Don't Waste Your Depression

I recently shared a video, on Facebook, where a YouTuber spoke openly and honestly about his depression.  It was a powerful video, and an important plea for people to seek help. 

Many of you, my friends and faithful followers then asked me, on that thread, or in private messages, how I was doing and about my own struggle with depression. 

So here is my confession. I frequently battle depression.  In the past I have struggled with disordering depression.  At my worst I could lay all day on the floor under a blanket feeling naked and exposed as the spiritual weight of an anchor was pulling my soul out of my chest.  

Now that God has blessed me with children I don’t have the luxury of these types of days.  I must rise every morning for them. 

So where do I lie in this moment?  After two international moves, the stress of a rapidly changing family (the blessing that it is), I now wait as my father slowly succumbs to an inoperable brain tumor.  He is my mentor, editor, advisor, challenger, advocate, and now his light slowly fades.

In this moment of typical stress, and not so typical stress, and in slow painful loss, my persistent companion has found me again.  I am in yet another season walking with depression. 

And yet, I title this post “Don’t Waste Your Depression.” I did not want to write that title, because I must follow any prescription that might I offer. So please don’t waste your depression. 

Are you cruel? You dare say my chronic pain is something good?  An opportunity? How dare you?  I dare because I write to you from out of my own darkness. 

How can this horrible thing serve me?  Because you can only see the stars in darkness.  Ahh, great you offer another pat answer, “See beauty in any situation. Look for your special ‘God moments’ in the every day.”  No! That is trite advice.  What I am telling you is there is certain rich moments of beauty and joy that can only be experienced in the midst of severe darkness and pain. 

It is written in the Westminster Shorter Catechism that ultimate purpose of life is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.  This is not something that happens only on a beach during a breezy, pleasantly warm, early summers day.  There is a type of joy that comes when we are overwrought with pain. 

I suspect that your reticence to hear this truth is that we, teachers and preachers of the word of God in the modern age, are too quick to resolve the tension between a good God and a broken universe.  I am discovering a frequent critique of The Last Jedi is that it resolved too many of the questions in the series thus resolving too much of the tension in the epic.

The Bible is not quick to resolve the tension between pain and a good God.  It is estimated that 1 in 3 psalms are written in the form called lamentation.  Lamentation is where the psalmist cries out painfully to God. 

Almost all of these psalms have a turn where there is a movement from despair to hope.  But as Michael card points out we are quick to jump strait to the hope section of the psalm.  When we get to the happy part of the psalm we think, “I have learned my lesson now I can worship.”  But, as Card points out, the sorrow in the first half of the psalm is ALSO worship.  In the wilderness you still find worship. 

Intimacy with God in Depression

I would like to make a wager that you have never heard a single sermon on Psalm 88:1-18.  This is a psalm that never turns from despair to hope.  There is no “and yet God you are good”.  The psalmist starts and finishes in depression. 

And yet this psalm is TOO BE SUNG IN WORSHIP! If you read, at the top of the chapter, you will see, “A Song. A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. To the choirmaster: according to Mahalath Leannoth. A Maskil of Heman the Ezrahite.”  In this pre-verse verse the psalmist is giving directions to the choirmaster, i.e. things like music and tempo (“it’s a blues riff and beat watch me for the changes, and try to keep up” -Calvin Kline)

What does this mean?  It means we are supposed to sing Psalm 88 together, in the congregation.  I very much challenge Hillsong or Passion to take a risk and give us a song, for worship, from Psalm 88. 

Why did God give us this psalm?  I believe He gave us this psalm so that we would have the permission to honestly cry out in our pain and depression. 

I thought of Matthew 18, while reading this psalm.  In Matthew 18 there is a parable of the shepherd loosing 1 sheep out of 100.  Well, put yourself in the place of the lost sheep who, in my mind’s eye, wondered off the path and got stuck in a thorny thicket.  Can you hear the almost hopeless, frantic, distressed bleating cries for help?  The sheep doesn’t know the shepherded is coming but she cries for him all the same.

I must cry out like this sheep.  This is the deep cry of Psalm 88.  And when you honestly cry out to God like this, you discover that God is not threatened by our bleating cry.  Instead he is there in our pain, acknowledging our pain, and seeking us in our pain, suffering alongside us (Isaiah 53:4-9; Mark 15:34).

When we find worship in these deepest moments of our depression we discover a never before experienced depth of intimacy with our loving Heavenly Father.

Intimacy in the family of believers in depression

Don’t waste your depression.  This psalm is to be sung in the congregation.  It is easy waste your depression.  Depression lies, it tells you that you are alone, that you have nothing to offer.  It wants to destroy you in isolation. This is why Psalm 88 is a psalm for the congregation.  We can confess our brokenness, our anxieties, and our depression together and as a community in Christ we draw closer to God and to each other in the journey through darkness. 

(Let me say this: You cannot just “get over your depression”; you have to go through it).

One of the most important moments for me, in a decade of ministry, was when a member of the congregation was suffering in a dark moment of depression.  The congregation came together and prayed for deliverance it culminated in a Psalm 88 type cry as we worshiped in the deep intimacy of lamentation as a congregation.  God, in that moment, did not lift the person’s depression but we worshiped all the same. 

Do not waste your depression, confess it.  This post came about when a good friend of mine sent me a message telling me, “God said I need to pray for you. What is up?” I broke down in the middle of talking about raising car support and the typical quotidian stressors of life and I said to him, “I am in a dark moment right now”.  He prayed with me like Psalm 42:5. He encouraged me to talk with someone here in country.  I did. And in prayer and worship I found a new depth of intimacy with my brothers in Christ. 

In our lamentation we worship God, not alone, but as a family of Jesus the Anointed One of God.

Do not waste your depression by quietly succumbing to the crippling pain of it in isolation.  Seek God, with his family, and experience a new depth of intimacy.

Epilogue

After talking and walking with others through this current season of depression, the darkness of night is changing to the light of day.  Though, with my dad and cultural transition, it may still be a rather cloudy day.  But, a deep hope and joy are rising because I was able to worship in the darkness.