Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness (23 page)

One of the well-established findings about depression is that depressed people usually are not pleasant company.

Depressed people enact a wide assortment of inappropriate verbal and nonverbal social behaviors that tend to elicit hostility and rejection from others. Through their behavior, depressed individuals create around themselves social worlds that virtually guarantee a steady supply of negative evaluations.
¹

How do you respond? It may not be relevant to you, but if you react against such an observation, consider your response.

Does it make you feel guilty? Then keep it simple. You
are
guilty if you have sinned against other people. If you have sinned, confess it to God and others, give thanks because of God’s delight in you as you confess, and ask for power to change.

Does it make you feel hopeless or helpless? Do you feel like other people simply don’t understand depression? Consider this: nothing can keep us from loving other people—not the sins of others, not our infirmities, not our humanity. Certainly, such a task might seem impossible—and it is, if you ignore the cross of Jesus. But when we call out for the grace to love others more deeply, God always answers “Yes.”

Resist depression on this point. Don’t let it excuse you from relationships and love; you will just deepen your despair. Loving others is not simply a duty; it is the way you are designed. God created you to trust him and love others. When you are not trusting or not loving, you are disconnected from your purpose, and hopelessness will thrive.

Plan to love. It will look different when you are severely depressed, but as long as you are still conscious, you can find grace from God to love others in ways like these:

• Thank them
  
• Greet them
  
• Pray for them
  
• Listen to them
  
• Touch them
  

If you stumble here, ask forgiveness of God and others. Ask others to pray that you would be able to love in a way that is noticeable, and set out to love again. If you are not even taking a step toward loving, your heart is being revealed.

You are venturing into new ground with this. You are going to do something when you don’t feel like doing it. It isn’t that you don’t want to love; it is that you don’t feel. Some buy the lie that such behavior is hypocritical. Why would you do something when your heart isn’t in it? The truth is that it is heroic. It may be the first time in your life that you did something simply because of Jesus.

Family and friends, you will also be stretched in the way you love. You may discover that your love has been accompanied by mixed motives. Perhaps you wanted to change the other person or make life easier for yourself more than you wanted to love because Christ has loved you. Like your depressed friend, you, too, will have to consider your motives and ask for prayer to love deeply from the heart.

Sometimes you will grow weary in loving. We all do. You will genuinely love, but it will seem fruitless or irrelevant. It won’t seem to matter to the depressed person. But know this: your love makes a difference. That doesn’t mean that one concerted push to love will snap anyone out of depression. By itself, your love will not change anyone.

No amount of love from other people—and there was a lot—could help. No advantage of a caring family and fabulous job was enough to overcome the pain and hopelessness I felt.
²

But depressed people, like all of us, are aware of kindness and love that is willing to sacrifice. Love always leaves its mark. As a result, depressed people who do best are cushioned by persevering love.

It is probably the passivity that will discourage you the most. Perhaps the most obvious challenge posed by depressed people is their apparent lack of passion or enthusiasm for anything. For close friends and family, this is difficult because our passions are what make us recognizable and unique to those around us. A passionless person seems different to other people. Not only does he seem unmovable; he just seems different. “He isn’t himself.” “I don’t feel like I know the person I married anymore.”

There are a few ways to prepare to love someone when the relationship no longer seems reciprocal. Foremost is to realize that you can no longer rely on natural affection. In the past, there was a give and take to your relationship with the depressed person. You enjoyed the person, and he or she enjoyed you. This dynamic interaction spawned a growing, caring relationship. Now, however, the relationship appears unilateral, which, of course, is not what we think of as a relationship. Very few people are willing to commit long term to such a one-sided arrangement. After an initial sprint of love, they give up.

This puts you in a position similar to that of your depressed loved ones. They, too, can no longer rely on natural affection. The problem is
not
that they dislike you; it is more that they simply don’t feel, or what they feel is different levels of pain, and relentless pain expels all other passions.

Without your normal relational passions to energize you, you have a tremendous opportunity. You, too, have the privilege of really loving as an expression of your trust in Jesus Christ and your love for him. This is one of the key spiritual skills needed by those who are depressed, and, typical of God’s ways, it is exactly what you need as well.

The course you must travel is identical to the one we have just described for your friend. For example, can you quickly identify your purpose? Anything that falls short of “to know Christ and to love others for his glory, not my own” will leave you hopeless and powerless to love. One of the many unique features of God’s ways is that we all shift back and forth between our roles as physician and patient. You need help and others need your help. You may never have struggled with depression yourself, but the issues surrounding depression are basic to all our lives.

What is your purpose?

Who is Jesus?

How can I grow in trusting him and expressing that trust in love to others?

This means that you can’t rely on last year’s knowledge as you come alongside someone who struggles with depression. When you talk about purpose, it must be personal. It must come from how you yourself found purpose. When you offer hope, it must be because you have found hope.

A counselor had tried everything to encourage a depressed counselee and nothing seemed to help. With nothing left to offer, she confessed her own impoverishment and then talked about what she personally had been learning from God’s Word. When she finished, she spent more time than usual praying for both herself and her counselee.

To the counselor’s surprise, the counselee scheduled another appointment. As soon as the counselee entered the room again, she gave her assessment of the last meeting.

“That was the best time we ever had together. Why haven’t you done that more often?”

The counselor had become another needy person rather than a dispenser of helpful information. She was no longer giving principles; she was giving testimony. The next step was obvious.

“God’s ways are better than our own. Isn’t it like him that when I would feel most needy and inadequate, I would say things that were most helpful? You’re right; I should have done this all along. I also should have asked you to do it because I want to learn from you. Next time we meet, why don’t you share what you are learning or thinking about when you are reading Scripture?”

To help a depressed person, you don’t need expert knowledge. You do need an awareness of your own spiritual neediness, a growing knowledge of Jesus, and an eagerness to learn from others, including the person you would like to help.

Without passion or keen spiritual clarity, those who are depressed find it nearly impossible to maintain a vision for the things that are most important. There is nothing emerging from their haze of despair to capture their attention. This, too, is recognizable to all of us because the world functions in a similar way.

Scripture anticipates this struggle. To counter it, God raises up ordinary people who remind us of the truth.

See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today,
so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. (Heb. 3:12–13)

What depressed people need—what we all need—are daily reminders of spiritual reality. As the truth of Christ is impressed on our hearts, we must offer that to others, and they to us. The target is always Christ and him crucified. The words are not magic, but they are food for the soul. Don’t get derailed. What you need is not something new. You simply need to persevere in applying old truths to present situations.

You don’t have to apologize for reading Scripture to the depressed person, praying with her, or looking for the Spirit’s work in everyday events. In the same way that perseverance is key for the depressed person, perseverance in “ordinary” ministry is key for you as well. The depressed person is loyal to his or her pessimistic interpretations; you must be loyal to a Christ-centered interpretation. If possible, offer Christ-centered interpretations in a way that is personal, meaningful (at least to you), and succinct, since depression can affect attention and concentration.

Since you are more like a depressed person than different, think in terms of partnerships. You are working together to walk a difficult path. Sometimes you will be doing the heavy lifting (Gal. 6:2), but if you are walking together you will look for ways to share the load.

One mistake that families and friends can make in the early stages of depression is to make all the effort themselves. It is a noble sacrifice, but you can’t walk that way for long. You can read to, pray for, exhort, and express love in many ways to depressed people, but you can’t drag them to
your
goals. Your destination must be a shared goal.

The end goal is Christ. The near goals are sometimes infinitesimally small steps that bring structure to an existence that can feel
aimless. Structure refers to boundaries, guidelines, accountability, reminders, and organized plans. The principle is this: the more painful and disabling the depression, the more important it is for counselors and friends to provide structure.

Structure could include the following:

• Go to bed and get up at the same times each day.
  
• Eat at appointed times.
  
• Exercise at appointed times.
  
• Have a schedule for the day.
  
• Write down one thing you agree to work on every day.
  
• Follow through on agreements you made with other people. Let your “yes” be “yes.”
  

This structure is not simply imposed on an unwilling victim. It is a partnership among brothers and sisters in Christ. Also, it includes times of considering “why?” Remember and review God’s purposes, and remind one another that the present training—though perhaps wearisome and hard—has eternal benefit (1 Tim. 4:8).

There are two ways to err when helping depressed people bring structure into their lives. One is to impose a pace that is beyond their ability, making them feel even more hopeless. Start slowly. Help people set very basic goals initially, and then work together to gradually increase the number of tasks and goals in a day.

The other way to err is to omit frequent times of accountability. At least daily accountability is best. Since this may continue for months, those who minister must develop a practical and wise pace for themselves, being willing to serve while also being mindful of their other responsibilities.

If your good friend suddenly insisted that you were an alien intent on murder, you would try to disabuse him of that inaccurate interpretation. You would try to understand why he developed such a perspective, but you would not sit idly by while you were being accused. Instead, you would seek to persuade the person of the truth. You might even rebuke the friend for his persistence in clinging to an interpretation despite all evidence and counsel to the contrary.

Likewise, when depressed people interject their skewed and self-defeating interpretations of life, you can’t sit idly by. You need to challenge and interrupt their inaccurate interpretation because it is wrong and leads to deeper despair. This, of course, is normal behavior in loving relationships. With depression, however, friends sometimes don’t pursue these normal interactions. Perhaps they are afraid that the depressed person will feel rejected. Perhaps they are afraid that the least provocation could lead to suicide. As a result, depressed people are often handled very gingerly. You feel as if you are carrying a torch around a bomb with a short fuse.

Wisdom and love, of course, must dominate your relationships with those who are depressed, as they should dominate any relationship. But if you find that you are increasingly reluctant to say important things, reconsider your path. Talk to someone who has been on a similar path. If you are slow to say the things you think are important, you are not really engaging in a relationship. As a rule, the closer the relationship, the more open you should be with the other person.

Don’t hesitate to interrupt the flow of despair, self-pity, and complaints that only reinforce the person’s unbiblical interpretations of God and himself. To do this too early in your relationship with depressed people (or anyone) communicates that you don’t really want to understand. It can silence people. But when your purpose is explained, it can be easily understood as an expression of love.