I have something to say today. It isn’t anything fun to say and in fact it’s a post that has been running through my head for months. I’ve ignored it for fear of lacking the words needed to give it importance. 

A few months ago, a boy I worked with committed suicide. I found out because I had seen something on a friend’s facebook and I sent her a quick message. She told me that he was gone. I was in shock. And then I just wasn’t.

This boy and I had worked together for a few months at an old folk’s home, and he regularly helped me with a resident there. She couldn’t talk which led to lots of conversations between this boy and myself. He was a Christian, and one night as he worked I asked him what was bothering him. He told me he had been struggling with depression, and that he had tried in the past to commit suicide, but was stopped by his girlfriend. I shared with him my story of struggle with depression and tried my best to encourage him to get help. 

Shortly after he and I talked I left that job and began working somewhere else. He and I stayed in touch a little over facebook and through other past co-workers and eventually I stopped hearing from him. I didn’t think much about it at the time. That made hearing about his death 100 times harder. 

Yesterday, as I’m sure most of you know, Robin Williams took his own life. This was hard for me to swallow, because Mr. Williams was one of my favorite actors as a child, and then as an adult. He was someone who always made me laugh, and a few years ago, when I read that he struggled with depression, I found myself relating to him more, knowing that he and I shared some of the same struggles. 

I was chastised by someone for mourning the loss of Mr. Williams because he had taken his own life, and frankly that infuriated me. 

As a Christian I have fought for years to teach younger people about what depression is, and how to recover from it. I have shared my story with countless youth in order to show them that there is hope. I don’t say these things with pride I say them because no one else had ever told these young people that. I remember speaking with a young lady who had told me she was struggling. She told me that she had related her struggles with her pastor, and the pastor told her that Christians weren’t allowed to be depressed. Even as I recall this story the anger again rises inside of me. 

That is why I am saying what I need to say now. 

Depression is something terrible. It is something that swallows your mind, and makes you feel insane. It feels as though you are drowning and everyone around you is breathing just fine. It is frustrating. It is difficult. It is dark. I tell you this because if you or a loved one has not experienced it, it is very easy to dismiss as something easy. Let me tell you that it is the opposite of that. 

I think that the devil has down a good job of wrapping depression up and making it look like something to be ashamed of. I think that he has made Christians believe that depression is something that can win over the power of Christ, when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. I think the devil wants us to believe that depression is sinful, that depression is a spiritual issue, that it is something God is ashamed of. 

I am here today to tell you that those words just aren’t true. When I was in the darkest days of my depression, I was not alone. I know that God himself was with me in my bedroom. I know that he is the one who sent me the help I needed and shielded me from people who believed that I was dirty for being depressed. 

God was not ashamed of me when I was wallowing in sin, and he was not ashamed of me when I cried out to him for help. And he is not ashamed of you. 

Christians, depression is a disease. It is a disease that attacks your mind and makes you feel empty. It is an imbalance of chemicals in the brain and that is what it is. Let me tell you this, depression is something that the devil intended to take you further from God, but I am living breathing proof that it can bring you closer. Those voices in your head that whisper discouraging words, that make you feel not good enough, those are not God. 

The devil came to steal and destroy and I truly believed that he is using depression to steal and destroy people’s lives and take them away from their first Love. He is using depression to create division in our churches, in our families and in our world.

I refuse to give the devil that privilege. 

I refuse to lose any more friends and loved ones to this disease.

Change needs to start now. It needs to start with our churches and our families. Mental illness isn’t a game. We have to begin shedding light on what this is. Christians don’t always have to be happy; we don’t always have to smile. We live in a world of corruption and evil and if Jesus can weep in sadness and grief so can I. But when the sadness begins to take over, when the darkness begins to take root it is time to get help. 

We need to be those encouragers. The ones who tell these people that they are loved despite their problems.