Seasonal Depression and Faith in Christ

There are plenty of things I love about the fall. I enjoy watching football with friends and seeing the leaves change. I enjoy candy corn and even an occasional pumpkin-flavored treat. Most of all, I enjoy being able to walk outside in South Carolina without immediately breaking into a sweat.

I also dread the colder weather and shorter days because fall is when my seasonal depression typically kicks in. The proper name for it is Seasonal Affective Disorder, which can be fittingly shortened to SAD.

I’m grateful that my experience of depression is neither chronic nor severe. I realize that many suffer from much worse forms of depression than I do. I joke with a friend who deals with chronic depression that I’m still in the minor leagues while he’s had a full career in the majors. But I’ve also learned that comparison rarely helps anyone, so I’ll just stick to what I know from my own experience.

When I’m depressed, life loses its vibrancy and slips into shades of gray. Activities I typically enjoy like playing basketball or reading novels become ways to mark the passage of time. My heart seems to carry a lingering bruise throughout the day. The smallest things can make me sad; I’ll feel like crying without knowing why, and I won’t be able to handle dark TV shows. (I’m looking at you, Fargo.)

My first response when depression slowly creeps in is usually denial. Surely, I’m just feeling “off” today, and things will be better tomorrow. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it does feel better than facing reality, at least in the beginning.

When I can’t ignore reality any longer, anger typically follows denial. It turns out that, for me at least,  facing depression isn’t all that different from the stages of grief. I get easily frustrated with others who inconvenience what already feels like a tough life and sometimes rail against God and the world for their perceived cruelty.

This is where my experience diverges some from the stages of grief as I don’t typically waste energy bargaining, and there’s no distinct depression stage when you’re grieving depression. But it took me a few years to realize that the most important part of the process for me is acceptance.

By acceptance I don’t mean that we stop lamenting our broken experiences of the world, nor that we ignore treatment options like therapy, medicine, and exercise. I’m not calling depression good or approaching it as a fatalistic certainty of life.

But I’ve found that when I accept my depression as a severe mercy allowed by a loving Father, I’m humbled to receive his grace in ways I often struggle to. When I’m depressed, I’m under no illusions that I’m in control because I can’t even control my own emotions. I can no longer pridefully see myself as more put together than anyone else I might encounter.

One of my favorite passages of Scripture is 1 Kings 19. Elijah is coming off a huge victory against the prophets of Baal, demonstrating Yahweh’s power in a showdown on Mount Carmel. It was one prophet against 450 prophets, and Yahweh had vindicated Elijah’s faithfulness against the backdrop of Israel’s idolatry.

And what did Elijah receive as a reward? Queen Jezebel took an oath that she would end his life, so Elijah fled in fear into the wilderness. Picking up in verse 4: “But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.’”

If this isn’t a picture of depression, I don’t know what is. Elijah sits down and is ready to die. He is alone and feels like a failure. The Lord meets Elijah in some beautiful ways that can be instructive for us in our own seasons of depression; in his compassion, God feeds Elijah and lets him sleep. Only after that does the Lord address Elijah’s bigger concerns.

And how does God address them? He offers Elijah his presence, gives him partners for his calling, and reveals to him that he has preserved more faithful Israelites than Elijah sees. God invites Elijah into a new place of dependence marked by humility—where he acknowledges his lack and his desperate need for God to show up.

When I’m depressed like Elijah, I’m aware of my weak faith and conditional compassion. I’m confronted by how much my “obedience” is usually attached to the expectation that God will grant my desires. And I’m painfully reminded of how much my reputation means to me as I lack the energy to maintain it.

Many were shocked when, after her death, Mother Theresa’s journals revealed her decades-long experience of a “dark night of the soul.” While spiritual desolation and clinical depression shouldn’t be entirely conflated, they do share some similarities. One gets the sense reading Mother Theresa’s reflections that while she longed to be rid of it, she trusted that God was doing something through it. She became a saint to those in the darkness because she intimately knew the darkness.

As with all suffering, I don’t believe that God gets any joy out of allowing my depression. I hold firmly to the mystery that God hates all brokenness and evil, and yet he somehow works through them to shape us into the image of Christ. We shouldn’t be too quick to explain away this mystery.

I’ve also seen how God uses my depression to humble me and prepare me to receive his grace. As one pastor put it in a sermon about how our suffering mirrors the disciples’ experience on Holy Saturday, “There’s a way in which we can be with God on Saturday that we cannot be with him on any other day because on Saturday we know that he is our only hope.”

Sometimes, I’m a better friend when I’m depressed. I don’t have the energy to attempt to fix other people. All I have to offer is my presence, which is usually what people truly need anyway. And for an Enneagram 3 like me, being unable to hide my depression makes me vulnerable in a way that makes space for others to name their suffering, too.

If I woke up next fall and realized I wasn’t depressed, I would be thrilled. But in the meantime, I’m trusting that if God chooses to allow it, then maybe it’s his invitation to meet him in that secret place. Perhaps it is the gentlest way that he can cultivate humility within me and, in the process, prepare me to enjoy more of his presence.