On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living

by Alan Noble

At root, these are the same questions because there are many ways to throw a life away, and most of them involve continuing to live. We like to think of suicide as a singular act: intentionally ending your life. But you can also destroy your life slowly through alcoholism and drug addiction. You can destroy your life through an addiction to gambling. You can destroy your life (and the lives of others) through abuse and violence. You can destroy your life passively by being so overcome with fear of failure that you cannot move. You can even destroy your life by giving up all hope and devoting yourself to fleeting, vacuous, mind-numbing pleasures. So this question is not primarily about what we normally think of as suicide. It includes that, but it also includes all the various ways we can deny the goodness of life and act in defiance of it—all the ways we can choose not to get out of bed and face the day.

More importantly, in the end, at your point of contact with the world, it always comes down to the same thing. Whether or not you have an official mental illness or disorder, your disorder has been properly diagnosed, or the normal travails of life have overwhelmed you, it always, always, always comes to the same thing: the choice to live, which only you can make.

Second, there are rarely clear answers to depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders. You can and should pursue professional help, but remember that there are limits. And at those limits we are thrown back on ourselves, God, and our neighbor for the responsibility of living. Even the best counseling and medication cannot replace the existential decision to live and rely on God and your neighbor. Professional help can guide you and medication can assist you—at their best they are means of healing from God—but in the end it is always just you and God and your neighbor and the present choice to act, which at root is actually the choice to worship. And that is okay. Really, it is.

to be placed here. As the wife says, “I didnt bring myself to this. I was brought.”18 You did not ask to be a witness to your children and your neighbors. You did not volunteer to be responsible for others or to be your brother’s keeper. But none of that really matters. Because here you are, and here they are. And it is good. When the son begins to doubt the goodness of their lives, the father tells him, “I think it’s pretty good. It’s a pretty good story. It counts for something.”19

Life will inevitably crush you, at one point or another, and your response to that suffering will testify to something. There will be times when subjectively you will be convinced that life is not worth living, and that existence is not beautiful or good but onerous and meaningless. When those times come, your obligation is to look toward others as witnesses of God’s goodness, to remember your responsibilities to care for others, and to remember that you are always a witness, whether you want to be or not. But most of all, remember that you are God’s beloved. This means acknowledging the objective reality that life is good, and that despite our distress, we must get up and carry on. Your existence is a testament, a living argument, an affirmation of creation itself. When you rise each day, that act is a faint but real echo of God’s “It is good.” By living this life, you participate in God’s act of creation, asserting with your very existence that it is a good creation.

In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot writes that “any action is a step to the block.”21 He means that our actions always draw us closer to death, and in that sense every action we take is a wager of our time. When I read Eliot’s poem, I imagine a wrongly condemned man calmly and decisively walking to the executioner’s block with his head held high, maintaining his dignity in the face of injustice. Each step brings him closer to death, but each step is also his own action, taken by his own feet and in defiance of the condemnation he is under. The onlookers observe his defiance and his dignity. His action is a testament that death is not final. That is the difference between a secular stoicism and bravely acting in defiance of our fears and hopelessness. For the stoic, though they can choose to face death bravely, death is the final word. For the Christian, death has been conquered, so we can face it bravely regardless of our fears. We can take a step to the block, confident in our hope.

To choose to go on is to proclaim with your life, and at the risk of tremendous suffering, that it is good. Even when it is hard, it is good. Even when you don’t feel that it is good, even when that goodness is unimaginable, it is good.

The mere fact that you can cope with great suffering is not in itself a reason to cope with it. So when we encourage depressed and anxious people to be active, get out of the house, and stay busy just so that they’ll feel good enough to stay busy, we may help them get out of a funk, but we aren’t helping them understand the goodness of their existence. Don’t do the next thing just so that you can keep doing the next thing. Do the next thing because it honors God and testifies of His goodness and the goodness of your life to your neighbor.

When your days are filled with mundane tasks, none of which are worth posting on social media or even talking about, it can feel impossible to build momentum, to feel like your life is going anywhere for any purpose. This is precisely why we must see that each choice to do the next thing is an act of worship, and therefore fundamentally good. Feeding your pets is an act of worship. Brushing your teeth is. Doing the dishes. Getting dressed. Going to work. Insofar as each of these actions assumes that this life in this fallen world is good and worth living despite suffering, they are acts of faith in God. Choose to do the next thing before and unto God, take a step toward the block. That is all you must ever do and all you can do. It is your spiritual act of worship.

To love myself I must hope all things. This hope is founded on the promises of God, not on my own ability to fix myself or control my circumstances or solve the problems of the world. My hope is in God’s promise to preserve me, to work all things together for my good, to finish the good work He started in me. And finally, to love myself properly, I must endure all things—including the torments of my own mind. I may tremble at the agony of life. At times I may feel crushed and overwhelmed and undone, but to love God, I must love myself; and to love my neighbor, I must love myself; and to love myself, I must endure. I cannot do this alone, however. I bear, believe, hope, and endure not from my own capacity for love but with the aid of the Holy Spirit and with the comfort and encouragement of my friends. It is only with the aid of others that I can love myself and thereby honor God’s creation.