Albert Camus, writing in The Stranger, of that monster called dread:

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“Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come.”

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Of course, as Christians with depression and anxiety disorders, we know exactly what he’s talking about.

In fact, you can’t escape those feelings if you have a mental health disorder. They’re part of it, just like high blood sugar is part of diabetes.

The great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, famously said:

“There is a kind of mental darkness, in which you are disturbed, perplexed, worried, troubled – not, perhaps, about anything tangible.”

So this isn’t just the despair of Camus. It’s the despair of a disease that Charles Spurgeon, that you and I, as Christians, also experience.

And I think a lot of us find great comfort in knowing we’re not alone.

But as Christians, we also know that those feelings tell us nothing about the fact — the amazing fact — that we are beloved children of God.

And that, while Jesus promises a life of tribulation, he also promises the former things that are so present, and that we fear are so future as dread takes over — these will all just be “former” one day.

As Neil Tennant sings of that moment, “These former things are passed away. Another life begins today.”

Our “another life” will begin one day.

Until then, we keep going, no matter the dark wind you dread from the future.

And you know what — that’s not your future, that’s not mine.

Depression wants us to tell us it is, but who are you going to believe — The Lord who died for you, or depression which kind of wants to ruin us?

We stand with the Lord, because he stood for us. By God’s grace, we stand with him. As Brennan Manning wrote, “All is mercy.” All is mercy.

If you’re struggling, find a psychiatrist here, a therapist here. Keep going, faithful one! And the faithful one will not abandon you.

And he promises, he will not leave you as an orphan.

A beautiful passage from The Valley of Vision.

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I pass through a vale of tears

but bless thee for the opening gate of glory at its end.

Enable me to realize as mine the better,

heavenly country.

Prepare me for every part of my pilgrimage.

Uphold my steps by thy Word.

Let no iniquity dominate me.

Teach me that Christ cannot be the way

if I am the end,

that he cannot be Redeemer

if I am my own savior,

that there can be no true union with him

while the creature has my heart,

that faith accepts him as Redeemer and Lord

or not at all.

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By the way, I hate that there are parts of my pilgrimage that I hate. And that’s okay that I hate it. Jesus begged for his cup of suffering to pass, too.

You don’t need to love suffering — the way that some in the church have turned it into video game power-up, as if one needs to explain and even glamorize the thing that caused Jesus to weep.

But our pilgrimage does include suffering, and yet thank God that, as the passage notes, there’s a gate of glory at its end.

For the depressed, that sounds like rest.

(I’ve always liked the conceptualization of “eternal rest” better than “eternal joy” or “bliss” etc, because if you’re depressed, anxious, OCD, PTSD, or any number of things — rest is something we often can’t even do even when we rest, right? So it sounds really nice).

Romans 5:4, New Living Translation:

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“Endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.  And this hope will not lead to disappointment.

For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.”

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The longer you’re a Christian, the older you get, the closer you come to understanding that living this life is about endurance.

And Romans promises it won’t lead to disappointment, “for we know how dearly God loves us.”

Sometimes, people overpromise and we’re disappointed.

I have an idea that if I were airlifted and dropped next to Yellow Stone’s Old Faithful, the trusty geyser would disappoint. Despite all the promises of the coffee table books.

“Nice fountain. Now can I see some bison? Oh, the bison aren’t here today. Ah, it’s next month that they come out.”

But God never overpromises because he can’t lie. And if he says we won’t be disappointed, I can barely imagine what he’s imagined up for us.

You and I will not be disappointed when our race is over.

Isn’t that when the glory, the happiness always begins? Isn’t that when you can rest, when you can relax and smile again? When the race is done?

Just keep going tonight.

The night is already much later than you think*. For Christians, that’s a reason to get up another day and endure.

[Photo: “Lawrence of Arabia”]

*There’s a beautiful poem of despair by the late Robert Service which ends:

Ah! the clock is always slow;
It is later than you think;
Sadly later than you think;
Far, far later than you think.

But we have Christ, the resurrection, we might have the same clock, but midnight means something different.

Anne Lamott, writing on Matthew 10:31:

“We are lovely as sparrows, and all sparrows are sweet. No one thinks, ‘that sparrow is kind of a loser and boy, is that one letting herself go’.”

In case you’re not familiar, David Foster Wallace was an acclaimed novelist (whom I’ve never read), and student of the human condition. And society. And mass media.

Shortly before he took his own life, he gave a commencement speech, “This is Water,” at Kenyon College (click here for audio):

The choice bit:

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“Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god…. is that pretty much everything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real money in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth.

Worship your own body and sexual allure, and you will always feel ugly.

And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.

,,,,,Worship power, and you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful; it is that they’re unconscious. They’re default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure measure value.”

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Of course, Christians have heard some version of this “everybody worships” spiel. It’s almost pastor 101.

But what drew me to this particular passage (from a Tim Keller book) is the phrase “eats you alive.”

Now one caveat: Depression and anxiety and other mental health conditions (particularly OCD) can all eat you alive, and that’s NOT a matter of worship but health.

So if you feel eaten alive and have one of these health conditions, it’s not because you’re worshipping the wrong thing.

Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking a bit about this.

What eats me alive? (beyond my mental health conditions).

Well, fear for my family, for one. I worry about what will happen to them all the time, and not just your run-of-the-mill, “I’ll buy life insurance” kind of worry.

It’s so intense that it eats me alive, sometimes.

Of course, my OCD, my anxiety disorder may be contributing to that, but I have to ask myself whether, in some form, I am worshipping my family. Is it my disorder or my worship?

These are hard things, particularly for people with mental health conditions, to know but it’s worthwhile to stop think for a second (without overthinking).

1. What is eating me alive?
2. Is my mental health condition contributing to it?

If you can honestly say “no” to the second, then maybe you and I are worshipping, at some level, something we shouldn’t.

Again, I want to be very clear: Your mental health can cause anything — literally anything — to eat you alive, and just being depressed, for no reason, eats you alive, as well.

But think also about how tied you are to the things of the world, what you might be worshipping, what might be eating you alive that doesn’t have to, that shouldn’t.

In his book on midlife crises, Dark Night of the Shed, Nick Page wrote:

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“It is a disturbing thing, that dark night moment when you realize that the gods to whom you have given your life have let you down.

And the reason that it occurs in middle age more than at any other time is, I think, because in the first half of life we can still hold out the hope that they will deliver on their promises.

There is still plenty of time for our worship to be rewarded.

But by middle age, as we’ve seen, our illusions have gone. We have seen the best that these gods can do, and found it wanting.”

……The wrong gods will always fail us. For some men this leads to anger and frustration.

For others it is expressed in fear and anxiety.

We lie awake at night worrying about money, about where the next job is coming from, about what will happen to use in the future. We feel helpless, isolated, trapped.

The German term for ‘mid-life crisis’ is Torschlusspanik, literally ‘door-shut-panic’, fear of being on the wrong side of a closing date.”

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The answer, of course, is the ones I’ll always give on this blog.

First and foremost, Jesus.

Even if you feel he’s forsaken you in this life, I promise he hasn’t because he was forsaken for you.

In Romans, Paul writes, “And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how deeply God loves us.”

Notice there’s an assumption of disappointment there — that you might feel disappointed by God. I don’t think any Christian hasn’t. But because God loves us deeply, one day — and it might only be when we die — that hope you’re banking on won’t let you down.

By definition, at death, everything else you trusted will have let you down. But not Jesus.

“Today you will be with me in paradise,” he told the thief.

And the second answer I’ll always give on this blog — if you’re struggling with feeling eaten alive, please please please also run to your doctor. Consult a psychiatrist, a therapist.

Depression doesn’t have to devour you, anxiety doesn’t have to consume you, OCD doesn’t have to… oh, OCD. How I hate you.

So look above to Jesus for salvation and to Psychology Today for finding a psychiatrist or therapist who can help with your mental health.

Oh, and here’s that speech.

[Photo: By Bjorne of Danmark]