depression on Emptiness

We would do well to keep in mind that Solomon’s words on the necessity of friendship were written toward the end of his life, well after he scaled his own Mount Significance. His accomplishments were ...

Dearest Father, we long for light, but dwell in darkness. We crave the warmth of the sun, but crawl into our caverns of sin and sadness. We are a people who prefer the misery and melancholy that we kn...

Depression is a thief. A pickpocket. Swiping a memory here and there. An emotion, a plan for the afternoon, part of a conversation. It is a burglar. Leaving behind empty surfaces and containers that u...

When J. K. Rowling created the Harry Potter universe, she naturally drew on her own experiences to flesh it out. This is true even for such alarming creatures as ‘dementors’. These are soulless beings...

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...

Those mornings when you wake up burdened, already thinking Oh why bother, start here: thank God for one thing. One person whom you love will do, though even a remarkable coincidence is acceptable. You...

For many of us, life can easily become disorienting and discouraging. Existential questions often emerge that never have before. As stressful as modern life can be, it is somewhat comforting to know t...

Last night REM wasn’t a sleep cycle I sank into but a 1990s rock band encouraging me to “stand in the place where you are.” My hands throb.

Sometimes we become so lonely, we'll do whatever we can to have some social interaction. Vulgar and with a quick wit, Dorothy Parker (1893-1967) was a significant short-story writer and social cri...

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression. In this excerpt, Marchenko describes one of the many paradoxes that come with depression: how ...

I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or...

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self – to the mediating intellect – as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus rema...

“Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?”  It’s a simple question. It’s also a question on everyone’s minds in the gospels. But it hits differently when you remember who asks i...

Take the great American writer Ernest Hemingway, for example. Born in 1899, he was the epitome of the twentieth-century man. At age 25, he sipped champagne in Paris, and later had well-publicized game...

Depression takes so many forms. Here’s how it looked for me today: All day I felt like a failure. An unending loop played in my head telling me that I have failed everyone in my life who loves me. My ...

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.

Before any great achievement, some measure of depression is very usual.

When Ministry Burnout Leaves You Empty I imagine that some of you feel like you have nothing left to give. Perhaps you’re in a period in which motivation has morphed into varying degrees of desponde...

Holy Comforter, You are near when my dream dies. You are near the brokenhearted. Thanks be to you for a new dream and a future beyond my imagining. Maker of Miracle, You are near when I cannot see yo...

Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake u...

There was a rich young man who had a series of disappointments that made him feel that life was not worth while, as if he really had nothing left to live for. On his way to the river where he intended...

Depression has felt volcanic at times. It may lie relatively dormant for some time, while its lava and force are constantly shielded beneath the tectonic plates. Without warning, it then forces its wa...

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

One of the biggest tragedies of depression is myopia. You cannot see beyond your own nose.

In her compelling memoir Still Life , author Gillian Marchenko recounts her struggles with depression: Yes, but what about Jesus?” friends ask later on. It is a valid question. If others look at ...

I was born into this world with a tortured sensitivity. For long I have puzzled over the causes of my psychological anguish.

God—We’d like to have had a Hallmark card kind of week: gentle, quiet and serene, but it’s been anything but that. People died this week—and families and friends grieve. A man got bad news about cance...

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.