Is everything sad going to come untrue?
I recently read an article on desiringgod.org called The Eternal Shore: Five Things We Forget About Heaven by Gavin Ortlund. In the article, Ortlund quotes Samwise Gamgee from one of my favorite book series, The Lord of the Rings. In the final book, The Return of the King after the biggest battle has played out and our heroes have won, Sam asks the wise wizard Gandalf, “Is everything sad going to come untrue?” in hopeful expectation of the good things to come.
Ortlund reminds his readers that this is something we can expect and look forward to when we finally reach heaven. That not only will there be no more sadness, but all the pain and sorrow we’ve ever experienced will somehow miraculously be reversed. All the sad will come untrue.
This is such hopeful news for those of us who have experienced the deep, dark sadness of clinical depression and know Jesus as our Lord and Savior! All the despair and pain we’ve known will not only end for all eternity, but will be completely healed as if we’d never known it. For those of us who believe in Jesus, we cling to this great news!
Though for some, who still struggle with depression day-in and day-out, this eternal happiness seems a far way off. Can there not be some degree of healing now? Can we not experience this joy now?
The answer to that is somewhat complicated. Complete healing and full joy? No. Those we will only experience in the presence of our good, good Father in Heaven. But healing and joy, in part, can be ours now.
Here what God’s Word says in Isaiah 40: 28-31
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.
We have an everlasting God who delights in lavishing His grace upon us. He will strengthen and sustain us, He will give us peace and joy, and He will be with us in the pit when everything else has seemed to abandon us.
There is a road that leads out of depression and into joy. It is a road paved by the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a road God travels with us, giving us the strength for each step. I have walked this road. I have experienced life in the “pit” of depression. But praise the Lord, He has miraculously helped me find my feet, enabled me to stand and has given me a little bit more joy with each step I take. I share with you my story to encourage you in two things: 1) there is a God who cares for you in your despair and 2) there is hope and healing at the end of the road of depression.
This is my story.
From Depression…
I was 14 when I was first diagnosed with clinical depression. I had pulled out of public school to be homeschooled my ninth grade year, struggled with an eating disorder and lost a lot of weight, and spent a significant amount of time in my room crying. One month in the spring I received my monthly Christian teen girls magazine Brio and perused an article on depression. At the end of the article there was a list of 10 or so depression symptoms to check off. If you had 3 or more symptoms the article urged you to seek professional help immediately. I had checked off all 10.
After showing the list to my mom and dad, we all finally realized what had been going on with me for the past couple of years. I was struggling with depression. I soon started taking medication for my symptoms and life began to turn around. I went back to public school, found a new group of friends, became really involved in my youth group, and started putting on some healthy weight. I even started dating a nice Christian boy, my high school sweetheart, who would one day become my husband.
Throughout the next couple of years, medication alone had seemed to do the trick. I did very well in high school, thrived in college and was engaged to be married and hired for a teaching position by end of my senior year. Things were going very well and I was very happy with my life.
We had only been married for two months, and I had been at my new job for one month, when things started to fall apart again. Being a good wife was harder than I thought and I felt, for maybe the first time in my life, that I was really failing at something. I was struggling with my new job, a kindergarten/1st grade teacher at a special needs school, and could not keep up with all the demands. I was in a new city, with a new husband, a new last name, new friends, and a new church and I was completely overwhelmed. By the end of my first month teaching and my second month of marriage, I had quit my job and my depression came back in full force.
For the next five years I would bounce from doctor to doctor, live with my parents off and on, try dozens of medications, see a handful of different therapists, and pray, pray, pray that God would finally relieve me of this awful disease.
At times it seemed utterly hopeless. At times I gave up and slept away the days in an attempt to escape my reality. At times I cried and cried for the life I had wanted so badly and had lost. At times I prayed and poured out my burdens before the Lord. And at other times I cursed God for allowing me to walk through such darkness.
…to Joy
But this story does not end in despair. After about four and a half years of sinking deeper and deeper into the pit of melancholy, hope dawned. I found a good psychiatrist who put me on a good combination of medications that finally seemed to work for me. I learned how to count and list one-by-one all the graces God continually poured into my life. I found joy in the fact that my God did care for me and this was evident in all the blessings he gave me each day. I learned to pray the psalms both the happy and sad ones, and used this to draw closer to the Lord. Then God blessed me with another teaching job, a better more manageable one. I thrived on the routine and structure this job provided and was thrilled at the success I experienced. After a couple years of teaching, God taught me more about Himself and drew me even closer to Him through the birth of my son. And as I grow in the grace and admonition of the Lord and navigate the tricky waters of being a good wife (which I am finally on my way towards becoming) and a good mom, I am sincerely joy-filled and depression-free!
But the truth is, I still have bad days, maybe more than most people. There are days I can’t get out of bed. There are times I miss social gatherings or other events because I just can’t muster up enough energy to face being with other people. There are times I feel sad for no reason. But my good days outnumber my bad ones, and I am always encouraged by the chance to start over each morning.
I Need the Gospel
The biggest lesson I learned throughout this, that I’m still continuing to learn, is that my failures don’t define me, Jesus does. The fact is I am going to fail and this shouldn’t catch me off guard or cause me to despair. I strive to be a good wife but I will never be a perfect one, not even close. I strive to be a gospel-centered mother but my shortcomings make this nearly impossible. What I know now is, I need the gospel. I need to be reminded that I am saved by God’s grace, not my own ability to do good. And I am clothed in Christ’s righteousness so that even if I am able to do something right, this does not define my worth as a human being, because it is Christ alone who makes me worthy.
So while there are several things I can identify that helped me through this dark period of my life, I know it was the gospel that truly saved me. I know that Jesus did not die for me to be defeated by my own failures. He did not die for me to keep being weighed down by my own sinfulness. He died to set me free from my sin and my own unmet expectations. He died to save me from my depression, and praise the Lord, he has done just that! Be encouraged, dear friend, the Lord can heal you too!
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor;[a]
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord‘s favor,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn;
to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.[c]Isaiah 61:1-3