Silent Souls Weeping: Depression—Sharing Stories, Finding Hope

by Jane Clayson Johnson

How could I be so depressed when I was so blessed?

“Though we may feel we are ‘like a broken vessel,’ as the Psalmist says, we must remember, that vessel is in the hands of the divine potter. Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed.”3

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’”

“First of all, it’s really a deep, blue, dark, completely hopeless mood where doing even the smallest things just really required a ton of effort. It was hard to even get out of bed in the morning. I had no motivation to do anything. I had no interest in things I used to have interest in. I ended up just feeling completely empty. There was this awful emptiness.”

“Depression,” Dr. Jorgensen says, “leads to a tripping of our circuit breakers. So the power’s still trying to get through. God does not stop talking to us, but we can’t feel it because our breakers have shut down.”

“Depression affected me in ways I hadn’t anticipated. It just made me feel like I couldn’t handle anything. Everything seemed overwhelming. And I just wasn’t feeling the Spirit of the Lord in the same way.”