Mental Health Awareness Month - Episode 19 Transcript Post
Today I want to talk about a subject that I spoke a little bit about back in Episode 5 – Life with a Side of Anxiety. I want to talk a little about mental health. More specifically, mental health from the Christian perspective – and even more specifically, mental health from the perspective of someone who walks with depression and anxiety. Please know, what I am sharing are my experiences and what I have learned as I have walked with these sharp edges of mental illness over most of my life.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I think that this is a subject that is far too often lost in the church. I believe, more often than not, Christians simply do not know how to reckon mental illness with a loving God. It goes back to the questions we ask when something hard happens – how can a loving God, a good God, allow this to happen? But, what I can say for certain, this is one of the many ways we walk through life in a broken world in broken bodies. It is not easy, and that answer doesn’t fix anything – it simply is. One thing we cannot do, no matter what our belief or faith system might be, we cannot NOT talk about it. That just keeps it in the dark and continues to allow stigma to grow, which then causes the depths to become much deeper.
I mentioned in episode 5 that I believe that I’ve suffered with anxiety most of my life. I look back and think about how my head carried so many heavy thoughts and how I would spend much of my childhood with an upset stomach, avoiding many social settings and I think about how my anxiety manifests now as an adult, or what precedes a panic attack, and it is the same. As a young Christian I believed that depression was a sign I wasn’t praying hard enough or that I didn’t have enough faith…or I was not praying correctly against attacks. Imagine my heartbreak when I went to the doctor months following my first surgery at the age of 26 to talk with her about what was going on (because surely something happened during that surgery) and she said, “Stacy, I think your depressed.” I burst into tears, yelled at her that I was a Christian and there was no way I could be depressed – we don’t get depressed. And then I sat there bawling for close to an hour.
Nothing about that appointment made sense to my young mom mind. I was a good person. I had a deep faith in God. I served at my church. I loved my family. I prayer. I read my Bible. I could not be depressed. But, I could. What started as a bout with post-surgical depression brought on by general anesthesia would lead to awareness of depression in my life off and on in the coming decades. I have been on medication off and on since I was 26. My longest time being off of medication for depression was 8 years and in late 2019 I had to go back on.
I don’t know how long I will be on them, but I know that I now do not equate my dance with mental illness to sin (other than this basic broken world and body), lack of faith, lack of prayer or anything else. What I learned early in life is that I really wished we would have talked more about this is church. I wish that sermons were preached on the subject – more than a glancing mention on the way to some topic considered deeper or certainly more spiritual. Depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, and any other number of mental illnesses are not outside of the grace of God.
These are some things I now know – and still often have to remind myself – about being a Christian and walking with mental illness.
Depression is NOT a sin. God is not apart from you in the midst of depression. He is a very present and relational God, who is full of love and grace in the midst of all of our pain. Now His grace in the midst of mental illness might look a little different, but that is where we learn to see Him as the God he truly is, and not the god we have made in our heads. This is what I have learned about God’s grace in the middle of depression and anxiety (and it holds true for all other forms of mental illness as well).
Depression and anxiety are very clearly walked out in the Bible. They are intense and deep human experiences that God is very near and very present with His love and grace. While there are many places in God’s Word you can find struggles with depression (Job, Jonah, Jeremiah among just a few), the Psalms seem to cut right to the heart. Here are just a few places we can read and see God as present and relational – there is hope even in the pit of despair.
Psalm 38: "… there is no soundness in my flesh [referring to the whole state of wellbeing] … I go mourning all day … my strength fails me; And the light of my eyes, even that has gone from me [from having wept continuously] … For I hope in you, O Lord; You will answer, O Lord my God."
Psalm 42 (& 43): "Why are you in despair [downcast], O my soul [referring to the whole being - physically/emotionally]? And why have you become disturbed [despondent] within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence."
Psalm 69: "For the waters have threatened my life. I have sunk in deep mire, and there is no foothold … I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched; my eyes fail while I wait for God … But I am afflicted and in pain; May Your salvation, O God, set me securely on high … For the Lord hears the needy and does not despise His who are prisoners."
No matter the mental or emotional aching and struggle we go through, God is not looking for sin in the middle of our pain. He’s actually looking to help us know that He’s there with us … present and with love and grace! This concept is beautifully expressed in Psalm 37:23-26:
"The steps of a man are established by the LORD, and He delights in his way. When he falls, he will not be hurled headlong, because the LORD is the One who holds his hand … all day long He is gracious and lends, and his descendants are a blessing."
In the passage I just read, there is a beautiful example of how God’s relational actions are found in science. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences here in the US did a study in 2018 (https://www.pnas.org/content/115/11/E2528) where they found that hand-holding is associated with pain reduction. Did you catch that in the passage? “because the Lord is the One who holds his hand…” He is our relationally close, hand-holding, grace-filled, pain-reducing God.
Remember my tirade in the doctor’s office about how I couldn’t be depressed because I was a Christian and we didn’t get depressed!? (By the way, I still laugh at myself over that one – it took several years of therapy, but I do giggle about it now!) Well, what I learned is to take a closer look at the men and women of the Bible, especially those in the New Testament. Even those church leaders, those disciples and members of the early church, full of faith, fresh from the presence of the physical Christ and now filled with the Holy Spirit – they were not exempt from depression. Paul often had dark nights of the soul and he was vocal about them. In 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 he walks quite honestly about the pressures on him and how he was struggling. When he couldn’t see or feel it, he had to rely on God’s gracious love and faithfulness (not work up his faith for it):
"For we do not want you to be unaware, brethren, of our affliction which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead …"
Later on in 2 Corinthians 7:5-6, Paul shares how he found God's comfort from all the external and internal pains:
" … our flesh had no rest, but we were afflicted on every side: conflicts without, fears within. But God, who comforts the depressed, comforted us by the coming of Titus."
Paul’s inner default was not to look for sin causing this, but to look for God’s very real and active grace. He also talks about finding comfort in community through the friendship of Titus and then in sharing with the community he was connected to. Long story short – God’s grace is alive in friendships and connection – we need each other to hold us up when we can’t hold ourselves up.
The obvious thing that I have learned is that even Jesus knows what depression and darkness is like. He experienced the mental and physical anguish we walk through. As Hebrews 4:15 & 16 says:
"For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore, let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
One more lesson: there is no shame in needing medication or in therapy. Let me say that once again…there is NO SHAME in needing medication or therapy. Here’s the truth that needs to be shouted from the rooftops for those who battle mental illness. These are illnesses that sometimes simply cannot be exercised out, fed good food to purge them out, fasted away, prayed away (that’s not to say God can’t or won’t’ heal from these illnesses), or worked away. Sometimes they need medication to help you function the way you were meant to. I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, and I have to take a pill for it every day. If I don’t my body continues its relentless attack on my thyroid and life is hell. My anti-depressant and anti-anxiety meds are no different. Now, I might be able to go off those meds (with my doctors’ advice and assistance), but even if I have to take them for the rest of my life – that’s ok. It’s ok to go and share my mental state with a counselor, because she helps me to see things and process things that I might not be able to see clearly from the inside of my head.
Now let me be clear on a few other things I have learned. Medication and therapy alone aren’t all that need to be done for my mental health. I do need to eat well, I need to get outside and have physical activity, I need to drink copious amount of water (especially here in the desert), I do need to pray and there are things that I need to fast from every so often (can you say social media!?) I have also done the hard work of becoming more self-aware and noticing the way God made me as an individual and the things that I need to set up good rhythms. One of those things is quiet. I have to start my mornings with silence…if I don’t everything gets off balance. I have to end my nights with meditation & prayer…if I don’t my sleep is restless. I am learning that I need to have time in my day to simply sit and breathe – that might sound silly, but I challenge you to stop and consider how deep breathing can calm you heart, mind and body. A few other things: I need to stretch every morning and every evening – call it a mini yoga routine. I also need to spend 10 minutes outside each morning barefoot in the grass. Call it grounding, call it connecting with nature, I call it – my feet need to feel the earth.
These are the things I have learned for me. There is nothing theological about any of this, and yet there is a whole lot of my spiritual growth wrapped up in my open-handed living with mental illness. Again, I feel like we need to be having more conversations about mental health from small groups, from the pulpit, from social media platforms. Even if you yourself don’t struggle, or you don’t know anyone who does (which, if you are reading this…now you know someone!), we can all learn to talk about it. When we talk about something we bring it into the light. When we bring it into the light, it loses its power and helps us step into managing our mental health instead of our mental health managing us.
If you are struggling, please reach out to someone, anyone. I promise, just starting to talk about it is the best next step you can take.
Wherever you are at with your mental health, I hope that you found encouragement in these words, and know that you are not alone. Until next time, go out and find a creative way to make someone smile – even if that someone is YOU!
Photo by David Hofmann on Unsplash
