Everything feels heavy. The atmosphere above you seems to be pushing down on you in a way it does not for others. You feel as if you are walking through mud; everything requires effort. It feels like you are being smothered by an unseen gloom; your breathing can even feel labored. It is the weight of the world and you do not know why you must carry it. You are being slowly crushed. This is depression. Everything is heavy. It makes you tired.
Your mind is heavy, and ineffective. It is hard to think because of the effort; like processing thoughts while having to push them through wet cement. You cannot make decisions. Not simply because of the energy required to do the math, but because you do not care about the outcome. You do not feel invested in anything. You have no real desires. You eat because you must, not because you want anything. You lay on the couch and stare at your phone. You sleep too much, or too little. What is this gloom? Everything is heavy.
It is Sunday now, and you know you should go to church. But you don’t want to. You do not want to do anything. You have no desire, not even for God. You do not say that of course, because it doesn’t sound right. So, you put on your game face, and you go anyway. You go through the motions because you are mature enough to know that it is good to do good things even if you don’t feel like it. But you feel like a fish out of water because you are depressed while everyone around you is singing. It seems everything is permissible in the American church today, except sadness. It is the new unforgivable sin. If you are anything but relentlessly cheerful you are somehow letting down the team. After all we wouldn’t want anyone to think that God doesn’t “work”. Is our theology really that shallow? That trivial? The books of Job and Lamentations are in our bible for a reason. But they are the scrolls we dare not read in public, God’s embarrassing children. They are too heavy for our theology of personal happiness. So, we hide them from the public.
I’m fine by the way. I am more than fine; I am on vacation with all my kids enjoying the most glorious weather we have ever had here. This is for those who are not fine right now. There are people all around you who struggle with depression, sometimes for weeks or even months at a time. I wanted to give them a voice because they may not be able to express the heaviness they feel so often. And I wanted them to know a few things…
You are not alone. You do not need to be fixed. You are no more broken than the rest of us, just broken in a different way perhaps. I do not know why some of us are made to feel this heaviness so often. Perhaps it is because there is so much pain and evil in this place that it would destroy most people to bear it for more than a moment. But, as his image-bearers, He has chosen some of us carry it; to feel the sorrow of God in a world that has turned away. I don’t know.
Whatever the reason, you are kind of heroic. To get up everyday when you do not want to. To muscle through. To carry the weight. To face the world when all you want to do is stay in bed all week. You have my respect and gratitude. And I want you to remember something. It is what I tell myself when I feel that familiar weight. It may not change anything in my mood, but it gives me perspective. It is this…
That truth and beauty are real things.
In a way, they are the only real things. Because they represent all that is eternal. The heaviness and gloom that confront us are fading. They are weak, and fleeting. There is a breeze blowing from Heaven today, because her front doors have been left wide open. This breeze changes everything it touches, pushing back the darkness, softening some hearts while hardening others. One day this will become a mighty rushing wind again. It will rearrange the furniture here. It will push all that is evil and corrupt off the edge of existence into an abyss from which it will never rise. It will blow away and dissipate the gloom and despair we carry as if it were a mist. Like the tattered shreds of a nightmare that we cannot even remember.
In that day you will lay down the weight you have had to carry. The only weight you feel will be the weight of glory. You will run and not be weary, you will walk and not faint. At last, you will be light-hearted, forever.
“To perceive is to suffer.” – Aristotle
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Longfellow
“Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God.” – Psalm 42 and 43