With love for my sisters in Christ from around the globe who email me about their depression…this week, I take a tangent and share some of what I’ve learned about depression. You may not be “diagnosed,” but you may be dealing with it.
This week’s music therapy-inspired worship music playlist gift (sign up below) is professionally designed to help with its symptoms.
What does depression feel like?
Also found alongside chronic pain and other chronic illnesses, depression can cause:
- a low energy level;
- lack of motivation;
- trouble focusing;
- sleep disturbance;
- a reduced or increased appetite;
- dread;
- moodiness;
- self-pity, worthlessness, withdrawal from others;
- despair and hopelessness.
Sometimes, depression can feel like no emotion, just numb. “Numbness is an incredibly strong emotion, an emotion so strong that it basically drowns out everything else… a flood, a torrent of overwhelmedness. It’s just too much to take in.”1 Often, suffering from depression feels more numb than sad, “like an emptiness where emotion should be.”2
Part of the brain’s challenge in depression is that the thinking or cognitive portion of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) is not adequately regulating the emotion-producing part of the brain (the limbic system).
As with chronic pain, neurotransmitters are depleted, but the hormone oxytocin, produced by the brain’s hypothalamus, is also depleted. Oxytocin is vitally necessary for the brain’s protection from stress in this fallen world; it also helps to produce dopamine in the brain stem. We feel more alert, motivated, focused, and happy when we have balanced dopamine.
Singing Christ’s hope into depression
It’s incredible. Singing has been found to increase oxytocin3…and gratitude increases dopamine!4
It is no wonder that our loving creator God tells us:
It is good to give thanks to the LORD,
to sing praises to your name, O Most High
to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
For you, O LORD, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy (Ps. 92:1-4 ESV, emphasis added).
Our Lord’s healing compassion in our depression, when “singing for joy” is difficult
“Depression can so vandalize our joy and our sense of God that no promise of His can comfort us in the moment…Though sins can result from it and temptations intensify because of it, depression itself is not a sin.”5
Father God,
For my sister in Christ reading this today, comfort her in this truth:
His forever, only his–
who the Lord and me shall part?
(“I am His, and He is Mine,” Robinson, W., 1890)
Comfort her in knowing she is not alone in depression, for it’s a common suffering for human beings, including Your beloved in Christ. Come alongside her through Job’s words and Elijah’s story, for they both suffered with its symptoms. Touch and strengthen her for the next hour.
Ah, with what a rest of bliss
Christ can fill the loving heart.
Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire? (Job 3:11 ESV)
Can I doubt his love for me,
when I trace that love’s design?
But [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.” And he lay down and slept under a broom tree.
And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, “Arise and eat.” And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again. And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, “Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.” And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God (1 Kgs. 19:4-8 ESV).
Bible scholars consider this angel to be…the pre-incarnated Jesus. Help her to see Your love for her…
in Jesus’ life, death, and ever-presence with her now as her resurrected Lord today,
bringing hope and healing for her every tomorrow.
In His name of unending love, amen.
By the cross of Calvary.
I am his and he is mine.
Advice from pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon, singing Christ’s hope into his depression
“I have suffered many times from severe sickness and frightful mental depression, sinking almost to despair. Almost every year I’ve been laid aside for a season, for flesh and blood cannot bear the strain, at least such flesh and blood as mine. [However,] I believe . . . that affliction was necessary to me and has answered salutary ends.”6
“I will tell Him that I am still His child, and in confidence in His faithful heart, even I, the barren one, will sing and cry aloud.”7
“Depression of spirit is no index of declining grace. It is Christ and not the absence of depression that saves us. So, we declare this truth. Our sense of God’s absence does not mean that he is so. Though our bodily gloom allows us no feeling of his tender touch, he holds on to us still. Our feelings of him do not save us. He does.”8
Heav’n and earth may fade and flee,
firstborn light in gloom decline,
but while God and I shall be,
I am his and he is mine.
God’s healing song gift to me
- Singing of our hope in Christ;
- singing of the sure end of our suffering when we see Jesus face to face;
- singing of God’s ongoing grace toward us as His beloved children;
- and singing of our gratitude to God for His gifts to us in the gospel;
- can be His powerful, healing means of grace as we live with depression.
His rescuing gift kept me alive through the darkest moments of depression. How? It was this song, God’s supernatural grace when I was even tempted to end my life with years of undiagnosed disabling illness and intractable severe pain.
“Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.”
It’s just because our Lord Jesus… lives!!
Singing Christ’s hope when you’re depressed
Praise God, He continues to bring the healing balm of worship music into cyclical bouts of depression that can still accompany my chronic pain. As a retired music therapist, I make and use weekly playlists to praise Him, to glorify Him, to lament to Him in personal worship, also knowing He uses them for healing of my body and brain in the process.
If this would bless you as well, sign up below and they will come to your email. This week’s “depression” playlist accompanies others found in our resource library for subscribers, with love for you…as I know the pain He is carrying you through.
To read more of Lauri’s writing, you can use her devotional Bible study lament prayer journals: Praying God’s Promises Into Suffering, or Near to God: A Devotional Bible Study of God’s Character as We Suffer, or Singing the Gospel to Job: Finding Hope in Suffering. In the Valleys of God’s Love is written for children aged 3-8, a perfect read for grandparents, parents, and children to share together, preparing them for suffering to come.
For Scripture devotionals, calming hymns, and encouragement from Lauri, click here for YouTube podcasts
For those suffering from chronic illness and pain, a podcast of Scriptures and hymns to help ease symptoms
- Groves, A. (2023, February 1). When you feel numb [Audio podcast episode]. In Where life and Scripture meet. CCEF, the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation. https://www.ccef.org/podcast/when-you-feel-numb ↩︎
- Korb, A. (2015). The upward spiral: Using neuroscience to reverse the course of depression, one small change at a time. New Harbinger Publications, p. 3. ↩︎
- Kang, J., Scholp, A., & Jiang, J. J. (2017). A review of the physiological effects and mechanisms of singing. Journal of Voice, 32(4), 390-395. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2017.07.008 ↩︎
- Korb, 2015 ↩︎
- Eswine, Z. (2015). Spurgeon’s sorrows: Realistic hope for those who suffer from depression. Christian Focus. ↩︎
- Spurgeon, C. H. (2020). Encouragement for the depressed. Crossway Short Classics. ↩︎
- Spurgeon, C. H. (1998). Morning and evening. Barbour, August 28. ↩︎
- Surgeon, C. H. cited in Eswine, 2015, pp. 38-39. ↩︎
