Recently, one of my squadmates posted an incredibly insightful blog inviting us to take a glimpse into her struggles with depression and the hope that she finds in the midst of it.
While I am not able to put my experience with the illness into practical words quite yet, this blog is my attempt to give metaphor form to what it feels like for me in these seasons when the depression is more than I can seem to bear.
I believe that God sympathizes with the use of metaphor—this language of sorrows—to help describe these times. We see it all throughout scripture, in fact.
Psalm 88:3-7 shows David comparing himself to a dead man and someone who is drowning beneath waves of misery.
Psalm 69:15 is similar in the way it’s author describes himself as being buried in the depths of is suffocating troubles.
Countless times in the narrative of Job we find him Using metaphorical language to describe his experience during his sorrows and heartbreaks.
You see, there is a larger story about God that exists and possesses within it this language of sorrows so that the gloomy, the anguished, the dark-pathed, and the inhabitants of the deep night are given voice. In it, we see the God who moves from preacher to poet so that we might not have to feel the sharp loneliness that the disease threatens us with.
The famed 19th century preacher Charles Spurgeon suffered from depression himself and described his own experience in this way:
The mind can descend far lower than the body, for in it there are bottomless pits. The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more, but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.
This is real. It isn’t just a “if you’d just pray and read your Bible more” or a “don’t focus on the bad” or “you’ve gotta remember the good.” It’s dark; it’s overwhelming.
So, what follows is my feeble effort to present to you my own personal metaphor for these times of overwhelming darkness that I often go through myself.
This is life when the fog will not lift.
It’s as if I’m standing on the edge of a cliff surrounded by a dense, heavy fog that I can’t work my way through.
It seeps into my lungs as I search for oxygen and it chokes me out; again and again. No matter which direction I turn, I cannot escape from the dark pseudo-reality that the fog has trapped me inside of. I try to move but I have no clue where I might even begin to walk to. It all just seems like more and more fog in every direction.
There is one single break in it all: one hole through which I am able to see clearly.
This hole reveals to me the edge of the cliff.
The fog only will allow me to see the dark, jagged edge that opens up to the emptiness below. My vision is fixated on it.
Fear.
Anxiety.
Doubt.
Destruction.
Hopelessness.
These are all that the fog will offer up to me. No matter how far I run in any direction, the only clear line of sight that the fog allows me is one that leads me directly to the edge of that cliff and the emptiness beyond.
For moments, a wave of light bounds into view and I can see the beauty surrounding me. Hills and olive trees and doves and butterflies and daisies everywhere.
But such hope pulses and fades: a lighthouse lamp slowly circling out of view. Into sight it returns, again and again, relentlessly pushing its way through the fog and absence toward me. In these moments I am acutely aware of just how close I truly am to the jagged edge of the cliff. And so I slowly step back from it for yet another dark night.
And tomorrow: it begins again.
And tomorrow: I will fight to see the Lighthouse; no matter how thick the fog is.
And tomorrow: I will live.
I offer this metaphor so that you might see a glimmer of light if you suffer your own seasons of depression. I feel it is my duty to do so. Those of us who’ve traversed the foggy night have things to say that no one else really can. We tell our stories not for sympathy or to steal another’s story for attention, but to sympathize. We tell our stories not because we wanted this experience but because we’ve had this experience. We tell our stories so that sufferers know that Jesus feels, not for their strengths but for their infirmities. We tell our stories to serve realistic hope.
Because no matter how far you fall in your depression, “the eternal arms shall be lower than you are.” The Lighthouse will continue to shine into the fog of our darkest night.
I believe the hope is in the dark night of Jesus; it’s in the Garden of Gethsemane; it’s in His bloody sweat. Jesus—as Hebrews reminds us—is fully able to empathize with us because he suffered just as we do.
Physically.
Mentally.
Emotionally.
He was with us every step, feeling what we feel. There’s hope found here and now, here within the Really Real.
You see, a story larger and truer than our moods or miseries holds us. We are more than the trials, feelings, or choices of a moment might suggest about us. The promises of God exist—just like that lighthouse—no matter if our mind allows us to see them or not in any given moment. The Lighthouse is there in the fog of any and every night. These promises aren’t magic—they don’t just make it all disappear, and they aren’t always what we want them to be; but, they do have the power to sustain us despite whether or not we think they will in the middle of that dark, foggy night.
Zach Eswine reminds us that “what God has promised is to be with us, to weep with us, to celebrate with us, to help us, to strengthen us, to never let us go and to outlast every evil and terrible thing with us. His love, His purposes, and His goodness will never quit and no foul thing will ever overcome them.”
In times of depression—when the fog seems thickest and the night seems darkest—God “will either make the burden lighter or the back stronger; he will either diminish the need or increase the supply.”
So friends who suffer with me in this way, know you are not alone—no matter how much your heart and mind try to convince you otherwise in the midst of your own fog. I know that when you’re stuck there the sermons seem hard to bear, the friend who quotes verses is like one screaming during a migraine, promises and prayers fade. The medicine, the naps, and the conversations grow empty.
But take heart, for this too shall pass; hope is on the horizon.
Because although there are times when the fog will not lift, there is never a moment when the Lighthouse is not shining into the dark of night with a light brighter than the blaze of a thousand suns.
Check out Morgan McGee’s blog over at morganmcgee.theworldrace.org for her post that I mentioned in the beginning of this post!
