Two years ago, my therapist told me I was depressed.

Not only that, but she told me I had likely dealt with undiagnosed depression most of my life. I didn’t want to believe her. Sure, there were signs. The symptoms listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the standard guide for mental health diagnoses) matched the symptoms I dealt with in my everyday life. Still, I pushed back against her assessment. I didn’t want to wrestle with accepting and admitting that depression has affected, and still presently affects, my life.

Although I have never been non-functional or bedridden, and although you likely wouldn’t suspect it from the outside looking in, there have been periods of time in which merely existing has felt like trudging through waist-deep wet cement. The heaviness of depression that presses down is relentless, and it often comes on without warning. Maybe that kind of slog is familiar to you, too — the effort of going through the motions, of putting one foot in front of the other, of pushing forward when everything in you wants to stop moving. It makes the usually vibrant world dim and dull.

I panicked when my therapist put a name to that dark, depression I’ve come to know, as if naming it somehow made the darkness more real than it otherwise was. Without a name, I could believe the depression was something of my own making, something I could turn on and off at will. While therapy, prayer, spending time outside, and staying connected with people I care about certainly helped push back the darkness, if I believed her, if I believed I really did struggle with a depressive disorder, then it meant I wouldn’t be able to work myself into the light. The thought of that was terrifying.

For most of my life, I believed it was my responsibility to position myself in the light, to chase after God so closely that I was caught in the glow of His glory. I thought any darkness I found myself in was a direct result of my own (probably subconsciously chosen) inadequacy or inaction, and that when I found myself there yet again, there would be no light in my life until I got myself back on track. I put pressure on myself to perform my faith perfectly, something that left no room for grace to meet me in my humanity. But scripture invites us into a different truth.  

Micah 7:8 ESV says, “Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me.” When depression strikes and we find ourselves in darkness, we haven’t fallen out of God’s view. He doesn’t leave us to our own devices, waiting for us to find our way out without as much as a glance over His shoulder. Instead, God shows up where we sit in the darkness, and He becomes our way through.  

God doesn’t wait for us to get better or be stronger to draw near. He doesn’t run from us when our brain chemistry shifts or when our lives become more difficult. He is present even when everything feels muffled and heavy, and even in the spaces I once thought of as empty and abandoned.

Depression doesn’t distance us from God. Depression, a darkness we can’t fully control or conquer, becomes the very place where we can experience the patience and love of a God unwilling to leave or forsake us.

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