Depression is extremely common today, and most of us have experienced at least periods of despair. Many have sustained times of depression that lead to hopelessness. I understand this and have felt it, but I also know that there is always hope. The feeling of hopelessness is a lie.
Job is a great example of this. Job is a righteous man who suffers tremendously. He starts as rich, with a good wife, lots of children and many servants. In quick succession he loses everything. His children are killed, his property is stolen, his wife turns on him, and he is afflicted with painful illnesses.
There are many passages where Job laments his situation. Chapter 7 has some of the most pointed:
Has not man a hard service upon earth,
and are not his days like the days of a hireling?
Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
and like a hireling who looks for his wages,
so I am allotted months of emptiness,
and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
Job sees his life as unrelenting toil of a slave working in the sun who longs for just a few moments of shade. He describes his life as emptiness with nights of misery.
Some of us have hard times thrust upon us like Job. Seeing your children killed would be a terrible experience and I think we can all recognize could lead to deep and prolonged feelings of emptiness and misery. Any task can feel meaningless at such times.
Not everyone who has such feelings has undergone incredible tragedies like Job. Depression can afflict anyone at any time. Everything in a person’s life could look good, and yet the person could be in incredible darkness, depression and despair.
All of us can appreciate to some degree the emptiness of a person who suffered a tragedy, but many struggle to understand depression when times appear good.
Many highly successful people experience this when they reach a major milestone. Graduating with a PhD, getting a major promotion to an executive position, or an athlete winning a championship are great successes, but it is fairly common that these triumphs are followed by a period of depression. Why?
We often motivate ourselves to work hard by the expectation of the reward, but when the reward comes, it satisfies far less than we expect. We become so attached to the struggle for the achievement, that the loss of the objective by achieving the goal actually leaves us empty and depressed.
This is just one form or cause of depression. There are many others. A new mother suffering post partem depression is something I am aware of but not something I can personally empathize with. I haven’t experienced it and will never experience it. Knowing about it isn’t the same as experiencing it.
Other times, depression seems to come from no source. We just become depressed. This is extremely difficult to share with others. The feeling of depression can be overwhelming and debilitating, but without an external cause, it can be nearly impossible to explain to even a close friend.
Job can help us understand depression and despair. We need to separate the situation from the experience. The translation of chapter 7 used in the Catholic Lectionary captures this well:
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle;
they come to an end without hope.
Remember that my life is like the wind;
I shall not see happiness again.
This is extremely common in depression, the feeling that it will never end. I can remember times when I was depressed and couldn’t remember what it felt like to not be depressed. Contrast this with feeling either good or neutral. Depression is a misery that pervades everything. One aspect is that feels like there is a weight holding you down, like gravity has doubled and every movement is a chore.
Perhaps you have had the experience sitting on the couch exhausted knowing you need to go to bed. Despite that, you are so tired that you can’t get up to go to bed. That exhaustion is similar to some aspects of depression. Even when physically rested, there is an emotional weight that makes every activity harder and more arduous. Job describes this by comparing every task to the work of a slave that is exhausted and longing for the slightest rest and shade.
A neutral state may not feel good, but it lacks the misery and despair of depression.
Job is in the middle this depression and he is convinced he will not see happiness again. Other translations state this that he “will never see good again.” Regardless of the translation, the meaning is the same. There is a hopelessness that the depression will never end.
This is the great lie of depression. Depression is not permanent. If you are depressed now, I assure you it will be short lived and I beg you to adopt a view with total confidence that it will end soon.
How do I know this? I have suffered from depression for years. Some bouts lasted months, but every time, there was eventually a reprieve. Could a depressive episode last for years. Yes, but we must attack depression with the confidence that it will end and will be short lived.
You may be wondering how I can say it will be short lived if I am also saying it could remain for months or years. This is not a contradiction. It is a strategy and there is truth in it.
The more you are convinced that a depressive episode is just that, a passing period of depression that will end, the easier it will be to persevere through that time. It is strange, depression often doesn’t have warning signs when it is going to end. I remember times when I realized that it was just gone. It had been there for days or weeks or months, and then without warning and suddenly I had energy and enthusiasm. This was often a shock because during the depression, I had forgotten what it was like to not be depressed. That depressive state became the only thing I knew. That’s how the lie of hopelessness becomes so easy to accept. We forget what being happy or joyful is like, so all we know is darkness and despair. How can we have hope when we forget what it is like to not be depressed? It is hard.
If you have ever had a long and severe cold or flu, and then after a couple of weeks you have a day where you wake up and feel substantially better. In those times, when the illness has dragged on, I tend to forget what it feels like to not feel sick. It just become normal to feel lousy all the time. Then that first day that feels so much better, not necessarily great, but much better, is a shock.
Having a depressive episode end is similar, but can be even more shocking. To laugh with a true sense of happiness after having completely forgotten what even the slightest feeling of joy is like is amazing.
The lie of depression is that it will never end. Continue to reassure yourself that the depression will be short and will end. Don’t worry about when it will end, only that it will. For people that have lived with depression for a long time, many gain strength with this knowledge. They know it is a passing experience, and every second, they are closer to the end. The more times they go through this cycle, the more confident they become that they are close to the end of the depression and their hope is greater.
Others succumb to the hopelessness. Instead of looking towards the end of the depressive episode, they focus on the depression and that it may come back. Although there may be relief for a time, the pervasive thought in depression and outside of it is of the depression. This makes the depression more difficult to carry and leads to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.
The choice is simple. Do you live with hope and confidence, or with despair and fear? As simple of a choice this is, it takes a firm, strong and persistent will to choose hope and confidence. Fortunately, we are not fighting this battle alone.
Our hope is not just in relief from our struggles, suffering and depression, but hope in the life to come. Our perseverance in this life leads to eternal life with God. Job understood this and while still lamenting the tragedies that befell him, speaks these words of hope in Chapter 19:
For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and in the last day I shall rise out of the earth.
And I shall be clothed again with my skin, and in my flesh I will see my God.
Whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another: this my hope is laid up in my bosom.
This is our second hope. Our first hope is in the knowledge that whatever hardship and depression we experience, it will be short lived. Our second hope is that the next life, our eternal life with God, will be filled with joy and no pain or sorrow will persist.
There were two things that strengthened me in my struggle with depression. One was my love for my family and my dedication to them. I resolved many times that I could endure any suffering for them. I don’t know if that is wholly true, but I continued to tell myself that my love for them was greater than my depression or any suffering I was experiencing.
Second, my faith that God would not abandon me was crucial. I knew that my Savior and Redeemer had struggled with anxiety and depression in the garden before His arrest, He was abandoned by His closest followers and suffered a torturous death. I know He understood my suffering and would not abandon me.
I read Job at that time, and his story reminded me and reinforced in me that that I could persevere. I learned that it didn’t matter how I felt. I had responsibilities and I would act on those. I developed a small group of friends that I could share my struggles with and ask to pray for me. They helped tremendously. They didn’t always understand my struggles and often couldn’t relate to them, but they supported and prayed for me when I needed it. At times, that was frequently.
Overall, I learned to focus on hope and not despair. Whatever the situation, be assured you have a reason for hope. Trust in God. If Job could trust in God, so can you. Hopelessness is a lie. The only way our situations can be hopeless is if we resolve to make them hopeless. We have to accept the lie, reject God and reject every opportunity to come out of our darkness. Never accept this lie. Never turn from God and never give up hope.