Depression Series - #1

So this is the first of nine articles I'll post on depression. I wanted to do this because I wanted to draw some attention to mental disorders. So many people out there struggle with all kinds of maladies of the mind. Besides struggling with depression myself, a friend of mine struggled with obsessive compulsive disorder, one of the possible reasons for him committing suicide two years ago. (For more on this friend, search for Clark Stacy on this blog to find all the posts that are flagged about him).

So this was probably the first essay I wrote on depression while I was in college. I put it together for the Jerry Jenkins Writing contest my alma mater held. So I had to think, "What would the author of the Left Behind books think would be a great essay on depression?" I almost didn't know how to answer that question but here's what I came up with.
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God Isn't Real When You're Depressed

God isn’t real when you’re depressed. He doesn’t reach into your naturalistic life and affect you in any way. All that is real is what you can see and touch and what crumbles in your hand when crushed.

For about half a year, these were the kind of thoughts that I had. Somehow, God became Someone who was extremely distant and didn’t have much to do with how I went to work or how I brushed my teeth in the mornings. Whatever connection that injected divine purpose, or any purpose for that matter, into my life seemed to have disappeared. There only seemed to be the methodic activities that I had to perform each day.

Shaving became a joy, or as much a joy as such an act can be. A Mach 3 triple razor skidded across my cheek, slowly ripping out the stubble that had grown through my skin during the night. The warm, burning sensation on my neck and cheeks from shaving were physical sensations that helped me to feel pain. I was happy for being able to feel anything at all; emotions and other sensations had withered away.

There was once a relationship with Christ that showered me with physical sensations and meaning from some otherworldly mystery. Before I went to bed each night, I could kneel down to pray and just by remembering the events of that day be overwhelmed with how God had worked in my life. I could hardly pray or think straight because I saw how much God loved me and how He had orchestrated what different people had said or done to show me this. I could only cry at knowing how much I was loved and how much I meant to God.

Yet for some reason, I didn’t have that anymore. Those snapshots of faith seemed to be a sort of photo album of the past and not much more than memories. The dynamic relationship with Christ from back then seemed too distant to have any effect on the depression of the here and now. Life was more existential and focused on the table and chair I was sitting at rather than the mystery of God speaking from above the clouds or wherever He truly was.

I knew that God was still there somewhere, yet that didn’t help me with my present situation. I had gradually become numb to anything spiritual and didn’t want to bother trying to figure out why. I was just here and knew that I needed to be somewhere else. My relationship with God had somehow become shredded, if not hacked to pieces, leaving me to merely wake up, exist for a few hours and then go to sleep again. There wasn’t really any reason for doing anything except that I was alive and had to do something.

During those months, one of the best distractions from thinking about how I wasn’t right with God was an online computer game called Super Bounce Out. I would spend hours rearranging colored balls on a screen so that when three of the same color were side by side, they would bounce out, making room for new ones. I made this a sort of priority and cherished the time spent scoring points on something that didn’t matter for anything. I reached a high score of 145,000 points on level 11, where you had to bounce out 175 balls in a short period of time. Somehow, this had meaning for me: I could always get to the next level and this was an accomplishment.

I didn’t know how or why I was like this. My life over the past year was a success story, like many others who get this way. I was editor-in-chief of the school paper and scared some of the administration with an article I wrote. I applied for and became an RA. I went to Africa over Spring Break and helped to proofread a translation of the Bible in a native language I didn’t know. I was a leader in the youth group at my church. I met a girl and started dating her during the spring semester and would spend the whole summer growing closer to her. I had absolutely no reason to be like I was.

These two thoughts did not become a romantic experience where I saw an opening in those clouds and was washed in a warming light that gave life to my cold, numb skin. As great as that would be to experience, I might not even have been able to receive that. My mind might have merely responded, “That’s kind of pretty.” Rather, the thoughts were simple and without flashy lights or sensuous smells to awaken me from my slumber.

“This isn’t going to last forever. You won’t always be like this.”

There was hope in those two sentences because I knew myself so well and knew where the thoughts must have come from. I knew where my state of mind presently was and what had been trickling out of it. A person who is depressed is not so likely to have hopeful thoughts because they are in the habit of dwelling on whatever is wrong. I couldn’t stop what I was doing, take a deep breath, and take a few moments to fix all the wrong thoughts that had been isolating me from God. My mind was still tightly fastened to the existential, natural world and couldn’t suddenly break the roots that held me there. So the idea that what I was suffering through wouldn’t last forever must have come from somewhere outside of me.

I soon began to realize that God was above all that existed around me and had the power to trump the natural laws He had made. He could dig into my grimy, dirt-under-your-fingernails-world to change things and perhaps even help me repair my shredded relationship. I slowly began to learn what ‘supernatural’ looked like in the numbing grind of daily life. A pitiful creature whose faith in himself and his reason to solve things would be shown how little meaning there was in himself and his reason. I saw this lack of meaning and began asking for help.

The hopeful thoughts became a new companion in the playground of my mind.

Unhappiness skipped over hopscotch squares as Hope of Changing cheered it on. Lack of Motivation swung harder on and higher on the playground swings as Hope of a Better Time pushed it. The depressing thoughts would remain like an unwelcome guest despite my knowledge that God had begun to supernaturally fix me.

I thought about reading the Bible and what better book to read when depressed than Ecclesiastes. Solomon, the wisest king of Israel, had gained everything his natural heart could want but, thanks to his wisdom from God, he saw it all as meaningless. All he could build or do was all in vain if meaning was not found in God. I discovered a phrase that Solomon repeated five times throughout the book: There is nothing better for a man to eat, drink, and enjoy his work, for that is the gift of God.

Solomon’s wisdom seemed to affirm my experience with depression. This life was just what it was and nothing else. Any meaning for all of my activities must come from God. In my natural world of tasks and tending to responsibilities, God would supernaturally provide meaning for it all.

This supernatural ability was more and more revealed to me as time went on. Small vignettes of people being put in the right place or circumstances working out to my favor didn’t always look like coincidences anymore. From an existential mindset, God working in our boring, everyday lives can be seen as nothing but chance. However, I can’t accept that anymore. God is supernatural and can rescue us from our naturalistic lives and prove His character through our struggles.