Sometimes what makes most sense is actually true. Isn’t it amazing the trust we put in the smartest and wisest professionals, yet we are more supremely confident in them when they say what we always felt made sense? This article is about that.
As professionals or as pastors, we can count up our years of learning at university, college or seminary level (and for some of us that can be a 20+ year process), and we can look at our degrees and diplomas, and then at the end come to conclusions that marry up with what we always thought would have made sense in the beginning. Yet it is so comforting to know that we looked at our knowledge in a scientific way, in the research we did over many years, all the books and articles we read, all the debates we had, together with our years of practical experience working with people, and in observing life, to have God prove to us a logic that cannot be refuted. It was as it has always been. And yet we know it is a deep truth because of all that we have learned.
Here is an astoundingly simple idea. Isn’t it ironic that it takes us professionals to come full circle to agree with what God would’ve said in the first place? This isn’t putting any of us down, because we really did need to make sure that what we thought made sense was actually true. And it so often is.
Our depression is a normal response to the losses we’ve suffered. Indeed, the exact amount of depression we suffer is commensurate with what we have lost and how that impacted us personally as far as we’re a unique and worthy person. The trauma we have experienced amid life has had an equivalent impact on our mental health. Is it any wonder that we suffer what and how we do? We suffer what another person would suffer if they had experienced what we had.
At some point we need to get beyond treating the symptoms of our conditions and dig deeper in exploring the causes. The symptoms are about what we are doing wrong, yet the causes are about what was done wrong to us. The causes are about seeing ourselves within the bigger picture of all of what needs to be considered. In reversing the focus, in looking at the causes, we get to see ourselves within the system of life, and within the systems that have impacted upon us, so we can see what we are responsible for, and what we are not responsible for. For the things we’re not responsible for we can then forgive, and that is its own very redemptive journey to embark upon.
It is far easier to heal if we can see the whole picture, including seeing how if we put another person in our place that they would probably respond the same way we have. We would look at their response and say it was normal, so why do we feel so guilty and ashamed, or weaker than we feel comfortable being, for responding the way that we have? The most important factor in redeeming our healing is being able to see apart from ourselves, in order that we may have empathy for ourselves, by extending to ourselves the empathy we would give our friend if they were suffering.
Even though it is not unusual that we judge others harsher than we judge ourselves, especially in conflict where there’s a difference in opinions, it’s usually the opposite in terms of our mental health a lot of the time. When someone else says they’re teary and they just can’t shake it, we feel sorry for them and we’ll encourage them and/or pray for them. But then when it’s our turn to be depressed, we can feel we’re a burden to others, or we feel we’re sad for nothing, or that we’re making more of this than it should be, or that we should be grateful, or that we shouldn’t be feeling that way, or that this is too much and too hard.
But what we’re feeling is normal for what we are experiencing. A big part of healing is coming to a place where we stop being so critical of ourselves. And when we stop criticising ourselves, we stop criticising others. What we extend to ourselves in terms of grace we’re able to extend to others.
We never need to feel guilty or ashamed for the depression we experience. It is a normal response to what we have suffered. Just knowing that helps us heal.
Photo by Halie West on Unsplash
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