depression and the fight for joy

There have been times when I woke to series of days filled with dreary dullness. Every movement had to be forced against a resisting heaviness. Joy in God was like something seen through the small end of a telescope: impossibly remote and endlessly receding.

I say this knowing that my experience is a tiny, salty drop in the ocean of what you may have experienced. If depression ranges from mild to severe - or "situational" to "clinical" - then I have only been at the very mild end of the spectrum. I have friends who have been in and out of hospital fighting relentless darkness for many years, and other friends for whom anxiety is debilitating and depression a horror which visits and leaves without warning.

Piper is too experienced a pastor not to know about such times. And so he writes this final chapter. So relevant is its message that it's been printed as a separate booklet, When the Darkness Will not Lift.

What does God have to do with depression? ...

You can read the rest at EQUIP book club today.

image is from Megyarsh at flickr