In the physical sense it is usually easy to tell if someone is alive. We can assess quickly if a person is alive; they are usually responsive, breathing and have a pulse. Assessing whether someone or even ourselves is mentally or spiritually alive is entirely a different matter.
I recently finished reading the Secret Garden with my oldest daughter.
This classic holds many nuggets of truth about sickness of the mind versus the sickness of a physical nature. I thought I would share an excerpt that really touched my heart.
“There was a man wandering about certain faraway beautiful places in the Norwegian fiords and the valleys and mountains of Switzerland and he was a man who for ten years had kept his mind filled with dark and heart-broken thinking. He had not been courageous; he had never tried to put any other thoughts in the place of dark ones. He had wandered by blue lakes and thought of them... A terrible sorrow had fallen upon him when he had been happy and he had let his soul fill itself with blackness and had refused any rift of light to pierce through. [After the loss of his wife and his son born crippled.] He had forgotten his home and deserted his duties. When he traveled about, darkness so brooded over him that the light of him was wrong done to other people because it was as if he poisoned the air about him with gloom... But the light had never seemed to touch himself until one day when he realized that for the first time in ten years a strange thing happened. [After he beheld such beauty, something started to awaken him.] The black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one,” 1
Frances Hodgson Burnett, the author of the Secret Garden, struggled with depression in her life.2 Her description of it in Archibald Crane’s life only shows how deeply acquainted she was with it herself. For Archibald had suffered greatly with loss, but he was not able to recover mentally. Depression is rampant, there are many who struggle with the listless feeling of wandering around in the dark during the bright of day. If you relate to Archibald Crane or Frances Hodgson Burnett, you are not alone. There are those around you who understand and would love to lead you to the light- to show you the way out of the darkness.
If you have moments where you are seeing the light, grasp onto those moments and don’t let go. John 1:5 says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." The light is Jesus Christ, and He has overcome the darkness. Whether your depression has come from unfortunate circumstances or from chemical imbalance, it is my hope and sincere prayer that you can become alive again. I have suffered from it in my life and there are times when the darkness was so oppressive that it was hard to see anyway forward. I can attest, though, that there is a way forward.
Dear sister, if you are feeling like darkness is surrounding you. Run to the light and the darkness will flee. In John 8:12, it says “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” One of the many amazing parts about this passage is the context of him saying this statement.
In the verses before the statement made above, the Pharisees had brought an adulteress before Jesus, asking him whether they should stone this woman for her sin or let her free. After Jesus tells the Pharisees, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” The very verse right before he speaks of himself as the light of the world he says to the woman. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.” John 8:10-11
Neither do I condemn you! Jesus says that to you, my sister. When I realized he does not condemn me, there was such freedom! When you are in Christ you are not condemned any longer. Condemnation is a nasty bedfellow of depression. Condemnation is the thing that holds you deep down in the darkness whispering and replaying all the wrong that you have ever committed. BUT Jesus, light of the world, comes with his arms open wide and says, “Darkness and condemnation flee!” Jesus is the King of the universe that created you. When he died for us on the cross, he took all the condemnation upon himself. When condemning thoughts come, bind them, literally take them captive, and give those thoughts to Jesus. Ask him instead to show you in his Word; what He thinks of you. Go and be free my daughter, live in the light. Become alive.
1.F.H.Burnett. The Secret Garden. HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007. 1990. pg 339-343.
2. Frances Hodgson Burnett, (March 4, 2024) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Hodgson_Burnett
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