Two weeks ago, my wife and I were scrolling through our Facebook feeds before bed, and she suddenly turned quiet for a few minutes, then said, “I have to send you something.”
That something was Sarah Robinson’s article, “I love Jesus, but I want to die: What you need to know about suicide.”
Halfway through, I thought, “This article literally has everything the church needs to hear about depression and suicide. I have to talk to her.”
So we talked — our conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
THE WC: Your article “I love Jesus but want to die” went viral. Things don’t go viral unless they resonate with people, so the assumption is that there are a lot of Christians out there who love Jesus but feel like they want to die.
Can you tell me more about your story?
SARAH: I’ve struggled with mental health my whole life. I don’t remember a time before I was depressed. I remember being really young and wanting to disappear or run away. Feeling like it would be better if I was dead.
I grew up in a home that was sort of Christian, but there was a lot of dysfunction in my home, and that definitely contributed to it. So I didn’t genuinely come to Christ until I was almost 16 years old, and I came to Christ in a more charismatic church that was more on the “name it and claim it” side.
There were aspects to that church that were amazing, and then there were aspects that were not very healthy. And one of those things was this idea that you could just choose joy- – that you could just choose to be happy.
I was told things like, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, even about yourself, don’t say it at all.”
I understand what people were trying to do. People were trying to impress upon me as a 16 year old, brand-new believer that your words have power, and the words you focus on can impact your thoughts.
But I don’t think they were communicated in a very healthy way.
So from my earliest days as a believer, there was a lot of shame and a sense that there was something wrong with me — that God seems to talk to these people around me and seems to be doing all these great things for people around me, but there’s something wrong with me.
I must be bad and broken because I wasn’t getting healed. He wouldn’t fix me. I felt like I was doing something really wrong.
It wasn’t a church where people said, “Hey, maybe seeing a counselor would be good,” or “Depression medication is a thing.”
It was more, “Just do all the right things, pray a lot, and if you’re in good standing with God, he’ll give you whatever you want.”
Which is totally an oversimplification [of their message], but that’s how I perceived it.
So in college, I moved out of my house and got in a more stable environment, but a lot of times really traumatic stuff and negative emotions tend to start coming up when you’re in a more stable place in your life.
So I got in this place of stability, and the bottom dropped out. I started self-harming and was deeply, deeply depressed. I went from being a straight-A student to almost flunking out of college because I just couldn’t go to class. I had to withdraw from all my classes except one.
It was a tough season, and I still didn’t know it was a mental health thing.
There were these moments where God would do something that would break through my darkness enough that I could keep going – like after I’d been self-harming for awhile, I showed up at the doorstep of a family I knew at about 10 o’clock at night. It was hot, and I just literally walked into their living room. They could instantly tell something was wrong, and I told them that I’d been self-harming.
They said, “On a scale of 1-10, when you’re self-harming, how much are you thinking of suicide?”
And I said, “Probably an 8 or 9.”
They said, “Okay, you’re going to stay with us for a little bit.”
So they just had me stay with them, cook with them, and just treated me like family. And one of the things they said that night that was so powerful to me — after I told them I was scared and that I wasn’t going to be able to make it if I kept trying to do this on my own — they said, “I’m not disappointed in you.”
And that was so crazy to me! I could not wrap my mind around that.
And that was the beginning of the little steps that helped me climb out a little bit. Thinking, “Wow, if these people aren’t disappointed in me when they see my very worst, maybe there’s a possibility that God isn’t disappointed in me.”
I’ve written about that elsewhere, on the blog, but that was a very powerful moment for me. Super powerful. And then some different things happened, over the next couple years, when I was in a more stable place, but I still didn’t know it was depression, anxiety, trauma stuff.
THE WC: What did you think it was? Did your friends or the church give you any idea of what it was?
SARAH: No. Nobody ever said the word depression until I was 26 or 27.
I moved to Atlanta to be a part of a ministry there, and the lady who led it looked at me and said, “Honey, you deal with depression really badly, and I know because I do, too, and you really need to take care of yourself. You fight really hard to not roll over and die, but you really need to take care of yourself.”
That was the first time anybody had said, “Hey, this isn’t you being a bad person, or not having enough faith.”
Everything in my church was spiritual – “lies of the devil.” Yeah, there’s a lot of lies with mental illness, there’s an extent to where that’s true. But there was just a lack of understanding.
When everything’s a spiritual problem, you can’t seek natural help. You can’t seek the help of doctors.
At that point, I didn’t have insurance or anything, so I started taking some supplements that started making a huge difference for me for a couple years, and I was like, “Huh, this is what it feels like to be happy. It’s a thing!”
It was hugely helpful for about 2 or 3 years, and then, for whatever reason, it just stopped working, and I just slipped into another really, really bad depression.
But by this time, I had learned enough about mental health stuff, and had come to accept that this is something you struggle with. It’s not your fault, you’re not a bad person.
And I’d started working in a residential facility with young women who had life-controlling issues. I was dispensing medications, so I’d become really familiar with meds and was in that environment.
It happened pretty quickly where I took a turn for the worse with my symptoms, and it got to the point where I was having really intrusive, dark thoughts all the time, and I said, “I need to get help, and I want to get help.”
I told a friend one time, “Dealing with depression is a lot different when you don’t hate yourself.”
I had all that self-hatred from thinking I was so bad and so wrong, but then being able to think, “Oh, this is a sickness. These are symptoms. I need medical help.”
So I called around until I found a doctor who could see me two days later, and got recommendations for a really good counselor. Getting recommendations from someone you trust is really helpful.
And that changed everything. She was amazing. I’ve been taking medication and therapy for a little over two years, and it’s by far the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life.
My relationship with God is so much stronger than it’s ever been. A few years back, I was struggling with coming to terms with having a mental health issue and [asked], “What if I never get better?”
And I was at a stop light, and I really felt like I just heard that still, small voice inside me say, “The darkness may always be there, but I will always be there in the darkness.”
Coming to that realization — that I’m not going to be alone in this, and that you’re [God] not upset at me, and you don’t wish I were different, you’re not disappointed in me, you’re in this with me.
I never have to be alone in this.
I’ve just learned that, for me, it takes more faith for me to walk with God through the darkness than it does for me to say, “Oh, Hallelujah, Jesus saved me, Jesus healed me, and everything’s perfect now.”
THE WC: Why did you write the article?
SARAH: It was right after Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade had died.
There have been a lot of high-profile suicides over the past several years, and I have a friend who also writes in the mental health space a lot, and he had had a couple of friends who’d talked to him about feeling suicidal. My husband and I each have a friend whose kids attempted suicide. None of them successful, thank God, but I was talking to my friend who writes about mental health.
And we were both feeling so fed up with it. There’s just so much misinformation, and you see things go around every time there’s a high-profile suicide, and it felt like the right moment to be really honest.
I’ve worked with young women, I was a youth pastor at one point, I was in youth ministry for 8 or 9 years in one realm or another, I’ve encountered it over and over again, and the most powerful thing has been when I’ve told people my story.
And they say, “Oh my gosh, you’re a legit, real Christian, and you struggle with this too?”
My life revolves around my faith, I’ve been in ministry, I have quiet times every day, I’m not just like the cultural Christianity thing. It’s a regular part of my life. And so is depression. I think people just need to know that it can be okay, and that there’s hope.
And if someone else has gone through it, and is going through it, and they’re okay, and their life is good and they’re thriving, then maybe you can too. That’s why I wrote this.
THE WC: How do we talk about this great joy and peace we have as Christians, but still acknowledge to non-Christians, “But by the way, I’m super depressed.”
How can we explain that we have a peace that passes understanding, but sometimes a feeling of zero peace?
SARAH: For me, the biggest thing is being so honest. I think sometimes there’s this idea that we have to package things a certain way for people, especially for people who are not part of our faith.
But the reality is – yes, I’m depressed, yes, I’ve lost people who are close to me, yes, I’ve had friends betray me, yes, I’ve had to go to the ER. None of those things are any different for me as a believer. The thing that’s different is that no matter what happens, I know I’m not alone.
And I think we’re so bad about having honest expectations and setting honest expectations for people.
Yes, if you have a genuine encounter with the love of God and come to know him for who he truly is, everything changes. And yet, nothing changes. Everything changes on the inside, because you know you’re not alone, you know there’s someone with you, you know there’s someone who’s always rooting for you, who will never leave you or lie to you, who will never shame you. But that doesn’t change the outward circumstances a lot of the times. Sometimes, but way more often than not, it’s on the inside.
The joy and the peace are no less real.
In fact, I think they’re even more real and compelling when we say, “Your life is still going to be hard. This world is broken and sick and needs healing, and needs restoration, but there’s a way to be a part of that now, to experience that now, to know love like you’ve never known.”
To feel completely and entirely accepted in all my crap, in all my thoughts that even the church is not comfortable with, in all of my failures and mess-ups. I’m completely, entirely confident I’m loved, I’m accepted, I’m not judged, I’ve got a friend who’s always there to talk to.
I think we just need a better understanding that suffering is part of our lives. Being a Christian doesn’t take that away, but it makes it better, because it means you’re not alone. Because we’re not alone, we never have to be completely hopeless.
THE WC: You said in your article that people often don’t commit suicide for selfish reasons. Can you explain more about that?
SARAH: People who haven’t dealt with that kind of pain think, “My goodness, how could someone be so selfish to hurt their friends and family like that, to end their life when they’ve got kids?”
But people who say that usually are missing a few important pieces of information.
One, when most of us get to the point of being suicidal, you really start to believe that would be the best option. At that point, people often believe that their existence in this world causes pain and struggle for everyone else around them.
So if you believe that you are bad, toxic, shameful, a burden, too negative, you’re going to believe that it’s a blessing to other people if you’re no longer part of their lives.
And you may recognize that it will be very painful, but at the same time, you have such a distorted view of yourself. One of the symptoms of the disease is that it lies to you and takes away the ability of yourself to see yourself objectively and with kindness and grace.
So you’re going to think, “Yeah, this is what I should do. This will be better for my spouse, my kids, my parents.”
On the flip side, people also don’t understand the physicality of depression. A lot of people don’t know you’re in physical pain. People think you’re just sad. For a lot of people, if you’re just sad, you’re lucky.
You just feel this awful numbness, your chest hurts. A lot of people get diagnosed with depression when they go in, thinking they have heart problems, because they’re having actual chest pain. It’s linked to severe chronic illnesses like fibromyalgia and autoimmune disorders.
For me, in my worst seasons of depression, I’ve had nearly constant migraines that lasted for three days, and you’re puking your guts out. You have no energy, you can barely get out of bed, your head’s foggy.
Now if someone’s in that kind of physical pain, if it’s like an illness like someone had cancer and they get to the point where they say, “I don’t want to fight the cancer anymore,” people understand that because it’s so horrible to go through all that anguish.
That’s what it is for a lot of people. [They think] “I just want to go home, and if I stay here, it hurts other people.”
You’re not making that decision out of a selfish place of, “I don’t care about anybody else.” You think, “I think this is best for everybody involved.”
THE WC: What would you say to a Christian out there who’s given up on joy or even trying to find it?
I’ve been in that place where I’ve said, “Okay, God, I’ve been looking for joy and peace for years, and you’re not giving it to me. I’m just not going to look for it anymore because it’s so disappointing to look and not find.”
SARAH: No matter what it takes, no matter how much time, energy, effort, money, whatever it takes for you to find healing and wholeness in your life, it’s worth it, and you’re worth it.
You’re worth the therapy, the medication, time doing things you just like – or did like, before you were depressed. You’re worth buying yourself flowers each week or going and sitting at the beach just because it’s good for your heart.
With that, the thing that’s really made the biggest difference for me is shifting my perspective of what joy is.
Christians like to talk about how joy is a choice, and it’s not a feeling – like happiness is circumstantial and joy is spiritual and eternal. That’s just simply not biblical. That’s not accurate. There’s no differentiation in the Bible between being happy and joyful. That might feel even more discouraging, because you say, “I sure don’t feel happy. This sucks.”
I can’t choose it, but I can cultivate it. I can choose my thoughts and actions that will help it grow.
One of the biggest things that helped me was reading One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. She’s someone who’s struggled with anxiety and mental health issues and self-harm. One Thousand Gifts is her story in finding beauty in the smallest things in life. It sounds so cheesy and ridiculous and you’ve probably heard it a thousand times. I get that, and I didn’t buy it, either, but just paying attention to the tiniest good things makes the biggest difference to me. So I started a gratitude journal.
In another season of life, someone gave me a big jar of marbles, and every day I could think of at least one good thing, I’d take a marble out before bed.
I’ve also written on little slips of paper something good that’s happened, so when I’m really struggling I can take it out and look at them.
It’s things like a good orange that was juicy, the way my coffee smelled – there was a lot of food on there. The sound of my niece laughing. Watching a stupid YouTube video. One of my go-to’s for when I’m super anxious or really depressed, I’ll go to YouTube and put on stinking Jimmy Fallon. It’s just knowing what’s going to help you and doing whatever’s going to help you.
It sounds so simplistic and so opposite of what you hear in church.
Like “Choose joy” and “The joy of the Lord is your strength and Jesus saved you, so that should be enough to make you happy all the time,” but seeing the tiniest gifts in the world helps me to see that even though this world is broken, God’s woven millions of love notes through it.
I try to remember, “Before the foundation of the world, you knew I’d eat this particular orange, and you knew I’d see that particularly sunset and it’d make me smile.”
A lot of it boils down to mindfulness, which is a buzzword right now and some people feel like it’s New-Agey, but it’s really just paying attention, working on what you see notice, and what you hold in your mind.
It doesn’t erase the pain, it doesn’t take away the dark thoughts entirely, it doesn’t heal your depression, but it sure does make you feel a little better. It brings up the bottom. It helps you to see that even if the toughest times, there’s still joy.
THE WC: What’s your favorite song to play when you’re depressed?
SARAH: I used to have a playlist that would make me feel more depressed, so that’s not very helpful.
THE WC: Sometimes I turn on K-LOVE and think, “Oh, I hate this station. It’s so unrealistic, it’s so nauseatingly positive. I hate it.” But other times, I go to my depression playlist, and I enjoy it for 15 minutes and say, “I can’t keep doing this. I’m getting worse and worse.” But other times, you kinda need that honesty.
SARAH: If I’m going for comfort and encouragement, it’s going to be something along the lines of “you never leave me” – some sort of a worship song.
If I need to be out around people and have to pull myself together, have to function and all that, I’m gonna listen to something fun and happy – I really like Ben Rechter for that. His album that has “Brand New,” “Men Who Drive Me Places.” It’s just fun and happy.
I’m not a one song person. Real big fan of John Mark McMillan.
There’s also a couple Nichole Nordeman songs that are way old school that are really good. There’s one called “Small Enough.” Which is “Great God, be small enough to be near me now.”
THE WC: Thank you so much.
About Sarah:
Sarah Robinson has a thing for redemption and finding hope in the darkest places. Check out Beautiful Between for honest stories about faith, mental health, and cultivating joy. She made this hope-filled manifesto just for you. <3
