The Bible Won't Cure My Depression, But I Still Need It

When you’re depressed, it doesn’t take long until you begin to receive prescriptions for how to fix yourself. They come in many forms. Some of them are pithy feel-good maxims that look like they should be painted onto a piece of distressed barn board: Just choose joy. Think positively. Count your blessings. Some come in the form of diet, exercise, or lifestyle advice: Have you tried cutting (insert food item here) out of your diet? Nature will be your healer; you just need to get outside. Have you tried (insert exercise program, alternative medicine product, or lifestyle fad here)? And, unfortunately, if you’re a Christian, some of these prescriptions come in the form of spirituality: Just pray more. Spend more time reading your Bible. Just have faith.

Often this advice, even if well-intentioned, causes more pain than good. Instead of hearing our story and keeping company with us in the midst of our pain, such advice tries to shout it away. It assumes that depression (or any other ailment) can be cured with a silver bullet approach instead of acknowledging its complexity. It also places a burden of guilt on the person who is suffering—implying that their lingering sorrow is a sign they’re doing something wrong or simply not trying hard enough.

But sometimes such harmful advice does carry seeds of truth. For example, for many people, exercise does help to manage depression. I know many also find being outdoors in a natural setting to be helpful. But we acknowledge that these lifestyle elements are not the only agents in our movement toward healing. They’re important, but they are not a one-stop-shop for mental and emotional wellness. They come in balance with other practices as well—like going to therapy, taking medication, or getting good sleep. When it comes to living with mental illness, I see spiritual practices in a similar way.

To put it simply: Reading the Bible will not cure my depression. I believe those who have reduced mental health to a consistent Bible study plan are severely misguided. Bible study will not prevent me from getting cancer or being in an accident—and it will not provide a guaranteed preventative strategy against mental illness either.

There are some people, I know, who would take issue with this. Some people seem to think that saying the Bible won’t cure depression calls into question the Bible’s authority or effectiveness. They think that if I say we shouldn’t suggest the Bible (or prayer or any other host of practices) as the cure, that I don’t think depressed people should read the Bible. Far from it. But we cannot reduce the hope of the Bible to a how-to-cure manual or a book-sized pain reliever. It’s not what the Bible is meant to be, and treating it as such does it a great disservice.

Let’s go back to the example of cancer. When someone receives a cancer diagnosis, I would imagine you are unlikely to suggest that a more vigorous spiritual life would cure them. In such situations, we encourage them in their relationships with medical professionals and in their suggested treatments. We support them with lifestyle changes they may need to make. We eagerly step in to meet pressing physical needs, like providing rides or meals or child-minding services.

But I would imagine that you would still believe the Bible would offer them comfort during a painful and uncertain season. In fact, if you are a Christian, you would probably see the Bible as an essential piece of navigating that journey—but you wouldn’t claim it as the cure for cancer. We can draw similar parallels about the Bible’s role when we face the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, or any host of physical illnesses or personal tragedies. Mental illness is no different.

I believe the Bible is incredibly helpful when we’re depressed—and I think Christians who struggle with depression will benefit from its truths. But it is beneficial in the same way that it is beneficial to the cancer patient wrestling with physical fragility, the new widow awash with grief, or the mom wondering how she’ll make ends meet. I do not believe that the “benefit” the Bible offers is about instantaneously removing us from pain—but about providing us with hope and truth and comfort to sustain us in the midst of that pain.

In the midst of my depression, as I turn to the Bible, I find a God who promises to be near to the brokenhearted and suffering, even if I can’t “feel” his presence. I find a God who consistently uses people who struggle like me—so I know that depression does not mean I’m disqualified from being an effective part of his kingdom. I find a Savior who himself suffered and wept and bled—so I know He understands my agony. I find a Spirit who intercedes for me when I don’t have words—so I know that God is still near me and hearing me, even when my words run out.

In the Bible I find a God who makes it his work to create beauty out of ashes in the most unexpected and miraculous ways. I find a God who gives me permission to bring my doubt and fear and anger and utter weariness before him. I find a God who refused to relinquish the world to sin and all its effects—and who set in motion a grand redemption of not only my soul but also my broken body and broken brain chemistry. I find a God who has promised to make all things new.

This is a hope robust enough to sustain me when I have no strength left to hope. It is an anchor when all seems lost and when darkness seems to have won. It will not cure me—but it will give me a reason to take one more breath. And that is enough.

Breath Prayer: A Prayer to Quiet My Anxious Heart

When I am deeply stressed or anxious or experiencing an overwhelming emotion like grief, I can feel it in my body. My muscles are tense, and my shoulders rise towards my ears as they tighten. I can feel my heartbeat elevated and can nearly hear my blood pulsing. I feel jittery and restless, sometimes to the point my fingers tremble. My stomach churns. And my thoughts—they surge and shift, taking me down too many rabbit trails, reluctant to quiet and still.

I know I’m not the only one who has felt this way. I would dare say all of us have at some time or another. Some of us, who live more chronically with anxiety or who walk through a prolonged season of grief or trauma, feel it more often than we would care to admit.

When I feel like this, I want to bring myself to God and put my anxious, hurting heart before him, but the physical and emotional strain of my body in the moment seems to rise and suffocate the words as I try to form them. Sometimes I don’t even know what words to pray. In moments such as these, I have found a particular model of prayer to be helpful: breath prayer.

Breath prayer has been a practice of Christians for centuries. It is a simple, one sentence prayer paired to the rhythm of your breath. As you inhale, call on a name or characteristic of God, and as you exhale, express the desire or need of your heart. For example, (inhale) God of all comfort, (exhale) bring your peace. Continue to breathe deeply and repeat your prayer. Come back to it for as long and as often as you need to throughout the day.

I find in moments when my emotions and stress response run high, a breath prayer can calm my body, my mind, and my spirit. It invites me to stop, to quiet my beating heart and frantic thoughts in God’s presence. It also focuses my heart on God—on who he is, on what he offers, on his nearness to me. As my breath deepens, and my mind continues to meditate on the Lord, I find myself quieting. It doesn’t solve all my problems or permanently fix my emotional state, but it does invite me into a moment of quiet. It helps me recenter on the God who hears, on the God who is with me.

We live in a tumultuous and chaotic world. Stress and anxiety will come. And when they do, when you feel your thoughts and your body becoming overwhelmed and paralyzed, pause, breathe, and pray. Carry your breath prayer with you into those moments. And rest in the fact that you are loved, seen, and heard as his beloved child.

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I would encourage you to choose your own breath prayer, based on what the needs and desires of your heart are in this moment. But here are a few examples to help you.

• Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me.

• Breath of Life, breathe on me.

• Father, let me feel your presence.

• Good Shepherd, show me your way.

• Lord Jesus, let your Kingdom come.

• Lord, in your mercy, bring your healing.

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Do you pray using a breath prayer? What breath prayer has been helpful or meaningful to you?

I Need Stories From the Dark

I heard the first threads of their stories in a seminary classroom. Just months before, I had emerged from another bout of depression, and the taste of that darkness still lingered. The isolation. The tears—then the numbness. The heavy weight pulling me to stay in bed, to not think, to disappear. I wonder now if I would have noticed them if it hadn’t been fresh, if I wasn’t still reminded by a pill each morning of my own fragility. But in that moment, I had ears to hear.

I made extra notes in the margins of my notebooks based on this anecdote and that aside from my professor, and those wispy threads began to converge. These people in church history, the ones I was studying, the ones we still celebrated—they too knew that darkness. They too had been depressed. Why had I never heard their stories? Would my own experience with depression have been different if I had?

Looking back now, I wonder how many explicit messages I heard about depression. I don’t remember anyone specifically telling me I was a failure for succumbing to it, but it was the message I received just the same. As it tightened its grip on me during my senior year of college, I felt as though I should be able to try harder, as though I had to find a way to pull myself together. But I barely had the strength to make it to class most days—an emotional overhaul was beyond my reach. I felt guilty and weak. I felt like a “bad” Christian. I was surrounded by a culture of spiritual perfectionism and keenly aware of how far I fell short. I was broken—shattered was more like it—and the God of comfort I had known fell silent.

At the time, I didn’t hear stories about Christians suffering from depression, aside from the confided experiences of a couple close friends. I certainly didn’t hear stories about what it looked like to live in the midst of depression, those stories of what faithfulness looked like in the dark. I heard whispers and rumors of others who suffered like me, but our time in depression’s darkness was not a story to be told—or so it seemed. It felt shameful and awkward. I didn’t know what other people would make of my pain—I didn’t know what to make of it myself, of that pain that grew so great it became nothingness, numbness, the void.

But what if, in that moment, I knew the stories I would come to know later? What if I knew of the saints of the darkness, of these sisters and brothers throughout the church’s history who had traveled this road long before me, who had wept and wrestled as I did? It would not have removed depression’s darkness or dulled its ache, but it may have made it just a little less bitter—to know that this was not some strange or shameful thing that was happening to me, to know I was not alone, to know God was not finished with me yet.

I realize now that the stories we choose to tell communicate something. My experience has been that we like stories of the light, stories of victory, stories of perfectly packaged happy endings. And why not? They’re heartwarming. But when we prioritize these at the expense of stories from the opposite part of human experience—of struggle and pain—we send an implicit but clear message that those messier and more painful stories are not welcome. It is this sort of message that kept me uncertain and quiet about my own depression. It is this message that perpetuates stigma and judgment, that suggests Christians shouldn’t struggle as I did.

But there are saints among us—perhaps you’re one of them—who have stories from the dark, stories of the not-yet, stories that end with a question mark—and we need those just as much. We have these stories throughout our history, just waiting to be told. We have them living and breathing among us today. Stories like these give me permission to acknowledge and share my own struggles. They remind me I’m not alone. They remind me of how God is faithful when I can’t see him or when I wonder if I have the strength for faith left. They tell me depression will not be the end of my story.

In my own experience with depression, I have found stories of the dark in the lives of people throughout church history. They are a source of comfort, encouragement, and guidance to me. But they also give me boldness to tell my own story—because somewhere out there is a college student like I once was, weary and heavy laden with depression’s load, and my story may just be the one they need to hear.

Do the Next Right Thing

I tend to be a planner. I like lists. I like being prepared. I like knowing what to expect. I work best with goals and plans and my resulting to-do list. (Can I get a show of hands?)

Seasons of pain, though, strip away my plans, my sense of security, my vision of what life will look like next week, next month, next year. I’ve seen it in depression, when plans and the simplest tasks become a burden under its overwhelming weight. I’ve seen it during mysterious seasons of illness, when I was forced to slow down, to ask for help, to adjust my expectations of what I could physically do. We saw this in the midst of infertility, when we lost our ability to plan, to envision our future, to hold onto a time line.

Grief, fear, depression, illness—these cannot be planned away. They cannot be sped through via a list or well-laid preparations. They slow us down. They lay waste to our plans—and our ability to craft new ones. Pain has a way of shattering the facade of our control, our ability to predict the future, of our sense of power. In such moments, life can feel terribly overwhelming.

How are we to move through these seasons? How are we to move through this season, when the world as we knew it seems to crumble?

Some of us are facing sickness. Some of us are fearful for loved ones. Some of us are grieving, are anxious, are depressed, are angry. Some of us are numb. We’re isolated, cut off physically from communities, from loved ones, from our normal routines. It can feel overwhelming to the point of paralysis. How are we to navigate this?

When we face seasons of pain, in which our lives and hearts are cracked open and laid bare, we lose our ability to plan ahead. How can we, when we need all the energy and strength available to survive each day, each hour, each moment? All we can do is steadily live through the pain, to keep moving forward breath by breath. All we can do is the next right thing.

The reality is, this is all we ever can do. Even the best of our plans and the most glorious of our daydreams require us to make a tiny litany of choices to see them take on flesh and blood. Pain in all its forms only makes this more apparent: all I can ever do in any given moment is the next right thing.

So in this global moment of chaos, of grief, of fear, of suffering—what is the next right thing for you to do? What is the next right thing to live faithfully where you are in this moment? What is the next right thing to move through this season? What is the next right thing to choose life?

Though there will be similar themes, what this looks like will take on different forms for each of us. Over the last week, for me it has meant taking a walk, reading a novel, and eating ice cream. It has meant calling a friend and keeping my distance from people I’d much rather embrace. It has been cooking through long recipes and pulling pre-made meals from the freezer. It has meant staying informed and also knowing when I need to pull away from my news feed and the latest reports. It has meant slowing down to keep pace with a toddler’s fascination with things I have come to see as mundane. It has been watching my favorite cooking show, praying more, and letting myself have the space to have a good cry.

The next right thing is not always glamorous or easy. It doesn’t always feel good. Sometimes it’s doing dishes or folding laundry or sanitizing those door handles. Sometimes it’s changing dirty diapers or tending to scraped knees. It may be finishing that project you’ve been putting off or renewing your resolve (once again) to stay at home.

The next right thing may also not be something you do at all. It may be taking time to rest. It may be stillness. It may be giving yourself space to grieve. It may be giving yourself space for delight. It doesn’t have to be monumental. It may not be something you can check off a list. But it may still be the next right thing. So do it.

As we walk through this season together, it will be easy to think about what we can’t do, what we can’t control. It will be easy to think weeks ahead to what may (or may not) happen. When your mind starts down these trails, when you find yourself uncertain, paralyzed, overwhelmed, fearful—Pause. Breathe. Look at where you are in this moment, consider what the next tiny step is towards faithfulness, towards life—and do the next right thing.

How to Care for Your Mind in the Time of Social Distancing

“The human heart is like a millstone in a mill; when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then ‘tis itself it grinds and wears away.” - Martin Luther

We find ourselves in an unusual predicament. We are living in a time in which the circumstances in our world spark anxiety. It’s a concerning situation. Every day we see the coronavirus spread. We see the loss of life. We see empty shelves in our grocery stores and hear rumors of shortages of medical supplies.

This is compounded by the practices of social distancing we are adopting to slow the spread of the virus. Even if you had no prior predisposition towards anxiety or depression, the situation is psychologically vulnerable. We’re more isolated and less occupied. All the while with more fodder for our twisting, spinning thoughts.

What are we to do to care for our minds in the time of social distancing? How can we practice psychological self-care when we’re forced into a unique circumstance that keeps us from common means of keeping ourselves healthy?

During this time, I’m finding some advice from Martin Luther. (See last week’s post on Luther’s wisdom about loving our neighbors during a public health crisis.) He was no stranger to depression or anxiety. He knew what it felt like to be locked in cycling thoughts and fears. He also knew what it felt like to be socially isolated.—He spent nearly a year sequestered in Wartburg Castle during the beginning of Protestant Reformation, when his life was at stake.

Luther’s advice doesn’t replace the importance of appropriate mental health care, and I know that for those of us with mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, adhering to his wisdom will be that much more difficult. But regardless of whether we live with a mental health diagnosis, he gives all of us excellent practical advice on taking care of our minds.

1. Get Out

When Luther found the “millstone” of his heart grinding away, he rushed out among his pigs “rather than remain alone by myself.” If you live in an area like I do, some of you may actually be able to find the companionship of farm animals. For the rest of us, following this advice might mean taking the dog for a walk, if you have one, or simply going outside and paying attention to the world around you. Watch the birds, who your Father in Heaven cares for. See the budding trees and flowers your Father in Heaven clothes. Breathe in deeply the fresh air and root yourself in your place. Let the physicality of the life around you pull you from your mind.

2. Flee Solitude

Luther also often counseled those who struggled with anxiety and depression to “flee solitude,” for it was solitude that gave thoughts space to fester. This is incredibly difficult advice to follow now, as we practice social distancing, so we may need to get creative. Use the technology available to you to connect with someone from afar—call someone on the phone or video chat with a friend. Think of creative ways for in-person contact that still maintains recommended social distancing practices. I’ve heard of neighbors gathering outside on lawn chairs spaced six feet or more apart and of friends picnicking with self-provided food, separated by a similar buffer. These things do not replace in-person contact or assuage our innate need for human touch. But they are some of our best options to follow Luther’s advice.

3. Find Delight

He also recommends to “joke and jest,” as a way to make morbid thoughts fly. He encourages the depressed and despondent to relish good food, to partake in activities they enjoy. He understood the importance of delight in fighting the battles of our minds. This, again, may need to be reimagined during this time—but keep your eyes open for and seek out even the simplest forms of delight and sources of laughter during this tumultuous season.

4. Dwell on Truth and Hope

Finally, give the mill of your heart something fruitful to “grind.” I’m all for staying informed. It’s an important part of engaging with the world. We do no one a service by sticking our heads in the sand or downplaying the current situation. But there does come a time to pull away from the headlines and the news feeds. As your anxious thoughts build, pull away and give your mind something different to process. Replace your morbid thoughts with a source of hope. Luther would encourage you to turn your eyes to Christ. He would encourage you to sing. Meditate on Scripture. Pray. We must live with eyes wide open to the reality facing us, all while anchoring ourselves in the truth of the sovereignty and goodness of the God we worship. Feeding our minds with truth positions us to be better able to abide with peace in the midst of the chaos.

Stay well, friends.