Where Is God In Depression?

This week my oldest child turns eleven, and our whole family is thinking back to when she was just a little baby. I have tried writing about the experience of becoming a mom countless times in the past, but I always felt like something was missing. And well, something was. I consistently left out the part about sinking into depression after the birth. Who wants to hear about that, anyway? The longer I’m a mom, the more I believe my story is like those of many others. There’s a shame that comes with feeling sad, lonely, scared, or depressed, and that shame is only magnified when a woman is a Christian. I have spent years wondering, “Where is God in depression?” I’m no expert, but here’s my story.

A Loss And A Blessing

My husband, Chris, and I had been married all of fifteen seconds before I dropped a bomb on him. I wanted to be a homemaker, and we should have a baby immediately. Always the easy-going guy, he agreed readily. We were married in August and expecting at the beginning of October. I took seven or so pregnancy tests (just to be sure), but I still couldn’t believe it. Chris was ecstatic, but I felt unsure and uneasy. And as the pattern of our marriage has displayed, in my opinion…I was right, he was wrong.

Within days of the positive tests, I began to experience terrible abdominal pain. After a counseling session with a student at work, I ran to the bathroom and discovered I was losing the pregnancy. After an awful hospital visit, two days in pain on the couch, and just all the tears I had, it was over. It was a chemical pregnancy. Some people dismiss these as nothing at all, but others feel the loss keenly. I was one of the latter.

As Thanksgiving gave way to Christmas cheer, I took another seven or so pregnancy tests. Nausea and extreme fatigue followed not long after. God had blessed us with a baby girl. The nine months were long, but she and I were healthy. I gave notice at my job when I was seven months pregnant and spent the last two months nesting and getting biiiiiiiiiiiiiiig.

After a Wednesday night service in August a church member told me there was no way I’d have the baby by my due date…just three days away. I left church that night angry and tearful. Well, I showed her! Around four in the morning I woke up with a terrible cramping sensation. I didn’t want to bother Chris, so I crawled to the bathroom and dealt with the pain in there. He eventually stirred and was up to help. We were timing contractions, eating, showering, and waiting for the right time to leave. Little did I know that my water had already broken. I won’t share why I didn’t know, but suffice to say, it was a legit reason.

We were brought to a room pretty quickly after our arrival at the hospital, but this laboring thing took forever. I was shocked by how painful it was, and quickly sought out the doctor with the big scary needle. Then, I was equally shocked at how uninvolved with my labor I seemed to be. I couldn’t feel anything. Nothing. My leg kept dropping off the bed, and I didn’t even know!

The Sadness Seeping In Already

I had agreed to letting family visit right after the birth despite my reservations about it. It didn’t seem like my kind of thing, and I was right. Before I gave birth my mom crashed my labor and delivery. We had asked no one to come until the baby was born, but she was outside the door pestering the nurses. So, I let her come in and say “hi” before the pushing started. Afterwards, I visited with my dad and stepmom and Chris’s family. A church family came by, too. All the while, my newborn was being passed from person to person and nurses kept coming in and demanding I use the toilet. (It was mortifying and overwhelming.)

I just wanted to hold my daughter, but a nurse came in and swept her away to the nursery for a bath. I felt scared, tired, unsure of myself, and totally left out of my own birthing experience.

Midnight Visitor

I fell asleep while we waited for the nurse to bring our baby back from the nursery, but a doctor from the NICU woke me up at midnight, instead. He went on and on about my daughter being very ill and having to narrow down what it could be. (It turned out to be Group B Strep.) However, the entire time I thought he was mistaken. My daughter was healthy and apparently receiving the world’s longest bath. The doctor thought a nurse had already told me, and spent half his visit assuring me that it was, in fact, my baby.

I spent the rest of my time in the hospital pumping, worrying, crying, and sitting with my sick baby. Finally, it was time for me to leave. My daughter would stay for a total of eleven days, but I was sent home after three. So, they wheeled me out of the hospital with an empty baby car seat on my lap in a line of other mothers leaving with their newborns.

Chris and I walked to our car, dropped off our bags, and we turned back around to sit with our daughter in the hospital the rest of the day as visitors. This NICU would be my home for the next week.

The NICU Days

Each night I woke up to pump milk every 3 hours while I rocked alone in my baby-free nursery. Each morning Chris went to work because he had used all his PTO (paid time off) in a hospitalization a couple of months prior to welcoming our baby. So, if he stayed home, we earned no money. Therefore, I ate breakfast and made my way to the NICU every day to sit alone. I sat there reading, staring into space, and watching my baby, but I spent almost no time in the Word or in prayer. I just worried and felt useless. My daughter was covered in tubes, so I was even afraid to pick her up or change her diaper.

Chris came to the hospital after work every night and held his daughter. He was such a natural, and I hated him for it. He seemed to know just what to do when she cried, and he picked her up without hesitancy. This man was a dad! On the other hand, I felt like I was just in the way. I loved her so much that it almost hurt, but I also felt distant. She was alien to me. I was alien to me, too.

Depression’s Quiet Residency Inside Me

Our daughter was finally home, and we were thrilled. Life as a family of three felt like it had officially begun. At first, everything felt better. There was such relief from having our baby girl home and healthy. But it wasn’t smooth sailing.

Our daughter never seemed to sleep. Our evenings were filled with inconsolable crying, and she would only sleep when held. Additionally, I thought she looked to be in a lot of pain. I felt like a failure as a mother, and I was no kind of wife at that point. In those first weeks as parents our home was one of stress and exhaustion. Chris worked while I sat chained to a baby who didn’t seem all right to me.

Our pediatrician assured me there was nothing wrong, and still my doctor did not see beyond my smiles and forced laughter at check-ups. I was miserable. I didn’t feel bonded to my daughter, and my husband was just a reminder of what a terrible wife and mother I was. He never said or suggested that, but I felt so inferior to him. Depression had been taking hold of me throughout the first weeks of motherhood, and I had no idea. I understood my feelings as being true.

“I am a terrible mother.”

“My husband can’t love me anymore. He can do so much better.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

“Getting married and having a baby was a mistake.”

“My husband and daughter will be better off without me. I’ll move out and let them have a chance at happiness.”

“I wish I were dead.”

No one knew I felt this way. I was embarrassed and ashamed. You might wonder where God was in this depression, but I didn’t. Undoubtedly, He was nowhere near me (so I thought). I knew these thoughts were dark, and I believed I had gone too far for God to be with me. All I felt was abandonment and loneliness.

A Swift Kick In The Rear

There’s a lot to the story, and it’s way too much to share in a post. However, take it from me that our home was an unhappy place for several weeks. Chris did his best. He came home from work and gave me a break from baby duty. He was an attentive father and loving husband. His patience and gentleness knew no bounds. Until they did.

I would say things out loud to Chris about my struggle to feel a bond with my daughter. I just felt numb and disconnected. One day, whatever I said had finally pushed him to the edge. I walked away after delivering my napalm-covered words to go sit in our bedroom and have another crying session. Chris followed, though, and barged in the room with a look I didn’t recognize on his face. Disappointment.

I don’t remember the quote 100% correctly, but this is a very close approximation of his statement. “Julie, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but one day you’re going to regret saying things like that. You’re going to feel terrible!” There was more but not much more. He walked out, and my heart just broke. Chris was right, but he was also a little wrong because I already regretted it. This is where God reenters my story. It turns out that he wasn’t far from me. He had been there all along, but I had turned from Him and relied on myself. I lost my faith in His ability to care for us. This was the first time I struggled with trusting God with my children, but it wouldn’t be the last.

Depression Fixed…Kinda

So, Chris pointing out how ugly my words were didn’t magically solve my depression problem, but it did convict me enough to involve God in my depression. It’s called rebuke, ladies, and it hurts. However, it also calls out our actions so we can change them. And change I did.

The first thing I did was pray. I had a lot of sin to confess and a lot of requests to make. It is frightening to approach God in prayer when we’ve been away from Him, but He gives us peace and comfort so quickly and so readily. I was afraid He wouldn’t hear me, but He always hears us.

“I have called upon thee, for thou wilt hear me, O God: incline thine ear unto me, and hear my speech.”

Psalm 17:6

“Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer.”

Psalm 4:1

The next thing I did was spend time in my Bible. You can’t really know God or His promises if you don’t read His Word. This was a comfort to me. Especially reassuring was seeing who I am to God.

“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light;”

1 Peter 2:9

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”

Ephesians 2:10

“For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.”

2 Timothy 1:7

“I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.”

Psalm 139:14

Finally, I focused on what God had for me to do. My tasks were to care for my husband and daughter. Not long after this we had a “scary diaper” incident. We ended up at a late-night pediatrician appointment and discovered our daughter did have more wrong with her than just colic. The pediatrician dismissed my thoughts, and I had the confidence to seek another opinion. Ultimately, I chose to help my daughter the way I believed was best and was backed by that later opinion. She became well and was a happy, healthy baby who cried normal amounts. Which is still a lot…

This “win” in parenting helped me move further out of my depression, but it has been God who keeps me on the path I need to be on. Also, I am sure I would have never even sought out a second opinion and stood up for myself as a mom if I hadn’t already been healing through His Word and prayer.

Depression Is A Battle

Falling into depression after giving birth was not my first rodeo with this struggle. I was a sad, and sometimes depressed, young girl. I made plans to end my own life more than once, but God had mercy on me time and again. Silently, I lived in these private ups and downs while always playing the clown in public. Shortly after our honeymoon I fell into a severely depressed state, and I later discovered it was because I had abruptly ended a medication I was taking for my skin. So, this battle with depression has been a lifelong struggle. To my disappointment, the struggle didn’t go away once I was saved. Where was God in my depression?

He was beside me. He offers life-saving truths, peace, contentment, joy, and a life that serves a far greater purpose than I ever could have created without Him. Am I always depressed or feeling low? No. And, thankfully, it happens less and less as I know Him more. However, it is certainly a battle. What better weapons to wield in battle than His Holy Word and prayer? My successes in this fight have never been more guaranteed.

Final Thought

This is one experience with depression from one person’s point of view. I am not saying that a stern rebuke and more Bible is always enough to pull someone back. My depression, though, was worsening in large part to my own self-pity and rejection of God’s sovereignty. Take it as you will. For some, medical intervention is necessary, and I will not deny the help medicine can offer. For me, and for many others, depression is something we can resolve without a doctor. My story is just that. My story. You live yours.

Mainly, I wanted to share this time in my life because I am celebrating that baby’s birth this week. I didn’t leave, and I have no regrets concerning her or my marriage. Depression creates patterns of thinking that are hurtful to everyone, especially the one stuck in that pattern. I don’t feel bad about it anymore, though, because I know what caused it. Also, I know how to come at it when it returns. Why bury this part of my motherhood like it is a secret shame? I’d much rather share my story, and encourage women to seek help from the Lord. He didn’t leave you. Where is God in depression? He is with you. Always.

I won’t ask you to share your experiences with depression. But will you pray for those who struggle with depression?

“God, the eternal God, is our support at all times, especially when we are sinking into deep trouble. There are seasons when we sink quite low….Dear child of God, even when you are at your lowest, underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Charles Spurgeon

Image courtesy of Sydney Sims via Unsplash.