The Depths of Depression: How Jesus Delivered Me
Something strange was happening!
The room where I was sitting disappeared, and I was standing at the edge of a brown, crusty field. In the far distance, I saw a farmer. The haunting, mocking sounds of death stopped as I stood there staring. The man walked to the far corner and plunged a sharp-pointed plow into the ground. Mesmerized, I watched as row after row was turned into beautiful, moist soil ready for planting. A dammed-up water supply burst, and I was crying a river.
The field was me!
Jesus Himself was the Farmer who appeared to me in a vision that cold January day to stop me from taking my own life.
Let me back up and tell you how I arrived at such a fateful day.
Depression was a dark, slimy pit where I lived for many years. In those days, there wasn’t a name for it, but nevertheless, the agony was real. As the years wore on, ultimately, there was a day when suicide seemed the only way.
At times, I would turn over a new leaf and begin to find my way to peace. I even had an experience with God that was joy unspeakable and full of glory. But then, an older woman called to tell me that I could not expect to live on the mountain top, and another called to tell me I was going to hell because I had married outside our denomination. Again, thoughts bombarded my mind, and it wasn’t long before depression returned with a vengeance. (Never forget—our words have power, and we must be sure that our “advice” to others lifts and gives hope!)
Like so many depressed people, I cried out, “Where is the God of the Bible? Why does He never answer me? Why are my silent screams met with silence? ‘They’ say that I’m this way because I want to be, but I do not want to be this way! No one hears—no one believes me.”
Depression and anxiety are no respecter of persons. They are horrific tormentors that can attach themselves to a little girl who has just experienced trauma or a teenager lacking in self-esteem or a grown man who thought he had it made with a successful marriage, business, and grandchildren. In much the same way, it attached itself to me.
In those early days of depression, my eyes were blinded, and I didn’t know that I could choose life or death. I didn’t know that I had a choice about anxiety and depression. I didn’t know then that God would take my hand through the power of His Word and lift me out of the pit that robbed me of peace and a mind free and clear. During those years of agonizing depression and anxiety, I believed everyone would be happier without me.
A day came when I experienced a glorious deliverance from fear, anxiety, and depression. No one else was around. It was just me and God. In the moment, in the twinkling of an eye, my darkness turned to light!
The Divine Helper
Deliverance is always supernatural, and everyone’s experience is different. Yet, every deliverance is the beginning of an exciting faith adventure. God has prepared the way we are to walk, and we each have our personal journey with Him. In His kindness, He follows behind us to spare us from the harm of our past and each past is different.[1]
Depression and anxiety are mental health issues that are sometimes passed down from generation to generation. Today, there is even medical and psychological help, and we have tools for achieving mental health. “A growing body of evidence shows how our thought lives have incredible power over our intellectual, emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being.”[2]
Nevertheless, the lasting Cure is God. He has given you His Word and a Divine Helper who hovers over you. He has provided everything you need to walk in victory! In fact, He is your divine Helper! “For although we live in the natural realm [where mental disorders dwell], we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energized with divine power to effectively dismantle the defenses behind which people hide. We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One. Since we are armed with such dynamic weaponry, we stand ready to punish any trace of rebellion, as soon as you choose complete obedience.”[3]
Scripture teaches us that thoughts are powerful! For as a man thinks within himself, so is he.[4] We no longer have to live in a fantasy world; we can live in the reality of righteousness, peace and joy—the reality of the way of love! We have the power to change the way we think! And this book from cover to cover is full of His counsel! As we align our lives with the truths therein, we’ll find ourselves living in the peace and abundant life our Father promises. My life is a testimony to the power of God’s Word.
The Counterattack
Many years after God delivered me from depression, it dared to raise its ugly head once again in an altogether different way. By that time, I was established as a Bible teacher and a writer whose books were changing the lives of people around the world. I traveled and ministered to crowds, sharing about prayer, faith, and walking in all the promises of God’s Word. I was the pastor of a congregation I loved. Yet, as we’ve said, none of us is immune to depression—nor its counterattacks.
Anxiety was just a word to me until the afternoon of a similar experience a few weeks earlier. I pulled into the same parking lot, where I sat in my car staring across the street for a few minutes before opening the door to exit. Suddenly, the same sensation came over me, and another explosion happened. For the first time, I acknowledged that I was face to face with anxiety.
Could this be a panic attack? I wondered. Some would say, “Yes!” The loving Voice I had come to recognize spoke, “You need emotional healing. You have forgotten a past that has not forgotten you.”
For the first and only time in my life, I put out a fleece before God. I said, “God, if this is really You, You will have to bring a counselor to me. I am not going to look for one!” God is faithful, and the day came when I attended a behavior modification class, which the diet center near my home was sponsoring. Wouldn’t you know the speaker was a counselor, and I recognized his information was simply biblical principles. I spoke to him after the meeting and made an appointment with him. I expected to go in for a couple of sessions.
Over the period of a few years, buried feelings and unacknowledged anger and their origins were uncovered and resolved. Ed Lauria challenged everything I believed! The Wonderful Counselor, the Holy Spirit, speaks through men and women. God intended for us to be a community where we are helpers of each other’s joy and share each other’s burdens. Instead of hiding our true selves from one another, we overcome the fear of exposure and confess to one another our faults (our slips, our false steps, our offenses, our sins) and pray also for one another, that we may be healed and restored to a spiritual tone of mind and heart. The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available dynamic in its working.[5]
My healing came through fellowship with other like-minded believers, by being honest with myself and with them. I attended a codependency support group where I learned how to submit to the planting of the Lord. Remember, I am His field under cultivation.
These events only increased my faith in the One who “understands humanity.” God knew the intimate details of the anxiety attacks. He knew me. And, again, intimate fellowship with my Father-God and His Word led me out to the calm and peaceful life He promises us. You and I are invited to come freely and boldly to where love is enthroned, receive mercy’s kiss, and discover the grace we urgently need to strengthen us in our time of depression and anxiety.[6] Jesus promised if we would come unto Him, we would find rest for our souls.
The Story of How My Depression Began
When did those two huge, ugly black birds named Depression and Anxiety first begin sitting outside my window? A very long time ago. It really began when my younger sister died at age 10 months.
While the two of us played together, I watched my baby sister die in a freakish accident. My dad came and grabbed her while others swooped in and whisked me away. That life-circumstance altered my life. I was no longer a care-free, happy two-and-a-half-year-old child who loved to play. For years when my mother and dad began talking about Frieda, an adult would hurry me out of the room. It would be years before I asked my parents why they never allowed me to grieve with them. I was there, and I saw her die! Because of my age, everyone believed I was too young to understand. Little did they know that I would blame myself for her death.
Before you judge my parents and the adults who came to help them, remember when Jesus opened a man’s blind eyes. Someone asked Jesus whose sin caused this guy’s blindness, his own or the sin of his parents? Jesus answers, “Neither. It happened to him so that you could watch him experience God’s miracle.”[7] So no one caused the dark cloud of depression that followed me for many years.
The “stronghold of depression” began as a work of the flesh. I describe depression as a wall of defense to situations that hurt us. I remember once telling my mother that “I lived behind my eyelids,” which was my childlike way of explaining I lived in a world to myself—quiet and self-isolated from the emotional fray. When a child is left to his or her own thoughts, the child finds a way to survive the trauma. Within those walls we create a fantasy world where we can shut out the people around us. I escaped into a world of books and music.
Looking back, it’s such childish thinking, but I thought that God had intended to take me instead of her, and He made a mistake. This was the lie that eventually opened the door to thoughts of ending my life years later.
No one could have foreseen the tragedy that claimed my sister’s life, and I did not know how to process it. I was a child, and I thought like a child. If only someone would have spoken a good word to me maybe it would have been different, but that's not what happened. People held me and loved me, but no one acknowledged my broken heart. As adults, they did the best they knew to do with a child less than three years old.
I still vividly remember thinking the day of the accident that if I had died instead of my sister, my parents would be happy. Even though I was so young, I tried to make them happy, but in my childish mind, I failed.
Again and again, I attempted to prove I was good enough by climbing never-ending ladders of perfectionism. I climbed and climbed until the thought that God had made a mistake became my reality. Another lie was added to reinforce a lie that I had forgotten. That original thought became a mindset, which led me to believe that I should never have been born.
Moving forward many years, after marriage and the birth of our fourth child, the thought that I was harmful to my four children hounded my every step. A war raged inside me, and I wondered if I was mentally ill. I felt like two people at times. Standing at my stove, I looked up to see an image staring at me through the window. A haunting and sarcastic voice said, “There is a name for this. You are schizophrenic!” Little did I understand that war, which is described in Galatians the fifth chapter. I had been born again at the age of twelve, and the raging war inside was between my carnal mind and my spirit. The Spirit of Truth makes us free, and the war between the carnal mind and the mind controlled by the Spirit is real. One leads to death, the other to life and peace.[8]
My dad was a pastor, and we moved often. I looked forward to the move because I thought each location would change things for me or make life better. I experienced hope, which soon was lost in the shadow that was my constant companion. With each move, I was the new kid on the block, and initially, everyone acted like they wanted to be my friend. So, I learned to wait for people to approach me. But in small town U.S.A., the outsider remains the outsider. I tried, but I never fit in. People accused me of being snobbish and conceited. They had no idea I was just trying to survive. What did it matter anyway! I knew there would be another town, another church, another school, and other people.
Once again, I smiled while returning to my best friends—my books, my piano, and my studying. I really tried to be a “good example” for the church members’ children. I was told that I could be anything I desired, but I soon learned that was not true. It was my responsibility to guard my dad’s reputation. It didn’t make sense to me, but the shadow that lived with me, that only I could see, made sure I saw how much fun the children in our church enjoyed life. But the more abundant life was only for certain people—it was all confusing.
God knew me before the foundation of the world, and He had placed a desire in me to study and know truth. I knew that I wanted to be a college English professor and a writer. I wanted to study psychology and journalism. I had high hopes! I was denied college and told that I could teach piano without a degree. Teaching piano was not my goal in life. I blamed my dad until a day when I realized it was my own shadow I feared. I decided that God did not like me, and I did not like Him! My fear of going to hell where I would burn forever and a religious person who shared from the pulpit that all my nails would be pulled out with pliers if I did not serve God would not allow me to completely turn my back on God.
Surely, everything would change when I started work, or so I thought. I loved my job, and they loved my work performance. With obvious regret, they fired me because I did not wear makeup, which the church told me was a sin. Satan takes advantage of every opportunity to build resentment that eventually leads to bitterness toward God. I made sure I was never fired from another job!
Of course, if I could just get married, if I could just have children, if I could go back to school and get my degree, it would all be better. I finally named my shadow of depression If. I married. I tried to be a PTA mom and fit in, but where was truth? All these other women both at school and in my neighborhood had it all together, and I wore many masks. If I had my degree, then I would be good enough to take my place in society.
With our three children in school, I was excited. Now I could go back to school. That was not to be. We make our plans, but God directs our steps.[9] Just as I was ready to enroll in school, I discovered that I was to have another child. I fell in love with her the moment I held her in my arms. Who knew that in a few weeks I would be sitting with a bottle of pills ready to go to never-never land where I would sleep the sleep of the dead?
It is ludicrous now in reflection, but I believed that I was ending my life for the sake of my children. I look back and realize that it was lie upon lie upon lie that I believed. And who is the father of lies? Satan! It has been said that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary feeling. Even though I had convinced myself that I was thinking of others, in reality, it was about me. Depression is sneaky that way; it tricks us into becoming incredibly selfish until our feelings, our mistakes, our lack, our void, and our agony are all we can see. Depression blinds us. It lies to us. Left to run its course, it points us toward death.
A Day of Reckoning
On January 20, 1968, the three older children were at school, and the baby was in her crib asleep. Sitting down with my cup of coffee, I felt secure in what I was about to do, looking for the exact time to take the bottle of sleeping pills. I was tired of trying to keep all the laws. What sense did it make to go to a movie and pray that Jesus wouldn’t come back while I was in there?
I’ll never forget the time my two brothers and my sister sat out in front of the house waiting for our parents to return home. I just knew that Jesus had come, and we were left because we were not good enough. I read all the self-help books. I knew all the Old Testament stories and tried to read the Bible. I tried to be good, but now I was faced with the fact that I was truly a mistake, living a lie, and hurting my children. The hateful mocking voice spoke, “Why look at you! You are a weak person—even too weak to take a simple bottle of pills.”
Whether aloud or from my heart I do not know, but with passion I cried, “God, if You are who my parents said You are, this is Your last chance to prove it! I refuse to go on this way! It’s over. Do You hear me? It’s over.”
Jesus Plowed My Hardened Ground
Suddenly, I was no longer seated at my kitchen table that cold, dreary day in January with a bottle of pills in my hand ready to end it all. I was standing at the edge of a brown, cracked field of fallow ground. There was movement in the far right-hand corner, and I was mesmerized as a Farmer named Jesus struck the hardened ground with a sharp-pointed plow.
I couldn’t move. I continued staring at the ground as beautiful, moist fertile soil was turned up row by row. To my surprise, a dammed-up river of tears began cascading down my face. I was God’s field under cultivation! Jesus had come to do the cultivating. He showed me the problem and the solution—and tended to the soil of my heart.
Suddenly, I was once again sitting at my kitchen table. I do not know how much time elapsed; it seemed like both seconds and an eternity. The table and everything around me was bathed in light. The walls were now a heavenly yellow. I looked outside to see brilliant evergreen trees welcoming me, and the overcast sky had turned into “blue skies smiling at me.”
His loving Voice spoke to me and said, “Old things have passed away, and behold all things have become new!”
My deliverance from the power of death came on the very day I had decided to end my life here on earth. Jesus had appeared to me, and my night was turned to day.
Faith Not Feelings
That was a glorious day, but as I was to learn, we are destined to walk by faith and not by feelings. For three months, I was on cloud nine! I thought differently, I acted differently, and I saw differently. But slowly, depression began to edge its way back, diminishing the peace and joy I was beginning to know.
Then, as I sat on the front steps enjoying the sunshine one beautiful Spring morning, the euphoric feelings disappeared. It seemed that fear sat on me and entangled me once again. I was afraid.
“God,” I cried out, “If I have to go back to the way I was before, please take me now! I cannot live that way again!
The same tender loving Voice that had spoken on the day of deliverance spoke once again, “My child, today is your first day of learning to walk by faith.”
I arose and walked back into my kitchen where I sat every morning to come with my Bible, pen, and paper and became a student of God’s Word. That was the beginning of an adventure that will someday return me to my eternal home beyond those evergreen trees and blue skies. In the meantime, I remain God’s garden under cultivation.
God’s Promise to You
You also are God’s field under cultivation! Jesus already paid the price and uprooted fear, depression, anxiety, and other mental disorders.[10] He has planted you beside living waters where your leaf will not wither IF you continue in His Word. Keep praising the One who delivered you from darkness and translated you into the world of Light!
God is faithful to watch over His Word to perform it. I encourage you to choose Him and take His hand. He is the Truth, the Way, and the Life.
My friend, pray this pray and begin walking in the light!
No More Gloom and Doom
Dear Father, Thank You for rescuing me out of the doom and gloom of Satan’s kingdom and brining me into the kingdom of Your dear Son. Jesus Christ bought and paid for my freedom and liberty, and I refuse any anxiety or depression that would once again cage me and put me in bondage.
God rescued me from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons. His son got us out of the pit we were in and got rid of the sins we were doomed to keep repeating. No more tyrannical rule! Now, I live and move and have my being in Him. God in me!
As I live this new life, I will be strengthened from God’s boundless resources, so that I find myself able to pass through any experience and endure it with courage. I will even be able to thank God in the midst of pain and distress because I am privileged to share the lot of those who are living in the light.
Father of glory, I pray You would impart to me the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation so that I may know the Lord Jesus Christ through deepening intimacy with Him. I will grow in the knowledge of You and be flooded with light so I understand the confident hope and rich and glorious inheritance You have given to me. I pray to grasp the immensity of this glorious way of life You have for Your followers—oh, the utter extravagance of Your work in us who trust You—endless energy, boundless strength!
Scripture References
Colossians 1:11-14 TLB, PHILLIPS, MSG, TPT * Acts 17:28 * Ephesians 1:17-19 NLT, TPT, MSG
Notes:
Psalm 139 TPT
Think, Learn and Succeed, Dr. Caroline Leaf, pg. 34
2 Corinthians 10:3-6 TPT
Proverbs 23:7
James 5:16 AMPC
Hebrews 4:14-15 TPT
John 9:1-5
Romans 8:6
Proverbs 16:1
1 John 3:8; Hebrews 2:14 AMPC
