Depression can be felt as a dark, dominating and incapacitating mood. There are challenges in speaking well to someone experiencing this struggle. When a sufferer is numb or overwhelmed their ability to respond to help is diminished. Your well-intended words can hit a glass pane and slide ineffective to the ground. Or it can feel like you are saying too much, overwhelming the one needing help. Or that you are asking or expecting too much of them – believe this, try that – and you risk paralysing the sufferer. How do we, as helpers, speak well to depression?
To be aware of the person in front of you is foundational. Attentiveness to the struggler can prevent the risk of speaking words that fail to connect: ‘How are you doing in our conversation? Is it too much? Is it helpful? What would be helpful?’ When the heart is weighed down and tossed about, concentration span can be short and ability to follow can tire easily. Love will cater to these struggles.
Psalm 42 is not a psalm specifically about depression. It’s about exile and hope when God feels very far away. In it we encounter sorrow and distress, and how faith turns to God and begins to see light. It’s not about depression, but like many psalms can help a person struggling with depression. How?
Being known in the struggle
A sufferer will be most persuaded by the person they feel most understands them. If I feel you ‘get me’, I will listen to you. We want Scripture to be a mirror in which the struggler sees themselves. What descriptions in this psalm of lament can connect with the experience of depression? Here are some examples.
It begins with a thirsty deer in a parched land, longing for water (v1). ‘You’ve told me God seems far away. Here’s a picture of wanting God, knowing that you need him, but feeling spiritually dry and distant and lifeless.’
Or, ”My tears have been my food day and night” (v3). ‘Do you see here a sorrow that takes away our appetite and affects our sleep?’
Or, ‘Verse 5 speaks of a soul weighed down, the mood brought low, under a burden that can feel physical. It’s like you’re paralysed beneath a heavy black cloud. Does that resonate?‘
Often depression can have significant anxiety. ’The turmoil of the next line is a sea whipped up in the storm, anxiety agitating the soul, leaving us restless and ill at ease. Does that sound like your heart at the moment?’
Or, ‘Verse 7 describes roaring waterfalls and an engulfing sea. Perhaps you too are feeling overwhelmed – you can’t get your head above water. And when you do another wave hits.’
The idea is not to pigeonhole the struggler’s personal experience. Allow the psalm’s imagery to lay hold of the struggle. Know that the Spirit is leading – it is his word. The goal is to help them hear God’s words and feel, ‘That’s me’.
Speaking hope to the struggle
It’s worth noting with a sufferer how the psalm moves back and forth from lamenting to finding hope, and how this fluctuating, back and forth, up and down progression evokes the fluctuating nature of depression with its good and bad days.
Verse 5 is a notable refrain in the song. It captures a core struggle in depression, which is to believe truths that my inner experience does not feel to be true. The self-addressed question of the psalmist “why are you cast down?” reveals the dilemma: ‘I shouldn’t feel this way if God is my salvation.’ But the psalmist does feel that way. And so, the voice of faith strains out from under the burden, “Hope in God.” This will need to be a hope that holds on to truth not presently experienced.
What might we say? ‘God doesn’t seem to be there. It feels dark. Spiritually you feel lifeless. Physically, restless. Yet let’s think about how we can turn to God in hope. Not that we are praising him now. But this is a hope that waits: “I shall again praise Him. My salvation and my God”. I wonder what this could sound like in your own words?’ Such faith can feel very weak. To the struggler it feels non-existent. To the helper, it appears heroic and glorious.
What do glimpses of this hope look like in the psalm? One example comes immediately in verse 6. “I remember you” is an active calling to mind of God. The geography of the verse may refer to the source of the Jordan, the river that marks the edge of the Promised Land. The image is of the psalmist in exile but seeing the little streams and tributaries that flow to the land of covenantal promise. This was a small but real and tangible reminder of God’s faithfulness. There were trickles of God’s steadfast love there. ‘Where can we see the little trickles of God’s grace and faithfulness in the midst of your experience?’
Knowing Christ in the struggle
This song of exile carries echoes of a greater exile of a greater king. In the garden, when Jesus cries, “My soul is very sorrowful” (Matthew 26:38) it is the Greek equivalent of the word for “cast down” in verse 5. Contemplating the cross, he confesses “Now is my soul troubled” (John 12:27) and the word is likewise an equivalent of “turmoil” in verse 5. This psalm brings us to our suffering Saviour. ‘He knows your suffering. His tears were his food day and night. He was overwhelmed by God’s breakers and waves. These are the sorrows he carried to the cross and overcame at the cross. He was exiled for you so that you would never be exiled from him. He is always with you, even when you do not feel it. He is your hope. He is your ever-present help.’
Speaking well to depression is a challenge. But God’s word gives us words that lead to the one in whom eventually all things will be made well. This gives hope not just to the sufferer, but to the helper too. The stubborn darkness can easily incapacitate those offering care. But the psalm is confident in hope. In Christ, I will yet praise God.
