Read What Others Have Shared
(May 1999)

There Is Hope In Knowing That You Are Not Alone

May 9, 1999
From: Ridair
E-mail : ridar@bigfoot.com

I am a 27 year old Man. I have been a christian for 5 years and God has been so good to me. Since I was 11 years old I can remember periods of my life when I just felt so sad and cried continuously. I never used to enjoy parties and felt socially awkward. This became progressively worse until I use to go to elaborate lengths to make sure I didn't have to be around people. I suffered with anxiety too, I used to dread being shouted at and feared that everyone hated me.

My conversion was a very powerfull one, I just started cying uncontollably at a friends baptism and found myself at the front of the church crying on the pastors shoulder. I was 20 at the time.I experienced such a love which brought relief from the depression. Looking back it was this temporary release from the chains of depression that kept me pursuing God and his love. The depression never went though. I joined a christain missionary organisation called YWAM, and did a discipleship course. God continued to bring tempory relief to the anguish of depression though it allways came back again. No one ever thought I had depression and just thought that the tears were God healing me.

One instance comes to mind where I was prayed for healing because of the difficult relationship I had had with my earthly father. Yes, God touched me, but the depression still remained. A week later, a well intentioned (but wrong) leader told me to let go of the pain and that God had dealt with it! I was so frustrated, the pain to me was real, and at the time I didn't realise it was depression.

I then went to work for a Christian charity working with children. My depression got worse and I was crying virtually every day, I lacked energy to be with the children and my concentration was none existent. My Christian boss decided to 'have a word' with me and told me to 'snap out of it' for the kids sake. I was given a verbal warning and told to buck my ideas up. In the midst of this I met a most wonderful girl who I fell in love with. God, even though I was a right emotional wreck allowed me to marry her.

We moved back into a 'secular' job and my depression continued to rob life from me. I managed to put on a public face and everyone thought that we were happily newly weds. My depression and anxiety was causing me to be highly irritable with my wife and led to me saying some very regretable things to her in my frustration. My depression was spilling over ino my job and I was starting to worry that I couldn't manage the reponsibility that came with it. I went to see my pastor and he said I needed to trust the word of God, and start memorising scripture. I tried this but found that it didn't help me at all.

We both continued struggling along, I was sure God would supernaturalyy heal me though another elder at the church who concilled me suggested I see a Doctor. That was 1 month ago.

My Dr. diagnosed me as having clinical depression, and started me on anti-depressants. The first medication I tried failed and was moved onto something else. I have been taking this medication for the past 2 weeks, and it has removed, to a great extent the anger I used to experience. It is still early days.

Last week I felt compelled to talk to a visting teacher who was preaching about joy and how all Christians should experience it. The depression had stolen my joy. When I shared this with him he said ' God doesn t want you to be like this, the first step is to recognise that you are a child of God'. I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that Christians though well intentioned can be so condeming in this area. This preacher firstly assumed that my depression was just a low, that I lacked faith and God's word should have been adequate. He was wrong. I am only just starting to have the ability to love my wife in a way that she deserves. The anti-depreassnts have done what repeating scriptures to myself never did. Don't get me wrong. I believe in the word of God and it's power. But I also believe in medicine that God has given us. Taking medicine is not contradictory to my faith, it has allowed me to live a more christ-like life. I believe God will restore the years the locusts! have eaten, but he will use medicine to achieve it. God has led me down a path that I would not wish on anyone, depression is a living hell, God's spirit didn't take it away, but God's medicine will.

Someone prophesied over me 4 years ago that "I will go through a time of spupernatural peace and don't go into condemnation". The peace I feel now is like that which was so fleeting in my early Chritsian years where God took it away temprarily by his spirit. I feel this peace is more robust. God does not want me to go into condemnation - nor should other Christians who take anti-depressants. We are being obedient to him in seeking wholeness for ourselves and releasing us to love others as he commanded us to.