Depression

The Sun Always Rises

Margaret Ashmore

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781596386259
• eBook ISBN: 9781596386266
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Suffering, in our fallen world, has always been part of the human condition—but Margaret Ashmore reminds us that our choices, not our circumstances, determine whether joy or depression rules our lives.

The Dark Night of the Soul

“His going forth is as certain as the dawn.”

—Hosea 6:3 (nasb)

“Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,

and he delivered them from their distress.

He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death,

and burst their bonds apart.”

—Psalm 107:13–14

My parents had just begun to build their dream home in the country, and they were so excited to watch the progress that they moved into an old trailer next to the building site. But before one nail was driven, my mom had a fatal heart attack. To paraphrase Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, as she walked home through the gloaming woods on a Halloween night, “Thus began my longest journey”8 and one that would take me through what many have called “the dark night of the soul.”

Dad loved Mom so much that he would have been terminally dispirited without someone occupying “her chair.” So I moved in with him. I left my home, my job, and my friends to live in the middle of nowhere in a derelict trailer, which seemed porous to every creepy, crawling species of insect native to Texas. Worse, the shadow of my mother’s death was “like the sky—it spread over everything.”9 It blighted any vestige of joy and left me wondering whether the heavy cloak of depression that seemed to swallow me whole would ever lift. But then God used my little dog Baxter to show me that it would.

On the night of a new moon, when a swath of clouds masked the steering stars, Baxter ran from the trailer into the woods after some varmint that proved too tantalizing for his terrier instincts. I was away visiting friends, so my dad took his flashlight and went to find my beloved dog. Well into his search, the flashlight battery died. There he was in pitch black, surrounded by a thick overgrowth of scrub trees, ravines, and old barbed wire fences, without a heavenly body for light or compass.

When I came home the next morning, I found Dad sitting in his easy chair, drinking a cup of coffee in perfect peace, with one sheepish little dog at his feet. After regaling me with his harrowing tale, I asked, “What did you do?” He looked at me almost quizzically and said, “I just sat down.” “You just sat down?” I asked. “Yes, Margaret. I knew the sun would come up in the morning.”

There was the answer. In the deepest, seemingly inescapable nightfall, the sun always rises. The disciples on the stormy sea cried out in fearful desperation, and Jesus came to them in the fourth watch, the Roman’s division of the day that heralded the dawn.

You may be facing some hard things in life now, all of which could easily spiral you into the depths of depression: a loveless marriage or what may seem interminable singleness, a wayward child, the haunting pain of abuse from childhood, looming foreclosure, age replacing youth. Maybe you’ve gotten a call from a doctor who found “something suspicious.” These are times John Calvin calls “critical seasons,”10 when we choose to sink into the dark depths of fear and anxiety, or be like Peter, who changed his focus from the storm’s threatening swells to a triumphant Savior. When we choose to focus on the Savior, we can walk astride the very thing that would drown us. Our wills, motivated by the knowledge of God’s unconditional love and in his enabling power, can decide to stand against that which threatens to undo us.

In Ed Welch’s book, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness, we read, “Martin Luther called depression anfechtungen, which means, ‘to be fought at.’ ”11 Instead of being translated as “something to surrender to,” it is a call to arms. He goes on to quote D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the British pastor and physician who addressed the topic of depression. He says, “You have to take yourself in hand. . . . You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, ‘Hope thou in God’—instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way.”12

What follows is a list of resolutions infused with truth to help you fight the good fight against depression and fight for joy in a world hostile to it. While there is no necessary order to the list, I begin purposefully with gratitude because God bids us come into his gates with thanksgiving. It’s amazing how that one act can change the entire trajectory of emotions. However, each resolution below has potency for lifting a heavy heart, while its neglect will most certainly weigh the heart down.

Choose Gratitude

“Our sorrow upon any account is sinful and inordinate when it diverts us from our duty to God and embitters our comfort in him, when it makes us unthankful for the mercies we enjoy and distrustful of the goodness of God to us in further mercies, when it casts a damp upon our joy in Christ, and hinders us from doing the duty and taking the comfort of our particular relations.”

—Matthew Henry13

I love the original word for gratitude, beholden, whose first-generation meaning is “owing a debt” or, more literally, “bound.” I cannot repay the debt of gratitude I owe God for my redemption, but it binds me to him. I cannot recompense the many kindnesses shown by friends and family, but my gratitude strengthens the ties of corporate and familial love.

Gratitude awakens the soul to the sweetness of being tethered to God and humanity. A refusal to be “beholden” breaks ties, allowing the soul to drift into isolation with a sense of entitlement and rancorous pride. Ungrateful people will not be bound by such a debt. They care more what is owed them.

Roman philosopher Cicero said, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but it is also the parent of them all.”14 A grateful person knows that all of life is dependent on the grace of a benevolent God and his people who extend that benevolence on earth. Conversely, while gratitude is the portal through which we enjoy God and others, ingratitude is a darker passage into moral and relational decline, as seen in Romans 1 when the apostle Paul describes the degeneration of man. His downward spiral began the moment he refused to give thanks.

Acerbic American writer and poet Dorothy Parker called gratitude the “most sniveling attribute in the world.”15 And where did her refusal to be beholden to anyone take her? She died so bitter and alone that after she was cremated no one claimed her ashes. They stayed in her attorney’s filing cabinet for almost twenty years. That is the common destiny of all who have no gratitude to God or man—a withering of the soul into depression and, finally, into irredeemable darkness.

But gratitude must have a legitimate source; otherwise it is a counterfeit emotion based on our circumstances. And when it is based on circumstances, I’m thankful that people are fulfilling my expectations, but the moment things go awry, I am resentful and angry. The great catalyst of being truly thankful in all circumstances (1 Thess. 5:18)—of gratitud...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• The Normality of Depression
• The Power to Choose
• The Dark Night of the Soul
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources
• More Resources on Depression from P&R
• Other Booklets in the Gospel for Real Life Series