Depression, Faith, and Me

I’m not ok today. My particular brand of neurospicyness means that I occasionally go through periods of depression. Sometimes these last for a day, sometimes for a few weeks. Sometimes it’s just a general feeling of melancholy and anxiety; other times it feels like a big pit of icy darkness waiting to swallow everything good until all of life feels meaningless and pointless. Rarely, something will trigger a period off. Most of the time, there isn’t a reason. It’s just what happens. I’m writing to reflect on my experiences of faith during these periods of depression.

It’s Not Easy To Talk

It’s not always easy for people to talk about their experiences of mental health and their faith. I’ve never really enjoyed talking about myself, and especially talking about anything as personal as my experience of poor mental health. But the church needs to be better at speaking about mental health, not only as a matter of psychological health but spiritual health as well. To do that, people need to talk about their experiences. So, here we go.

I’ve never had a particularly emotional connection to my faith. To put that in context, to try and explain what I mean by that, I have stood in the middle of a crowd of people moved in worship, and felt absolutely nothing. Praying rarely brings any kind of emotion; when I sing, I enjoy the words, but very rarely feel any sort of connection or emotional movement. Apart from some very rare moments of emotional connection, my faith is mostly worked out through my reason. This is important for how my periods of depression interact with my faith.

Most of my periods of depression don’t really have an impact on my life. I have been feeling generally anxious, lacking motivation, and struggling to care about things for a few days. I will often become more emotional, particularly more easily annoyed and angry. I tend to become a less fun person to be around for a few days. But apart from that, not much changes, and I know it will be over soon. My faith just plods away during these times. Just doing what it always does in the background.

During the more severe periods of depression, when it feels like there is a great gaping maw just beneath my chest sucking away all the light and joy from my life, faith becomes more difficult. For me, this isn’t because I’m feeling really bad, or because I don’t have the normal feelings that my faith gives me. Principally because I don’t really feel anything with my faith. I know this isn’t how it is for most people. For many Christians who experience depression, one of the hardest parts is feeling cut off from the kind of supportive and uplifting feelings that faith experiences can grant. For me, my faith is affected not by the melancholy and anxiety of depression, but by the existential malady that comes with it.

Is This The End Of All Hope?

For me, the depths of depression bring with them the end of all meaning and purpose. In those days, I would feel any sense of hope disappear. Whatever I do never feels good enough. Everything feels pointless and meaningless. Anything good turns to ash, all joy becomes shadow, and ultimately, everything feels less than a passing breath because I am deeply aware of the passing of all things, and in the inevitable end that we all face. Essentially, I end up lacking any kind of meaning or hope for the future.

This has the most significant impact on my faith, because for me, my faith is principally the way that I make meaning out of the world. In the collection of essays titled They Asked for a Paper, C.S. Lewis described his belief in Christ as being the same as his belief in the sunrise, not only because he could see it, but because by its light, he could see everything else as well. For C.S. Lewis, faith in Christ was not only about the belief in the person of Jesus, but also because by believing in Jesus, he was able to make sense of the world. For me, my faith acts in this same way. Technically, we could say that my faith creates my epistemic reality, or it constructs my worldview. Either way, my faith gives me a sense of meaning and purpose within a reality which makes sense because of that faith.

When everything seems meaningless and I struggle to find any kind of sense of purpose or hope for the future, when everything seems pointless and transitory, my faith struggles to act in its accustomed fashion. What does my faith mean for me if there is no meaning to life? What difference do my beliefs make if nothing could ever make a difference and my life is little more than the flap of sparrow’s wings?

Depression Is Spiritual As Well As Medical

This is where I think we need to consider depression as both a medical and a spiritual malady. Because, in the midst of my depression, I am fully and rationally aware that it is passing. That it will not be forever, and if I can hang on long enough, it will eventually go away again. I also know that if it doesn’t, if it goes on too long, I can seek help and support for my experiences. Yet, despite this knowledge, I am also convinced that everything is pointless and meaningless. So what happens next?

The Vanity Of Meaninglessness

My faith takes its turn into the darkness and mystery of God, into the depths of Holy Saturday, into the difficult parts of scripture. The author of Ecclesiastes comes to my aid with the reminder that, actually, everything is meaningless because all things are passing. Is there any inherent meaning in anything other than love? The poet John Donne wrote that all things to destruction are drawn/only love hath no decay. I feel that everything is meaningless, and the emptiness of Holy Saturday echoes back to me the descent of Christ into hell, in my case, not some place of eternal punishment (that I don’t really believe in anyway) but into the hell of my existential pain and meaninglessness. The depths and mysteries of an infinite God who is always beyond my ability to grasp hold me in the dark embrace of unknowing.

There, in those moments of my depression, when I feel empty and struggling with any kind of meaning to life, the absurdity of the cross, the vanity of thinking that life should have meaning, and the storm that raged before Job, all come together and comfort me. It is in those moments that my mind is able to turn back to the things that actually provide meaning to life. Not because my life has meaning, but because it gains meaning through love. The love I have for my family and my family has for me, the love of friends, the love I have for the little things which don’t do anything other than bring joy and light into my life. The love I know God has for me, not because I feel it, but because it simply makes sense.

The turn to accepting the vanity of meaningless is the turn to love. It is for me anyway. This doesn’t suddenly make me feel better. It doesn’t even start me coming back up from depression. It does provide me with the capacity to make sense of my pain and to support me in those moments. Depression robs my faith of its ability to provide meaning, but in those moments, my faith finds a way to transform the pain of meaninglessness into a way back into the experience of Christ. My faith doesn’t take my depression away, but neither does my depression take my faith away. Instead, when I come back up again from depression (hopefully soon!) I will look back and see the shadow of the crucified Christ hanging over me.

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