How God Is Using Depression To Give Me Hope

In this excerpt from her interview on the Hope Anew Disability Podcast, Gillian shares how her depression is being used by God to give her hope.

Listen to the full interview on the Hope Anew Disability Podcast January 6th!

When Hope Isn't A Thrill

This is the season of hope but I realize that many of you are going through hard times and not feeling so hopeful.

Sarah and I recently had the privilege of interviewing Gillian Marchenko on the Hope Anew Disability podcast and you will be able to hear the interview the first Monday in January! One of the questions that we asked was, “How do you find hope in the darkness?” We had a great conversation about this in the podcast. Gillian went on to write about it further in a recent article on her blog and gave us permission to repost it on the Hope Anew blog here!

May it help you find hope this Christmas season.

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A thrill of hope?

It’s Christmas time, those days in the year when popular lyrics like “a thrill of hope” are on the tip of the tongue. And yet, for some of us who fight depression, the idea of hope isn’t a thrill, but rather a briar patch of disappointment, confused emotions, and shame.

Depression is defined as hopelessness.

For me, hope often feels more lost than found when my mind is frost bitten by darkness. What in the world is a Christian supposed to do with all this?

“Gillian, how do you find hope in the darkness?” the podcast host asked me recently during a conversation about mental illness. A straight forward question with a layered and at times, seemingly complicated answer. How do I explain the inner turmoil that blows around my insides like a bitter, winter breeze swept up in a frenzy? Sometimes hope is a promise I can grab on to. Other times, it melts in my hands.

A positional hope

My friend Andrea and I are working through the book of Romans together and it talks a lot about hope. Look at some of chapter five:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 

Romans 5:1-2

Obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. This is a positional hope a person has when he or she responds in faith to the gospel. It’s solid, sure. It doesn’t melt away. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. What does glory mean here? It’s who he is. We rejoice in WHO GOD IS. He is our hope.

But can I find hope?

The wording of the question in the podcast, find hope, stuck with me. Can I find hope? Paul says yes. He talks about the already and not yet of hope, already possessed through the gospel and something that should be sought after and grown. But how do we do that? How do we seek hope and grow it?

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

After Paul proclaims positional hope in the glory of God through Jesus, he then gives us action points to help cultivate hope in our day-to-day lives. We are told to endure in the faith (not give up) and to let that endurance grow our character (by living faithful lives obedient to God). Endurance produces character and character produces HOPE. How do we endure? By looking to the gospel and trusting God. How do we grow our character? By beholding Jesus above and beyond anything else in our lives, and we can behold him in scripture, prayer, and in fellowship with others.

The NIV adds the word ‘proven’ to these phrases in Romans; endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. Although my emotions my say differently on any given day, when I look back at my life, I see God’s proven faithfulness over and over again. And when I commune with God in a rhythmic way, Christ has ample opportunity to whisper these truths in my ear.

There’s hope positionally in me. And there’s hope for today.

Hope grows in suffering

We rejoice in our sufferings.

Romans 5:3

Is my depression, the one thing I would flick out the window as quickly as people flicked cigarette butts out of the car in the 70s, what is teaching me to hope?

Years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach the thought that my depression would produce hope. But as I’ve grown in my faith and in health, in the midst of freezing out the world in dark nights of the soul, crying out to God for healing, and clawing out of the pits of pain time after time, I have learned and continue to learn this:

When Jesus is all you have, you find that Jesus is all you need.

My depression is training me to hope. Suffering produces hope.

The weary world rejoices

Because of Christ, I can rejoice in my achy limbs and muddied thinking. They aren’t happenstance. They have purpose in me. They stretch me to endure. They mold my character. Hope exists whether I feel it or not because hope isn’t the desire of a future want or need fulfilled, but rather Jesus Christ himself. It’s his life, death, resurrection, and pending return. And when I focus on these truths, my weary world rejoices.

Hope is a promise, not a feeling. And God, by his grace and in his great wisdom, is growing hope in me today.

And that actually is pretty thrilling.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

Written by Gillian Marchenko

This article was reposted with permission. To read the original, please go here.

Gillian Marchenko is an author and a speaker. She lives near St. Louis with her husband Sergei and their four daughters. Find out more about Gillian at her website gillianmarchenko.com.

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Yes, I Am Depressed

Do you struggle with depression? I was sitting in a sterile office with my wife and kids as some stranger was analyzing my blood and this is the question he asked. My gut response was to swallow the lump that suddenly appeared in my throat and say “No. No, I don’t struggle with depression,” rather than admit the truth before my wife and boys.

Instead, I swallowed my pride and with my heart beating in my ears, admitted that I struggle with depression. Oddly, I wasn’t met with scorn or rejection and the world didn’t fall apart when I spoke the truth. My boys didn’t suddenly think less of me and, if I’m being honest, it really wasn’t a surprise to Sarah.

So why was it so hard to admit that depression was a struggle? I didn’t want to be seen as weak or dare I say, unstable. I didn’t want it to impact my relationships with those around me.

 I’ve always been pretty even keel. I don’t have an extreme visible range of emotions. I’m not known for displaying high levels of exuberance when I’m excited or for flying off the handle when I am angry and I definitely don’t talk to others about being depressed.

 Why not? Have you ever felt like you had to wear a mask in order to be perceived a certain way? You wear one mask with your friends. Another mask at your church and so on.

By admitting I struggle with depression, it felt like I was admitting that I was “less than.” Somehow in my personal life, I equated depression with not being strong enough mentally or physically. More importantly, I equated it to not being strong enough spiritually or having enough faith.

Isn’t that ridiculous? Of all the foolish notions, I don’t even apply the same standard to others when I see them struggling emotionally. In fact, it grieves my heart to hear of individuals who didn’t open up or get help when they needed it.

Sadly, I think many of us are stuck in this game of wearing a mask. Not everyone is trying to hide depression. It might be worries over a child who is struggling with a disability. It might be a marriage that is in shambles or an addiction of some type. We’re afraid of what will happen when we are real about where we are at.

Do you know what happened when I answered this man’s question? He said, “Okay, that fits. Let’s look at your adrenals.” He helped me look for an answer and came alongside me. What if I had buried the truth? My overall health would have suffered as a result.

As parents of children who are impacted by additional needs, we often neglect our own emotional, physical and spiritual health. Are there areas that you are burying? Who can you find that will allow you to safely take your mask off so you can begin to experience healing?

When Life Is Too Much

The alarm rang and I finally turned it off. I had already hit snooze, twice. Then I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head again to disappear into blissful oblivion. This seemed to be a pattern lately. It was not even because I was exhausted – and I was exhausted. It was because I dreaded the day before me. Did I love my kids? YES! With all my heart. I would have done anything for them…except maybe get out of bed that morning, but we’ll ignore that for now. I just couldn’t deal with it, with them and their issues and all the pressures right then. So, if I just rolled over and went back to sleep, maybe they would just disappear or wait for a few hours? I was groggy and half asleep and was not really functioning in reality yet, so this just might be possible, right?

 “I didn’t sign up for this.” “It’s too much.” “I have a sense of dread at returning home at the end of the work day.” Are all phrases I’ve heard expressed by parents. This special needs parenting stuff can be hard – really hard. It is unrelenting. The pressures are there and they will continue to be there, probably for our whole lives. Aren’t I just the harbinger of good news and joy to you today, sorry. But this is nothing you didn’t already know (insert big compassionate sigh here). So, what do we do and how do we manage so that “I didn’t sign up for this” doesn’t become “I’m out of here – for good” or we don’t just pull the covers over our heads never to get up and deal with our lives that day and the next and the next?

 Obviously, practical matters like getting a break and resting is a critical physical need that must be met and is the first priority if you aren’t getting that, hopefully before you completely burnout. But, if you’re regularly getting your eight hours of shut eye and are still pulling the covers over your head or taking the scenic route home from work every day, then we need to share our cares, concerns and burdens with someone else. This can be tough. I know it’s not easy to share the most vulnerable, weakest parts of ourselves with another person. But, it can be so helpful.  It’s important to let the pain, doubts and fears out, get some reflection and perspective from other people, whether that’s a friend, counselor or both. But, it’s also important to choose those people wisely so that you get wise reflections and helpful encouragement and advice.

 Even Jesus who was, well, perfect asked for support from others in his darkest hour. Matthew 26:36-46 gives us the account. He goes to an olive grove to pray and takes his three closest friends, Peter, James, and John, to be near him and pray too. He was “anguished and distressed”. Can you relate to those emotions? Jesus is there to talk to his Father. He asks his friends to talk to the Father as well, but every one of the three times he returns to his friends, they are asleep. Jesus’ friends were not the best support to him that evening.

Even if you have great friends who are very supportive, I’m sure there are times when they aren’t available or when their advice or response misses the mark. Know that God the Father is always there. Always available. Never too busy. Never asleep. Never otherwise occupied.

 In a sermon I recently heard, I loved a quote the pastor shared from Paul Tripp, “When we are God-forgetful, we tend to load burdens on our shoulders we cannot bear.” So when the load seems too much to bear, remember to take it to Him.

You weren’t designed to carry the load alone.

Written by Sarah McGuire Co-Founder of Hope Anew

WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO GREAT

On June 20, 2017 the Grand Rapids News published an article with a title reading, “‘Saw his son suffer too much, too long,’ friend says of principle in murder-suicide.” This article shared a friends perspective of George Heckman, an elementary school principle, who took his son’s life and his own life.

George’s 28 year old son Grant had cerebral palsy, was non-verbal and confined to a wheel chair. If you were a friend of George’s, you would think that he had it together. George was described as being able to make others laugh. He would volunteer and help other families, and he served on the board of an organization that came alongside those who are disabled. If there was poster of a parent who appeared to be doing well and to be thriving, George’s picture would have been on it.

Unfortunately, George’s story is not unique and has been repeated with other parents of children impacted by special needs around the country. In Michigan alone, over the last five years there have been at least 3 attempted murder-suicides of parents and their child who has additional needs.

There may be some days that you feel like George. You may feel like when others see you, they see a person who has it all together. While inside, you are just struggling to make it and it is killing you to see all the extra pain and hardship your child has to endure.

As parents of children with special needs, it is not uncommon to deal with chronic grief. Many have mastered the art of wearing a mask, because we think, “Nobody wants to hear about our pain again. The same struggles, the same pain we’ve been dealing with for the last five, ten, twenty years.”

The pain, hurt and anger can only be buried so long. In time they will reappear in one way or another. It may not be as extreme as George Heckman’s case but it will reappear, unless you address it.

Addressing the pain, doesn’t mean the pain will go away. It might but not necessarily and this doesn’t make you a weaker person. You will have good days and you will have days you really struggle. On those days you struggle, have one or two people that you can really be open and vulnerable with. Have those people you can take your mask off with without fear of how they will respond. It is amazing how much healing can take place when you can be real about your pain.

Do you have that person you can be real with? That person who isn’t scared when the mask comes off but respects and loves you more because of it?

If you read this article and find yourself feeling suicidal or homicidal, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or text with someone at the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741.