The Valley of the Shadow of Death

TRIGGER WARNING:

THIS ARTICLE MENTIONS SUICIDE IDEATION AND MENTAL HEALTH STRUGGLES.

THE CONTENTS DETAILS MY PERSONAL JOURNEY, AND SHOULD NOT REPLACE ANY

MEDICAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSIDER YOUR OWN MENTAL WELLBEING BEFORE READING.

'It had been continuing for months. I felt like I was going crazy, I wasn’t getting any better, maybe I was getting worse. The only clear message from the Lord was ‘wait’. But I was tired of waiting, tired of not feeling normal anymore, tired of nothing helping, tired of feeling like I was, tired of being so scared and anxious. Then it was one of my darkest days. I spent most of Thursday crying, endless tears with silent screams echoing in my head. I felt like I was shouting into darkness and no-one could hear me. Was God even there? Was he listening? Why wasn’t he helping when I needed him so much?

I read my Bible but it felt like everything was garble and nothing was helping. I felt alone and at the end of my ability to keep going. When my husband came home from work, I managed to pull it together because I knew he wasn’t coping with this person I had become, and that watching me like this was painful. But once he was asleep that night the tears came once more. I tried reading my Bible again but it felt like I was staring at a blank wall. God wasn’t speaking to me. I barely slept and the next day started the same. Tears from me and silence from God. I had already listened to a podcast I followed but had only found it discouraging. I couldn’t feel anything I was meant to be feeling as a Christian.'

I wrote the above paragraphs whilst I was still in the midst of a mental breakdown. After being in Niugini for 3 years through the worst of Covid, we had finally been able to return to Australia for a holiday. But while we were here, I ended up in autistic burnout. I had intrusive thoughts about suicide multiple times a day, extreme social anxiety and constant panic attacks, I suffered skill regression and could barely manage self-care, let alone looking after my family. We were unexpectedly living in another country so we had nothing but a few suitcases. Our entire lives and ministry were abandoned overseas, including all the people and churches, our pets and every physical possession we owned. Then my husband also became suicidal, and all my kids were struggling. And I had the most intense guilt that I was responsible for it all.

And while that was all happening, not one single person from my church ever once came and prayed with me. Even though everyone knew we were still in Australia because of my mental health issues.

But despite it all, this is what I also wrote:

'At this point in desperation I found a random sermon on YouTube. I don’t remember much of the sermon except that it was about Psalm 42:

“As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?” (Psalm 42:1-3)

The Psalm was describing exactly how I felt. I was looking for God but seemed to be drawing a blank. I longed for direction from the Lord but there was nothing. I had cried and cried but I couldn’t find Him. My tears seemed to be mocking me, asking me where my God was. But I also knew deep down that only he had the solution to the mess of my broken spirit and mind. Then verse five,

“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.” (Psalm 42:5)

The preacher made the point that Psalm 42 is describing depression or anxiety. What is depression if not a downcast soul and anxiety if not a disquieted spirit? But it also offers an answer: hope thou in God. Hope is the answer. Hope will lift up the soul and quieten the spirit.

The sermon finished; though at this point I still didn’t feel any better. I was still completely distressed and a mess. I thought, ‘If hope is the solution, I don’t even know what hope means.’ I picked up my phone to check the meaning of the word hope in Psalm 42. If hope was the answer to how I was feeling I needed to know what it meant. I read:

Strong's Definition:

A primitive root; to wait; by implication to be {patient} hope: - (cause {to} {have} make to) {hope} be {pained} {stay} {tarry} {trust} wait.

Brown-Driver-Briggs' Definition:

1. to wait, hope, expect

   • (Niphal) to wait

   • (Piel)

     1. to wait, await, tarry

     2. to wait for, hope for

   • (Hiphil) to wait, tarry, wait for, hope for

I couldn’t believe it. For months the only clear message from the Lord had been ‘wait’. Now here at my darkest time when I thought he wasn’t listening, the answer that the Bible gives for a depressed and anxious soul is ‘wait'.

Just wait. Wait longer.'

Dictionary.com includes this definition of hope: verb

to look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence,

to feel that something desired may happen.

It is how hope is used today. Today hope is akin to wishful thinking: it might happen. But in the Bible, hope is an expectation: it will happen. Think about the following phrase, "I hope to receive eternal life." If we read this with a modern definition it says, “I wish to receive eternal life.” In other words, you would like it to happen but there is no guarantee it will. But if we read it with a Biblical definition then it says, “I wait to receive eternal life, or I expect to receive eternal life.” Hope is something that is going to happen, just not yet.

Hope is all about the things we don’t have yet, but will receive. If fact, God provides a clear definition of Biblical hope in his word, and its nothing like the wishy-washy meaning that is used today:

For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it. (Romans 8:24-25)

Hope is waiting or expectation. Once we have received what we are waiting for we are no longer waiting. Therefore hoping is all about the future promises from the Lord. But for now, because we know they are coming we wait patiently for them.

That day, was the day I started healing, because it was the day I realised that I had a choice. Even when I couldn’t see the end of the valley I could chose to wait. I could choose to have hope. I could choose to trust the promises. I could choose to have faith.

Personally, I have always found the concept of faith to be an abstract concept I couldn’t quite get my head around. What does it mean to ‘have faith’? So, I found it really helpful to find out that in Greek, faith is just a different form of the word believe, they are the same root word. So ‘have faith’ is really just an instruction to believe, or trust God. No matter the circumstances. No matter my feelings. I could choose to trust God. And so I waited.

There have definitely been set backs in my journey through that valley and in those dark times the Lord was my only light. I can’t imagine going through those times without him. But, there were no more days that felt like I was screaming into the darkness and he wouldn’t answer, because I chose to believe that he would answer in his time. Ultimately, I have witnessed too much in my life to believe that he would abandon me when I needed him the most. It had nothing to do with how I felt, and everything to do with what I knew and believed. I knew he was the answer and he would provide a way out. I could choose to have hope in the valley.

During that time the beginning of Psalm 40 became my refuge and I started memorising it:

I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD. (Psalm 40:1-3)

I truly felt like I was at the bottom of a horrible pit, and when I first read these verses I had an image of the Lord as a shepherd. He hears bleating in the distance, he follows the cries to the pit, then he reaches down and rescues his lost lamb. But as I read and memorised this part of Psalm 40, I realised something about the wording, it actually says “he brought me up.” The word brought means to “take or go with (someone or something) to a place” (dictionary.com) and I realised, that for God to bring me out of the pit he had to be in it with me.

God wasn’t in the distance and finally heard my cries for help. It wasn’t that I had to call out loudly enough from the pit to make God hear me. I came to realise God sits at the bottom of the pit with me. He’s listening to every cry for help. And sometimes, even when we don’t understand his timing, we need to wait patiently. He will remove us from the pit in his perfect timing. “We walk by faith, not by sight,” (2 Corinthians 5:7) and that faith is a choice. We walk through the dark valleys by belief, not by sight. Believing is a conscience choice. Trusting God is a conscience choice. Hope is a conscience choice.

Choose today, whatever your circumstances, if you’re traversing a valley or sitting in a pit, choose to have faith. Choose to hope. Choose to wait patiently on the Lord.

All Glory to the God who sits with me,