Depression Quotes

“You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Notice how those who have medicated away their hardships with illegal drugs, alcohol, or sex can seem immature. They may look forty-five, but they have the character of an adolescent. Find a person who has weathered storms rather than avoided them and you will find someone who is wise.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Faith feels many different ways. It can be buoyant; it can be depressed and lifeless. Feelings don’t define faith. Instead, faith is simply turning to the Lord.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“The feeling of emptiness is usually a sign that we have put our trust in something that can’t sustain us. It reminds us that we were created to trust in our heavenly Father and nothing else. We were created to enjoy the many things God gives without making them the center of our lives. When we confuse the two, our lives feel out of kilter. To feel better, we try again and search for love apart from God, but when we finally realize that it is elusive, we forsake the quest and quietly despair. Keep probing. Life is ultimately about God.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Through our struggles and pain, we are being offered perseverance, the character of God. Hardships are intended to give us a spiritual makeover, "that we may share in his holiness" (Heb. 12:10). Therefore, when God encourages us to persevere, he is not stumbling for encouraging words. He is teaching us how to look like him.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking up from the Stubborn Darkness

“God created you to trust him and love others. When you are not trusting or not loving, you are disconnected from your purpose, and hopelessness will thrive.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Somehow, turning to God and trusting him with the mysteries of suffering is the answer to the problem of suffering.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Sin can certainly be a cause of depression, but you must be careful about connecting the dots between the two. If you are being honest, you will always find sin in your life. Everyone does. That doesn’t mean that sin caused your depression. No sin is necessarily connected with sorrow of heart, for Jesus Christ our Lord once said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.” There was no sin in Him, and consequently none in His deep depression.3 The”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Part of the depressive syndrome is that you are immensely loyal to your interpretation of yourself and your world. If God says you are forgiven in Christ, you create new rules that mandate contrition, penance, and self-loathing. If God says he loves you, you insist it is impossible. There it is: your system is higher than God’s.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Imagine the presence of one who deeply loves you and is powerful enough to deal with the things you fear. It turns fear into confidence. But, like all spiritual growth, this change only comes with practice. It comes when you say, “Amen—I believe” when you hear or read the promises of God. It comes through meditation on God’s words. It comes when the cross of Jesus Christ assures you that God is faithful. These words to the fearful are so important that Jesus makes them his final words on earth: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:20). The resurrection is God’s answer to fear. Jesus is alive. RESPONSE”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Joy is not the opposite of depression. It is deeper than depression. Therefore, you can experience both. Depression is the relentless rain. Joy is the rock. Whether depression is present or not, you can stand on joy.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Suffering nags us with questions about God in a way that comfort never could.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Therefore, to fight against hopelessness is to take action in the present. You think that checking off a to-do list is unspiritual? When done by faith, it is heroic. There are paradoxes in depression; there are also apparent paradoxes in the way God works in us. For example, if you want vitality in the present, entrust your future to the Lord. If you want to have glimpses of hope for tomorrow, trust God now. What are your dashed hopes? What have you done with them? Where are your new, emerging hopes?”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Love breaks the hold of individualism; it builds new communities out of the ashes of broken and fragmented relationships.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“The reason Scripture doesn’t give clear guidelines for assigning responsibility is that it is not essential for us to know precise causes. This is good news: you don’t have to know the exact cause of suffering in order to find hope and comfort.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“There are more subtle ways we can contribute to depression too. For example, our misguided beliefs might lead us to think that we are beyond God’s love or forgiveness. We could be carrying fears of death and judgment or fears of the future because we have believed myths about both God and ourselves. These mistaken beliefs can actually cause depression. At the very least they can get pulled into depression’s gravitational field and end up as partners with depression that can intensify the experience.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Depression ... involves a complete absence: absence of affect, absence of feeling, absence of response, absence of interest. The pain you feel in the course of a major clinical depression is an attempt on nature’s part ... to fill up the empty space. But for all intents and purposes, the deeply depressed are just the walking, waking dead.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“in view of God’s sovereign control, God will accomplish his purposes in our lives even when we make decisions we later regret.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Joy is not the opposite of suffering. If it were, a person practiced in joy could crowd out pain because one couldn’t exist with the other. Instead, joy can actually be a companion to suffering.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“People who have experienced war have learned to accept the trials and sufferings of life. Among many wise, older citizens in American society, there is no desperate flight from suffering. Instead, there is a recognition that it is a part of life that can have some benefit. Yet among those in the post-World War II generation, a wisp of happiness is the goal, and suffering must be avoided at all costs. If there are hardships in a relationship, end it. If there is an unpleasant emotion, medicate it. It is a generation that perceives no value to any hardship. Like a pampered child who never experienced the regular storms of life, we lack the skill of growing through our trials.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Scripture is about suffering. It has given comfort to millions. It has spawned hundreds of wonderful books that highlight God’s gentle care and Scripture’s probing insights. You can be assured of this: God really does speak in our suffering, and we have good reason to believe that the words he says are good and powerful enough to lighten our pain.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Everything turns inward in depression. A beautiful flower momentarily catches your attention, but within seconds the focus bends back into your own misery. You see loved ones who are celebrating a recent blessing, but before you can synchronize your feelings with theirs, you have doubled back to your own personal emptiness. Like a boomerang that always returns, no matter how hard you try, you can’t get away from yourself.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Joy is not the opposite of depression. It is deeper than depression. Therefore, you can experience both. Depression is the relentless rain. Joy is the rock. Whether depression is present or not, you can stand on joy. Does”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Put a dozen relatively like-minded people into the same crisis and you will see a dozen different responses. Some are heroes; others are cowards. Some are leaders; others are followers. Some are optimistic; others despair. Some shake their fist at God; others quietly submit. You don’t really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure. Throughout”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride. Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.3 What do you see in your own heart?”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Many depressed people have been hurt and rejected by others. They feel as though basic relational needs have not been met, and they will be stuck in depression until they are. Rejection from parents, spouses, or friends has left a profound emptiness that feels like an emotional handicap. What does this have to do with the heart? Consider first the example of Jesus. He is God, but he was truly human. If anything is clear from his life, he didn’t get love from people, he never prayed that he would know the love of other people, and he didn’t seem emotionally undone by rejection and misunderstanding. Rather, his deepest needs, as noted in his prayers, were for the glory of his Father to be revealed and for his spiritual children to be protected from the evil one and united in love (John 17). The”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Now listen more carefully to depression. Like all feelings, it is a kind of language. Guilt says, “I am wrong.” Anger says, “You are wrong.” Fear says, “I am in danger.” Depression, too, has a message, but the message is usually not that simple. “Whereas some emotions are clear and unambiguous, depression’s language is more heavily encrypted. It might take some decoding before it is understandable, but it is worth the effort. RECONSTRUCTING”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“Faith is not the presence of warm religious feeling. It's the knowledge that you walk before the God who hears.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: A Stubborn Darkness–Light for the Path

“We crave autonomy. Autonomy is closely linked to arrogance. They are both expressions of human pride, but autonomy suggests that we want to be separate from more than over. We want to establish the rules rather than submit to the lordship of the living God. This was the essence of Adam’s original sin. We want to interpret the world according to our system of thought. We want to establish our own parallel universe, separate from God’s.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness

“God says that he will give you grace to handle the disappointments that lie ahead; your task is to live for him in the present. At first, this feels reckless, as if you were enjoying the thrill of a speeding car when you are courting devastation at the next turn. But it isn’t reckless to trust in God rather than yourself.”
― Edward T. Welch, Depression: Looking Up from the Stubborn Darkness