The Bungee Cord. 5-19-25

Hello,

I am not sure who decided that May is Mental Health Awareness Month, but that is what May is. I, personally, don’t need to have a designated month to make me aware of mental health, because I have lived with depression and its sidekick, anxiety, for twenty years. Twenty years ago, I found myself being swallowed up in darkness. When people have asked me, what depression is like, and I think it is different for each person, I say it’s like feeling that you are in a toilet bowl and someone has just flushed it and you are fighting with all your might not to be sucked down.

It is not just being deeply sad, there are plenty of things in life for which sadness is an appropriate and helpful emotion. It is not something that a few laughs will get you out of. For me, when depression hits, it is irrational. I have everything to live for, and yet life feels completely empty. I have lived a life full of successes, but I look in the mirror and see a complete failure. My mind tells me that I have the Midas touch, only my touch doesn’t turn everything to gold but into crap. Depression is an ugly thing.

I know that it is hard to live with someone who deals with depression. You never know how the depressed person will be from day to day. And since depression is wrapped in irrationality, you never know quite what to say. What seems so simple to you, is almost insurmountable to the one who is depressed. It is hard for the people around the depressed one, too.

I have been blessed, though. I have a wife who has held onto me when my life is shaking. I have sons who have done the same. I have friends who have called me to check in on me. I have had good doctors who have given me the best of care. I have responded to the medicine, medicine for which I am greatly thankful. And I have a God who has searched for me in my darkness, gathered me in his arms, and has promised to not let me go. When in the deepest of my depression, Holy Communion was a powerful grace. “This is my body. Give for you. This is my blood, shed for you.” In my weakest moments, Jesus did not abandon me, but instead Jesus united himself with me. Hugged me from the inside.

As I look back on my life, I believe that I have dealt with depression and anxiety from my childhood. When I was younger, I developed coping mechanisms that shielded me from the darts of depression. But when those shields no longer existed, or weakened, the chemical imbalance that is who I am churned up.

Rich Mullens has a song entitled, “We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are.” I have discovered the truth in that song. Most days, I live in the light, thanks to the grace of God. Grace I tangibly feel in the love and care of those around me, in the incredible wonder of scientists who care for me so much that they create medicines for me, and in God whose words I repeat in my head when the world’s words are tearing me down. “My grace is sufficient for you.” “Be still and know that I am God.”

When I was hit head on with depression, I called a pastor friend who I knew was a fellow upstream swimmer with depression, and I said to her, “Tell me that there is hope.” And she said to me with gentle confidence, “Jerry, there is hope.” I have found her words to be true. I don’t know if any of you, my readers, find yourself shadow boxing depression, but if you are, my word to you is as was my friend’s to me, “There is hope.”

When you don’t have the strength to hold on, feel the strength of the one who is holding on to you, Jesus the Son of God. When the darkness is so dense and you don’t have the strength to move to the end of the tunnel, see the light coming to you into that tunnel, Jesus the light that nothing can overcome. When you don’t think that anyone cares, scream out and see someone coming to you…scream out to a friend, scream out to a pastor or priest. You are worth so much to God that God, himself, took on the pain of depression on the cross, so that he, not depression, has claimed you…forever!

Before I got hit with depression, and depression was lurking in the bushes of my life, I wrote a song, a song that put Mary and Martha’s words to music (John 11:21,22). Many have heard these words as words of scolding, but I hear them as words of deep faith, and so the song, “Lord When You Draw Near, There Is Hope.”

There is hope!

God’s grace and peace, (ggap)

Pastor Jerry Nuernberger

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