Content Warning: This essay contains topics such as depression, mental health and suicide. It is the third in a series exploring mental health and faith.
Grace can be found everywhere. I think we rush through our days too quickly, and we don’t take the time to admire how beautiful everything is. I found a snail on the sidewalk the other day that filled me with so much joy that I couldn’t help but take a photo of it and share it with my family. Grace is everywhere. But what about the times when grace can’t be found?
Depression hurts because it makes it difficult to find grace in the world. When we can’t see the beauty in our lives, we focus even more on all the wrong things. In doing so, depression traps us in a spiral where everything only seems worse and it can feel as though all the goodness in the world has simply gone away.
When that happens, I find myself wishing for the flood to return. I want God to see the world as my depressed mind sees it, and I want him to take action to fix it. Wipe away everything and restart with a clean slate, find another Noah, build another boat.
I want God to see the world as my depressed mind sees it, and I want him to take action to fix it. Wipe away everything and restart with a clean slate, find another Noah, build another boat.
There’s a catch — I don’t want to be Noah. When depression has hold of me, I want to be whisked away in the flood.
Of course, the Bible has taught me that there’s not going to be another flood. God promised us that they wouldn’t do that again (Genesis 9:15), and I need no more proof of that than Jesus. Jesus died for our sins. He was the sacrifice that spared all of us from what could have been another cataclysm. Jesus loved us enough to die for our sins. He died so that we may live, but it is hard to see the beauty in that sacrifice when filled with anguish.
In April 2023, I arrived at the emergency room, suffering from a mental breakdown. The nurses had me sitting in a chair and were asking me all sorts of questions, but one of them was clearly more important than all the others.
“Have you had any thoughts about harming yourself or others?”
My answer was “No.” I was being fully honest. I was at my lowest, but one of the reasons I went to the emergency room instead of fighting through my anxiety (as I too often prefer to do) was because I have seen people who have turned to self-harm. I will not go into details, but the fear that I could have ended up trying to inflict harm on myself, or someone else, was terrifying. Still, I think back to the question the nurse asked. I have never wanted to hurt anyone, but at that moment, I wanted God to renege on his promise and send in the flood.
Looking back on it, I didn’t want the world to be flooded. I knew, deep down, that there was still grace and beauty to be found. What I needed was for my mind to be flooded. I wanted God to take all my happy thoughts and put them on a little boat before flushing the anxiety and depression from my mind like the sinners in Genesis. There was no flood, but instead, there was grace. I found beauty, and I clung to it for dear life, until my mind had returned to a better place.
There was grace in the phone call I received from my brother as I sat in the hospital waiting room, checking in to make absolutely certain that I was going to be okay. There was grace in the doctors who cared for me. There was grace in my classmates at college the next day, who asked if everything was alright. Some of them didn’t even know that I had been in the hospital, they just knew that I was struggling with something so large and so stigmatized that they’d have to keep pestering me about it until I opened up.
There was no flood, but instead, there was grace. I found beauty, and I clung to it for dear life, until my mind had returned to a better place.
If my depression was a representation of sin, then the people who showed me grace would be Jesus in this metaphor. They took time out of their days to be with me. Time is one of the most precious resources we have, and they sacrificed it because they cared about me. There is endless beauty in that.
It’s difficult to watch someone struggle with depression. It’s hard to reach out to people when they cannot see the good in your actions, but it is always important to do so. Jesus, no matter how much opposition he faced, continued to reach out to others with kindness and love. We must strive to do the same because there is grace in the act of reaching out and asking someone if they are alright. There is love in taking even a moment from your day to make sure everyone is okay.
There is grace in everything. Sometimes, we need to remind others of that. Sometimes, others need to remind us of that. But there is grace in everything that God has made, and calling forth a flood would not ease our weary minds. Be the hand that reaches out with kindness and love, because it is through that love that even in our darkest moments, we may find the beauty in this world.
Are you or is someone you love struggling with emotional distress?
Call 988: The 988 Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the United States.
Call 1-800-662-HELP (4357) The SAMHSA National Hotline, also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service, or TTY: 1-800-487-4889, is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.
