There was a darkness that had set in. My sorrow and discouragement began to wrap around me and squeeze. It was hard to not experience my entire reality (my family, work, rest, prayers) through the filter of sadness and sorrow. “The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more,” says Charles Spurgeon, “but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” ^[1] In other words, while depression may have been triggered by circumstances, it wasn’t just discouraging circumstances that kept me low.

I don’t remember all the details of the conversation. My wife and I were sitting together. It was the evening time. We had this corner in our apartment that we called “the nook.” It was between the dining room and the kitchen and it had enough space to fit two arm chairs, a table between them, with a lamp. We spent a lot of time in that nook together, with many conversations. This one stands out to me because it was the first meaningful conversation we had about my sadness.

My wife mentioned noticing some emotional disconnect in me. I was attempting to explain it like when you fall asleep on your arm funny and it falls asleep. You sit up and you try to reach for a glass of water with that arm. You look at the glass and you look at your arm, but as much as you want to reach out, there’s a disconnect with your intention to reach out and your arm’s ability to actually do it. That’s how I had felt in my emotional life. I had wanted to connect and reach out emotionally, but something inside me was asleep or disconnected. Something had changed.

It wasn’t surprising to my wife that I had been sad. There was challenging circumstances at church. There was conflict, confusion, and for the first real time in my life, I had experienced being slandered and lied about, where I had lost my reputation with people that I cared for. I was exhausted. I was regularly in meetings until midnight, trying to work through really tough, relational dynamics. I lost a lot of confidence in myself. I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down during much of that season. It lasted about 18 months.

But I began to notice that I wasn’t just sad or discouraged about my circumstances. Something was different. There was a darkness that had set in. My sorrow and discouragement began to wrap around me and squeeze. It was hard to not experience my entire reality (my family, work, rest, prayers) through the filter of sadness and sorrow. “The flesh can bear only a certain number of wounds and no more,” says Charles Spurgeon, “but the soul can bleed in ten thousand ways, and die over and over again each hour.” ^[1] In other words, while depression may have been triggered by circumstances, it wasn’t just discouraging circumstances that kept me low.

Depression was something that I had never experienced. I had always had the ability to see around the corner; to speak truth into circumstances and trust either in God or, sinfully, in myself to make it through. But now it was as if I had emotional blinders on that didn’t allow me to see or feel much of anything else but my sorrow. My inner life seemed to reject a word of encouragement like a body that vomits up medicine. I could hold on to hope like I could hold on to smoke with my hands.

But the more I had opened up and talked about it, the more I heard from other pastors and colleagues that they had never experienced depression until they went into pastoral ministry or engaged some significant conflict or discouragement in their work. I wasn’t alone. What was remarkable was that while words of truth and encouragement often felt as effective as cough syrup for throat cancer, the abiding presence of a fellow sufferer was like the hand of God over my wounds. It helped enlarge my scope of reality. Depression was like being in a confusing, blindingly dark cavern, but the presence of someone who could give witness to my pain was like a voice in the dark, awakening some hope that there may be some direction out.

Read More