Here is a sentence I wrote in my journal on April 18th, 2017: “Depression makes it really easy to feel like you’re faithless; depression makes it really easy to feel like you’re failing as a Christian.”

For me, being mentally unhealthy meant that my depression overwhelmed and negated every basic Christian truth I stood on. Objectively, I knew I was saved, but subjectively, I felt like I was drowning. I knew I was a child of God and therefore precious in His eyes, but my brain would constantly tell me the detailed reasons of why I was worthless. I knew that from God comes a peace that surpasses all understanding, but that peace was remote (alien, impossible, a fairy tale) when I was having an anxiety attack in the middle of the grocery store. It was hard to believe there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus when I woke up every day hating myself. And it was hard to accept that God was doing anything in my life when I felt so alone and wrong and empty. 

So.

This is a blog about mental health and spiritual experiences. I can say now in July 2020 that the Lord has used many of my struggles with depression to reveal more of Himself to me, to reveal more of myself to me, and to gain more of my heart for Him. (And He will probably continue to use them for the rest of my life.) I can say that some of my more significant experiences with the Lord—the ones I can point to and say, “There, right there! That is why I know God is real, living and operating within me!”—sprouted from this fight with depression/anxiety and from what felt like an overpowering darkness. I can share those stories another time. Today, for this first post, I just wanted to acknowledge how difficult the day-to-day experience of being a Christain with poor mental health can be. It can seem like your brain and your emotions are directly fighting back against what the Bible says, against what you know of God, against what you thought you believe.

But here’s the awesome part I’ve learned: God is bigger than whatever terrible things my soul (my chemically imbalanced brain, my broken heart, my staggering emotions) dredges up. And He’s greater than whatever stupid symptoms depression and/or anxiety throw my way as well. The (objective) truths that sometimes don’t feel (subjectively) true are still true, whether or not I believe them at the moment. They’re not true because I believe in them; they’re true because God says so. The word of the Lord abides forever. My feelings will pass, my anxiety attacks will pass, even my depressive symptoms will pass. What doesn’t change is the word of the Lord, who He is and what He has promised. He is faithful throughout it all.