Can I Say I’m a Son or Daughter of Christ and Suffer from Depression? health, self-help, God

Hope for the Weary

I was wrapped in fear and had given up on God the morning of my psychiatric evaluation at Johns Hopkins Mood Disorders Clinic. I was working as hard as is humanly possible to feel good again. I had already been through seven different psychiatrists, had tried 23 different medicine combinations, and had experimented with every kind of alternative treatment. However, I still wanted so badly to die. I was running dangerously low on hope. On the way to my appointment, my husband and I passed through the billings and administrative building. There, in the lobby, was a 10-and-a-half foot marble statue of Jesus. The passage inscribed on the pedestal read: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

He Is With Us Always

I wept at those words. I knew that God had not abandoned me, just as he did not abandon Christ on the cross. I knew then, as I know now, that Christ is with all of us who suffer from this invisible disease. He knows that when we beg to be dead, it is a woeful cry of help from despair, and that we need, once again, to be filled with hope and love and compassion. He takes our hurts to the cross. Matthew 19:26 says, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’” He is there--within the mess of things—holding a flame of hope. We need not figure out why he allows our pain. We need not have to spend a certain percentage of our day in prayer to be relieved of the suffering. He is simply there, offering light in darkness and love in moments of despair. “Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9).