My breathing grew quick and my heart pounded in my chest. I didn’t know what was happening to me. Everything seemed to be closing in around me.
I was driving alone in my truck down Foothill Blvd, but I felt more than alone in my truck—I felt completely unseen, unknown.
Finally, the dam broke. I began weeping, still hyperventilating. I didn’t know what specifically led me to cry, other than the thoughts racing through my head. They felt so real. I knew they probably weren’t, but that seemed more like a wish than reality. Reality felt like what my thoughts were telling me, and I suppose that is what made me weep.
Eventually, I had cried all the tears I had in me to cry, so things naturally began to calm. The thoughts dissipated and I felt more able to think rationally again. Although, I suppose, the possibility of those thoughts being real continued to linger in the back of my mind, unnoticed, until it happened all over again—less than a week later.
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I began having these episodes every so often, happening once or twice a month. But it wasn’t until I was listening to an audiobook on restoration six months after the first episode that it dawned on me that I was experiencing panic attacks. Overwhelmingly realistic thoughts of self-condemnation, feelings of being all alone, panic attacks, weeping for no apparent reason, inability to sleep at night, loss of interest in things that had been passions of mine—the book went on to discuss many of the common signs of depression and I began to realize it was describing me.
I’m not depressed, I thought. I don’t mope around as if the world is ending. I’m disciplined and light-hearted. Depressed people are always a drag, not? They never smile and have no sense of humor. That’s not me.
Even more, I was following Jesus. I “fixed my eyes on the Truth of God’s Word.” I’ve been through many programs for reciting and grounding myself in Truth, what we as Christians call “reality.”
“God’s Word is what’s actually real,” preachers and counselors would say. “The path of health is to be rooted in reality.”
My wife and I had done nothing but serve Jesus since our marriage began. We were committed members of our local church, serving in any way needed. We had even lived overseas, teaching for a small missionary school. It’s not like we were just “living for ourselves.”
Yet here we were. Some might have called us “model servants of God.” Yet, I was falling apart. I was not healthy.
Serving people, being committed to and involved in a local church, and “fixing my eyes on Jesus and His Word” wasn’t doing anything to hold all these unwanted emotions away.
Why?
The Church Hasn’t Done Well with Depression
One of the weaknesses of modern Christians is that we can easily forget humans are wholistic beings. We are not merely intellect, spiritual, or physical. If we’re not careful, we can sound more gnostic than Christian.
Gnosticism is a heresy that the apostle Paul dealt with in his day. It held various beliefs, not the least of which included the notion that what is unseen is more real than what is seen. Much of gnosticism came out of the teachings of Plato, who believed that god (or “the highest good”) existed beyond the material universe, was perfect, and so would not have created an imperfect world.
Out of Plato’s Theory of Forms came the belief that the form of something is more real than its particular. For instance, there are many various types of particular tables. Plato reasoned that the essence of a table is its form. The form was thought of first, and now many types are created based on the form.
Plato’s theory seeped into Judaism and Christianity through gnosticism and is partly why some Christians believe the spiritual realities are more real than the physical realities. Right belief became our “form” and is often considered more important than how one feels on any particular day.
You may feel sad or lonely, but if God’s Word says you are not alone…then you are not alone and what you feel doesn’t matter.
You may feel unloved or unvalued, but if God’s Word says “I have called you by name, you are mine,” you cling to that because that is more real than what you feel.
We even have the old story about feeling, faith, and fact: “Three went for a walk on a wall: feeling, faith, and fact. Feeling took a bad fall, and faith was taken back. Faith walked so close to feeling that he fell too. But fact remained, and pulled faith up, and faith brought feeling too.”
Feeling is relegated to being unreliable and not real. Fact is hailed as the savior of faith and feeling.
The problem with this is two-fold. First, it is theologically flawed. God created man. He created all things. This is a central doctrine to the Christian faith. Not only did he create man, he created the particulars of man—and he called it all “good.”
Emotions, whether wanted or not, are a part of God’s good creation. The path towards healthy living in Christ is to recognize that emotions play a role in making us bearers of God’s image.
The second problem with gnostic ways of thinking about emotional and mental health is that because it singularly emphasizes the spiritual over the physical, it assumes something is spiritually wrong with a person when they face a complete psychological challenge like depression. Sure, depression can be caused by hidden sin in one’s life such as bitterness, jealousy, or malice. But depression is, perhaps, more commonly the result of chemical imbalances caused by an illness, change in hormones, lack of sleep, bad diet, or inactivity.
Other common causes of depression include trauma, burnout, loss of relationships, isolation, abuse, recurring pain, and other experiences that are not inherently spiritual in nature and often the result of human elements around us.
Some of you just thought, “everything is spiritual,” and you just proved how massively Plato has impacted Christian thought.
Did you know the word “spiritual” doesn’t even show up in the Bible until Paul’s writings? He frequently uses terms that would have been introduced through Greek philosophers and plays on them for the purposes of helping his Greco-Roman audience grasp what he’s saying.
But in ancient Hebrew thought, there wasn’t such a strong distinction between the physical realm and the spiritual realm. Creation just was.
What we call “spiritual realities” manifested themselves physically. Physical solutions seemed to have “spiritual impact.”
But today, we as Christians tend to be far too quick to deduce problems in a person’s life to a spiritual deficiency in that individual. While there is increasing work coming forth demonstrating the connection between our brain, our physical senses, our emotions, and spiritual wellbeing, for the most part we tend to only think in terms of praying certain prayers to “deal with issues.”
Sometimes there are particular actions that are causing depression or particular actions needed to be taken in order to help cope with depression.
When it comes to parents, many factors play into why we might be facing depression.
We don’t do well at talking about depression and its causes. Perhaps we are ignorant—I certainly was. Perhaps we are scared of the mysterious nature of depression.
I don’t know why we struggle to talk about it without narrowing the conversation to praying about ambiguous spirits or strongholds, but I do know depression is real. And when you’re a parent struggling with depression, it can be difficult to raise kids.
Then, the more you struggle with raising your kids, the more negative you feel about yourself as a parent and the more disparaging you think about your children.
Which leads to more depression.
And the cycle takes off.
I think it’s time we talk about it. I think it’s time we bust some myths about the subject and give some practical words of hope for those who are either dealing with it themselves or in relationship with others who are dealing with depression.
Perhaps we should start with the obvious: people right in front of you, that you’d never guess, face depression.
I used to think someone who dealt with depression moped around in their pajamas with a box of Kleenex spewing pessimistic thoughts all day. I never realized it’s possible to be one of the most ambitious, self-disciplined, personally motivated people in your world and still be depressed.
Before discovering the fact that my unprovoked weeping as I drove revealed a level of depression in my life, my answer to the Kleenex-carrying pessimists in my life was to go do something productive. Now I think my drive to be productive was simply my feeble attempt to stave off unwanted emotions. The busier I could keep my mind — especially when it led to accomplishments that people praised me for — the less opportunity my mind had for wandering to dark thoughts that shattered internal peace.
What I didn’t realize was that the body keeps the score. No matter how productive and positive I am, my body stores up those thoughts and emotions in a secret vault I never knew about until driving down Foothill Blvd and needing to pull over because I couldn’t breathe nor see well enough through my tears to drive.
Never assume you can tell a depressed person by the expression on their face.
Another myth we often tell ourselves about depression is that it can be“fixed.”
One preacher gives verses to memorize, another writes specific prayers for cutting off certain ties in your life. Someone else gives you a list of things to do and their friend tells you everything to stop doing.
If someone ever offers a solution that postures as a “fix” for depression, understand they do not know what they are talking about. Depression is not a missing puzzle piece that needs to be properly placed. Depression is like an injury — you’ve got to manage triggering experiences as you seek to heal.
Both Teresa and I have faced depression at different periods of our lives. It would have been difficult to spot our depression without digging deeper into our lives. We both either sought or were encouraged to seek a variety of “fixes.”
We read our Bibles more and watched movies less.
We invested in people instead of just sitting at home.
We participated in the ministry of our church.
We sought to be the change we longed to see in our community…
…and still, we’d find ourselves in private corners weeping.
Peeling back the layers to better understand ourselves, our stories, and our God’s hand in all the chaos hasn’t happened overnight. Truthfully, it’s still happening. But it’s because of our experiences that we have developed a desire to normalize the conversation. Some other couple, not unlike ourselves, is probably living in their own bubble of isolation. They need to know there is a way forward that gives more honest and stable direction than whiffing at the often unhelpful mantra of Christianese answers to depression.
They need to hear these four simple phrases… [2,976 more words]
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