Anxious? Depressed? Keep Going!
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It is the Lord who goes before you; he will be with you, he will not fail you or forsake you; do not fear or be dismayed. – Deuteronomy 31:8 (NRSVUE)
It wasn’t until after Mother Teresa’s death, when her spiritual journals were published, that we learned she’d lived in depression almost all of her years in Kolkata. How could a woman struggling with depression have accomplished so much for God and the people God loves?
We can see some clues in the work of medical sociologist Allen Horwitz. He recognized that what doctors were calling depression, starting in the 1970s, was the same set of stress-related complaints that they’d called anxiety from the 1950s into the 1960s. Horwitz predicted that anxiety would again become the most common diagnosis, and it has. Stress still exists, but at different times we have labeled our responses in different ways.
Anxiety and depression are two ways we respond when we face stresses that seem beyond our control. Our body becomes tense and edgy with anxiety as we ready for what seems to be an overwhelming battle. It slows down with depression when we’re convinced the battle is already lost. We can’t control those feelings and we shouldn’t try to, because they’re symptoms, not disorders. They signal that in some way our relationship with the world is out of whack. Sometimes that happens because the world itself–being fallen–is out of whack. Sometimes it’s because our hopes and expectations are misaligned with the person God has made us to be. We’ve made a habit of aligning ourselves to crushing ambitions and then become anxious or depressed when we’re not able to attain them.
Everyone experiences various kinds of misalignment in this world. But when anxiety or depression signal that misalignment, we need to refuse them the power to stop our fruitful service. God still has purposes for us in this world. When we’re anxious, we have to trust God is going before us. When we’re depressed, we have to trust that God’s power is sufficient when our own power feels entirely inadequate–-even utterly immobilized.
Mother Teresa chose to focus on what God called her to do instead of how she felt, and in that way was able to let God work through her in spite of her own feelings. We can do it, too. What is the task God has put before you right now, today? Walk into it, knowing that God is with you.
Questions for Reflection:
1. What was I thinking about when this wave of anxiety or depression washed over me?
2. Is God in a position to do something about that concern? (Hint: the answer is always and everywhere yes! Ask God to go before you into the situation.)
3. Am I in a position to do something related to that concern? If I am, then I will remind myself that God is the one who put me in this stressful place and God is going before me into this challenge. If I’m not in a position to do anything, I’ll return to the point above: God is able.
