An apt description to be sure
But to explain to someone this darkness is a near impossible task, unless they have sat in it themselves. It is a kind of crippling, suffocating, life altering, ache that somehow convinces you that nothing means anything. It is the type of darkness no one warns you about. The kind that creeps up slowly, unknown, silent. Until it demands to be felt and by then it has made itself at home. And the date of departure states “Unknown”.
The darkness can ruin the brightest of days, the clearest of birdsong, the highlights of life, the joy of celebrations. It is a monster that devours everything in its path.
I know this darkness, because I’ve been there. We are acquainted quite well by now. It cannot creep up so slowly and silently anymore. But its almost more fearful seeing it lurking in the distance. The foreboding warning that dark clouds deliver before a massive storm hits. What makes it more lethal is the different forms it takes on. Delivering blows in different ways, at different times.
For me this darkness is depression. For me this darkness is anxiety.
I know what it feels like to stare at your phone and its million messages and notifications that need an answer and physically being unable to pick up and respond. I know what it feels like to toss and turn for hours on end, unable to switch of the thoughts running through your mind. The overthinking. The worst-case scenario that might never happen. The doubt about anything and everything. I know what it is like to give up on trying to force yourself to sleep, so you get up. You clean or cook or fold or pack – anything that will keep your hands busy and your mind distracted. I know what it is like to force down a single bite of food, tasteless, just because you know you need to eat. But your body has forgotten what it means to have an appetite. I know what it feels like to think about a situation and become so nervous, so anxiety ridden that the very thought of it sends your heart racing. Your body snaps into fight or flight. I know what it is like to look back on experiences that caused you so much anxiety that thinking about those moments make you physically ill. I know what it is like to have endless thoughts running through your mind, to the point of being unable to focus on a single thing. Let alone remember important things.
I know what its like to wish to sleep for days, just so the sadness is eased. Sleep so you can feel numb and not face life. To consider death a welcome relief. I know what it is like to eat for comfort, to buy the chocolate or the burger just to spark the smallest bit of happiness. I know what it is like to feel completely unwanted in all areas of life and to be unable to see how that is not true. I know the refrain of “not good enough” that plays like a stuck record. I understand isolating, pushing people away, avoiding. Because its easier, it feels safer, no one asks you to explain the unexplainable. I know what its like to wish with every fiber of your being to feel joyful, but it be so dark that you cannot remember what a single moment of joy looks like. And joy becomes something of a miracle. I know what it is like to have to force yourself to show up, and the strength that it takes is enough to exhaust you for a lifetime. I know what it is like to have warm tears run in rivers down your cheeks. No sound escaping; the silence an ode to the depth of the heartache. I know what it is like to miss the sound of your own laughter. Reality being that you cry as often as you used to laugh.
I know what it is like to lie on your bedroom or bathroom floor, curled up in a ball begging the Lord to take away the pain, to bring some relief, to ease the burden. I know what it is like to feel like there is deafening silence on the other end. I know what it is like to be hit by wave after wave. I know what the fire of faith being tested feels like. I know what it is like to be completely at the end of yourself.
But some don't know...
I’m also here to tell you, my friend, that some people will never understand. Will never experience the darkness you know. Some people will never know the depths of the pit. The despair. The fight to try to stay out of it. Sometimes it might even feel like they are pushing you in, enjoying your pain. Laughing at your discomfort. It might feel like the ones you love most do not care or try to understand. And your mind is incapable of distinguishing truth from lies. So, you become sheltered and somewhat mistrusting. Allowing people to sit in your garden but not enter your house. You selectively share. You edit out the hard things. You rehearse the script. You know how to answer the questions to make sure that no one gets too concerned. And at some point, you stop telling people that you are struggling at all, because you have accepted the lie that no one really cares.
Surely life isn’t that bad. Surely you should just put on a smile, and you will feel better. Exercise and get some endorphins going. Eat healthier. Hang out with friends. Do things that you enjoy doing. But will this solve the root of the problem? Is it a temporary fix or a long term one? Does it mean that I don't trust God if I'm struggling with anxiety? Do I not understand that my joy rests in Him when I'm experiencing depression?
What does it say about my faith if I struggle with mental illness?
There is no doubt that this darkness is not a new concept. The lamentations of the Psalms will quickly make that clear.
"I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God." Psalm 40:1-3
"Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying out; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God." Psalm 69:1-3
"I am utterly bowed down and prostrate; all the day I go about mourning. For my sides are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am feeble and crushed; I groan because of the tumult of my heart. O Lord, all my longing is before you; my sighing is not hidden from you. My heart throbs; my strength fails me, and the light of my eyes - it also has gone from me." Psalm 38:6-10
"Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by. I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me." Psalm 57:1-2
What these Psalms also make clear is that we cannot find any answer within ourselves. It would do us well to cease our efforts to rescue ourselves.
"It is a beautiful thing when a broken man genuinely cries out to God." John Piper
Beyond the writings of the Psalmists we also know that some of the most faithful theologians and hymn writers struggled with deep depression for most of their lives. Charles Spurgeon and William Cowper being just two examples. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote a book called Spiritual Depression and Bible-saturated Puritans recognized that the causes behind the darkness are a lot more complex than we make them out to be.
What brings about this darkness?
There are those that will tell you this darkness is because of your own doing, your own sin, your own disbelief. There are the moments when your head and your heart will fight one another. Your head knows that Paul wrote one of the most joyful books in the Bible while in prison (Philippians), but your heart mourns the circumstances of life.
Let me be clear, sin has consequences. And if you are a child of God actively living in sin, the Lord will lovingly discipline you. We see the prophet Jonah running away from what God was calling him to do. And it ended him in the belly of a fish for three days and three nights after being in a terrible storm at sea. At the point of repentance, he was delivered.
But we cannot deny the story of Job, a man after God’s own heart, losing all he has and in despair crying out. His trial came not from his own doing. In fact, at the beginning of the book we see a conversation between the Lord and Satan that gives us insight into the trials that follow.
Let’s not be so quick to put the person amid suffering as the cause of their own hurt. Sometimes we get caught in the crossfire of other’s decisions and the shrapnel hit us. There is no way of avoiding that. Sometimes life simply hits you with a perfect storm.
Behind the darkness could be sin, satanic assault, distressing circumstances and hereditary or other physical causes. In the season of despair we can only pray that the Lord would give us eyes to see and obey accordingly.
It feels like my faith is failing
"Yes, it is possible to be so overwhelmed with darkness, that you do not know if you are a Christian - and still be one." John Piper
I have been at the point in my own journey where I told someone dear to me, "It is not that I do not trust that God can do the impossible, it is that I do not believe He will do it for me." I have been at the point where the answers that good, faithful God-loving community gave me, made me want to pull my hair out in frustration. And they were not answers based on whims and feeling, they were answers rooted in the truths of Scripture. God will never leave you or forsake you, He makes ALL things work together for the good, God's ways and times are not our ways and times, the Father knows how to give good gifts to his children, the Lord hears every prayer you are praying.
With every fiber of my being I wanted to shout out, HOW LONG OH LORD!? There were days in the midst of the darkness where I knew I had to open the Word even if it was just to read a single verse. I knew I had to pray even if it was just to call out in despair. I knew these things but I could not do them.
What hope do we have that our faith will prevail amidst moments like this?
"Once a sinner receives Christ by grace through faith, God will not let his dear ones slip into eternal ruin. No temporary malfunction of the mind can reverse God's call of his elect (Numbers 23:19; Romans 8:29-30)." - Christine Chappell
Christ. The very Son of God at the right hand of the Father interceding for you. The promise of the Shepherd leaving the 99 to pursue the one. The promise of Romans 8 that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Our faith is sustained not by our own efforts, but by the power of the One who saves us. We do have responsibility to keep pressing in, to keep fighting the good fight. To work out our salvation with fear and trembling. But we also have a great High Priest.
"It is utterly crucial that in our season of darkness we affirm the wise, strong hand of God that holds us, even when we have no strength to hold him." John Piper
"What Christ bought for us when he died was not the freedom from having to hold fast, but the enabling power to hold fast.
What he bought was not the nullification of our wills as though we didn’t have to hold fast, but the empowering transformation of our wills so that we want to hold fast.
...
It is not foolishness, it is the gospel, to tell a sinner to do what Christ alone can enable him to do; namely, hope in God."
(Excerpt from Solid Joys; 24 November)
Pray
Lord Jesus, I am blind, be thou my light, ignorant, be thou my wisdom, self-willed, be thou my mind. Open my ear to grasp quickly thy Spirit's voice, and delightfully run after his beckoning hand; Melt my conscience that no hardness remain, make it alive to evil's slightest touch; When Satan approaches may I flee to thy wounds, and there cease to tremble at all alarms. Be my good shepherd to lead me into the green pastures of thy Word, and cause me to lie down beside the rivers of its comforts. Fill me with peace, that no disquieting worldly gales may ruffle the calm surface of my soul. Thy cross was upraised to be my refuge, Thy blood streamed forth to wash me clean, Thy death occurred to give me a surety, Thy name is my property to save me, By thee all heaven is poured into my heart, but it is too narrow to comprehend thy love. I was a stranger, an outcast, a slave, a rebel, but thy cross has brought me near, has softened my heart, has made me thy Father's child, has admitted me to thy family, has made me joint-heir with thyself. O that I may love thee as thou lovest me, that I may walk worthy of thee, my Lord, that I may reflect the image of heaven's first-born. May I always see thy beauty with the clear eye of faith, and feel the power of thy Spirit in my heart, for unless he move mightily in me no inward fire will be kindled.
(The Valley of Vision, A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions; Need of Jesus, pg186)
Survive the darkness
Community is crucial. You need brothers and sisters that are praying for you. You need to be surrounded by the body of believers. They can help keep your arms in the air when you have lost all strength. You need people who will not give up on you. Call them. Speak to them. Allow them to minister to you.
Praise the Lord for who he is. Over and over, remind yourself that God will never leave or forsake you. That you do belong to him. That he is a good Father. You might not FEEL these things, but they remain TRUE. And when our hearts and minds are misguided we need Truth to guide us. You have to remind yourself of the promises of Scripture and pray that the Spirit will write them on your heart. Recognize the truth that joy is a fruit of the Spirit and asked to be filled, to bear fruit.
And wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord to do the work that only he can do. He can pull you out of the pit. He can point out idols that need to be removed. He can forgive sin and make beauty out of messy consequences. He can heal broken hearts. But we need to cultivate a way of living that waits patiently for the Lord to will and to work as he sees fit. You do not know what the Lord wishes to accomplish through you and in you even amidst deep distress and sadness.
“I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up and have not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.
O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol; you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints, and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”
By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed.
To you, O Lord, I cry, and to the Lord I plead for mercy: “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be merciful to me! O Lord, be my helper!”
You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness, that my glory may sing your praise and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever!”
Psalm 30:1-12 ESV
What about medication?
I trust that the Lord has blessed doctors and scientist with the knowledge and the wisdom to formulate medication that can help to alter the chemical imbalances in our brains. Medication will not fix the problem, but it can help you to deal with the root causes better.
"If there was imperfection in the choice to use medication, the imputed righteousness of Christ will swallow it up as you rest in Him." John Piper
What if my friend is struggling? How do I respond?
"You cannot persuade a depressed person that he has not been utterly rejected by God, if he is persuaded that he has been. But you can stand by him." John Piper
Show up. Love them. Remind them of truth. Lift them up in prayer. Support them. Be a safe space. Sit with them in silence. Read Scripture over them. Do for them what they cannot do for themselves. Don't decide a timeline for them. Don't tell them when they should be feeling better. Point them to Jesus and all the means of grace consistently. You won't be able to convince them that they are believing lies. You won't be able to change their circumstances for them. You won't have the answers they are begging for. You cannot save them. The most powerful, most important thing you can do, is to lay them at the foot of the cross in love, knowing that the God of the impossible loves them a million times more than you ever will.
Helpful resources
Books:
When the Darkness will not Lift - John Piper (this book is often quoted in this post and provided a useful framework for my thoughts)
When I don't desire God: How to fight for joy - John Piper
Articles:
30 Minutes with The Perrys (podcast) episodes:
Jesus and Therapy
Fear of Death, Social Anxiety, and Other Angsty Things
Please reach out to someone if you are struggling with any sort of mental health concern and seek professional counsel. You are not alone. This does not define you.
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