
Joshua
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