This article is taken from J17 Ministries newsletter from 4/9/2024. You can learn more about J17 Ministries and it’s founder David Drum by visiting their website.
This is Part 2 of a depression story written by Dave Drum. If you haven’t read Part 1 we highly recommend you do here before reading on.
Part Two: My Personal Ongoing Testimony of Healing
Last week’s part one story of my lifelong journey with depression left off rather deep in the pit. If you missed it, I suggest reading that first HERE. Sure, you can skip straight to Easter if you want to, but it will be more meaningful if you walk through Good Friday first!
As I shared last week, I believe depression always has three components: biochemical, spiritual, and volitional. Healing, therefore, will need to involve all three as well. I’m not sure the order matters, but eventually healing has to hit all three aspects of the problem. In my case, biochemical came first, followed by spiritual and volitional in a dead heat.
Shortly after the painful marriage conversation a year and a half ago, where I articulated to my long-suffering wife that I didn’t think God planned/wanted to heal my depression, and saw no reason to keep trying, I kept trying… more as a response to her pain than my faith or hopefulness. I mentioned the dilemma to my spiritual director (a pastor here in town), and simultaneously another friend reached out seeking a counselor recommendation for depression.
God used relationships in the Body of Christ, and their connections, to point me in a new direction – a PhD psychologist who is also a nurse practitioner, so he can prescribe meds.
He a) listened well; b) laid out some options, including one we hadn’t tried before which gave us a tinge of hope; c) increased an antidepressant I was already on to the max dose, and when that didn’t help; d) said I qualified, based on my symptoms, for a non-traditional class of medications (stimulants) that had been shown to help people with medication-resistant depression. Like most meds, we titrated slowly, but both my wife and I noticed an almost immediate effect. That stimulant (Ritalin) was a game-changer; it helped me feel better enough that I had hope to tackle the other issues which were bigger and more challenging, and therefore required more energy and effort. And jumping to the end of the story: I have now weaned fully off Ritalin, and will begin testing the waters on whether I still need an antidepressant at any level. Trust me – if I need it, I’ll take it!
After a few months on that medication, in addition to the traditional antidepressant, I felt like we had settled on the right dosage. That brought me to almost exactly a year ago. I realized for the first time in April 2023 that I had become cynical, particularly about prayer. I shared at the end of last week’s article several huge personal topics I’d been praying for with no visible results, and, for the first time, I was able to articulate the heart conclusions I’d reached, which differed from my head conclusions (ie, sound Biblical and theological beliefs.) My functioning view of prayer at that time was that:
- there are safe topics to pray about, like John 17 unity, spiritual renewal and growth, etc., and unsafe topics, like depression, my kids’ salvation, etc.
- I will keep praying out of obedience, because it’s the right thing to do, but on the unsafe topics, it’s an empty religious ritual, because…
- God will do whatever He wants, with or without my prayers, so putting any energy into those prayer requests is both pointless and painful.
Perfectionism stems from some of my family-of-origin dysfunctions. Combine that with a deeply-rooted sin issue of pride, and it’s rather embarrassing to admit as a pastor of 33 years and the leader of a ministry based on a prayer (!), that I’d become a cynic where prayer was concerned. I shared some of this with my wife, but nobody else, until the April 2023 Pastor Prayer Summit. One of the deeply treasured parts of those three-day summits is breaking into small groups of five or so and praying with intention for one another. The boost from the stimulant helped me with enough courage to decide to do the hard thing and be fully transparent with these other pastors about my prayer cynicism. As I shared all the disappointments I’d been experiencing in prayer, the pastor to my left literally began weeping – not a few barely-noticeable tears, but full-on sobbing.
When I finished, he shared through his tears simply, “I’m so sorry for all your pain.” I experienced the heart of Christ right then and there, and the thick layer of ice over my soul began to melt for the first time.
I’ll be brief here about the next couple of huge steps toward healing, although I’m happy to share more about any of them if you’re interested. One of the ways I knew that God was healing my depression is that difficult events didn’t sink me. The last 12 months have included some exceptionally painful challenges, but they didn’t put me in the pit of depression. I could feel grief and fear and remorse and deep disappointment, but without the traction-less and hopeless experience of the pit. My times with the Lord pulled me out of the pit literally every day of the last year except one – one day out of about 365. And even that one day I knew wouldn’t last, and it didn’t. In fact, the ability to actually feel feelings and sit in the grief and pain was evidence of healing – in the past I would have run from those immediately and usually subconsciously toward the nearest distraction.
On May 11 my wife confronted me about a recurring sin issue. When the depth of the issue fully hit me, I didn’t panic or deny or do what I usually would have done. I took my fears to the Lord, using my prayer journal as a much more in-depth, honest, and transparent resource than I had previously. I prayerfully determined that it was time to tackle this issue to the ground once and for all, with no room for compromise, whatever the cost. The twelve-step group I’m a part of weekly has led to victory in an area that greatly contributed to depression over the years. Guilt and shame are the enemy’s favorite tools for kicking people into the pit of depression. The volitional and spiritual components to depression are inextricably connected, and victory over both will be required for full healing. In my case, the meds gave me enough relief that I could tackle the more daunting areas, where I’d known forever what was necessary, but the lack of emotional and mental energy made it easier to give a half-effort or a short-term effort where a full and sustained effort was required.
Sometime in June my wife and I decided to work through a book together on identity that had been recommended to us several months earlier. The book is Living Fearless by Jamie Winship, and I’ve referred it to dozens of people in the last ten months. It’s changing lives all over the city and country, just within personal connections I’m aware of. The book has four sections, with some recommended applications at the end of each section that I followed religiously. And this time, “religiously” was actually a healthy term! I approached the exercises with humility and a recognition that I needed help, that the author knows more than I do, and so I’m going to do exactly what he suggests and how he suggests it. The exercise of identifying and breaking off false identities (lies!) that I’d accumulated over a lifetime was immediately and powerfully transformational. When I say “immediately,” that’s what I mean! God freed me from the power of some of those lies instantaneously; others have been more of a process. Working through this material with my wife brought marital transformation and healing that just accelerated the healing from depression.
Our annual family vacation to Rocky Point last summer was another step in the healing journey. In 2022, unbeknownst to me, there was a time when the kids were all with my wife in the ocean and I was in the condo mentally 100 years away. They confronted their mom and said, “What’s wrong with Dad?” They could tell that my depression was worse than it had been. She told me about the conversation after the fact. So in 2023, the first night we were all together after the grandgirls were asleep, I told them I wanted a few minutes to talk before we jumped into a game. I said, “Your mom told me about your conversation in the ocean here last year, when depression was even worse than it had been previously. I’m so sorry I was so disconnected and unavailable during our vacation last year. I’m happy to report that God is healing my depression, and this year, I assure you, will be different.” End of speech. Beginning of a wonderful, more-transparent-than-ever, rich several days of vacation.
Combine Living Fearless with A Praying Life by Paul Miller (which I’ve referenced several times in previous newsletters), and my morning interaction with Jesus began growing exponentially as well. Miller directly addresses the cynicism that I had been developing without realizing it. Prayer is the healthiest and most enjoyable it’s ever been during any of my 60 years. I’m finding more and more people to run with who are experiencing similar transformations, and so the mutual encouragement just adds to the joy, leaving depression further and further in the rear-view mirror. Both Miller and Winship encourage deep honesty in prayer (a future newsletter article!), which is one of the tools God is using to both help me feel feelings more deeply and genuinely, as well as keep those feelings from devolving into the hopelessness of depression. I had read Miller once before and found it intellectually stimulating and helpful. But I decided to reread it devotionally over the last year, a few pages at a time with journaling and reflection as a part of the process. As a result, it’s now stimulating at a heart and habit level, and not just residing in the dusty recesses of my mind. At an August pastor prayer summit in Phoenix a couple of years ago, the facilitator invited us to share the “one thing” that we most wanted to ask from the Lord. I knew immediately what mine was: that I would hear from the Lord more clearly, consistently, and confidently. The Lord is answering that prayer, and so I’m asking it even more fervently.
At the end of 2023, I did something different than in previous years. Several of us have adopted the spiritual discipline of choosing a single word for the coming year as an overarching focal point. In the past I’d given lip service to prayer, and basically chosen whatever word I wanted the next year to look like. This year I determined that I wasn’t going to choose a word until I was confident that it was the Lord’s choice, not mine. When my wife cheated and chose a hyphenated word, I experienced a refreshing wind of freedom, haha. So the Lord gave me a double-hyphenated word: restore-and-more. And it even forms a lovely phrase: “Restore-and-more in ’24.” That has proven to be prophetic on an almost weekly basis.
God is restoring all the years lost to depression, and more… allowing me on occasion to use what the enemy meant for evil (depression) and turn it into something God means for good (helping others heal from depression also).
Almost done! The acceleration in healing and transformation continues at a breathtaking pace. In February I was with a group of people in the Dallas area who are all hungering for John 17 at a deeper and more practical level. The opening introduction question was not, “What is God doing through you?” but “What is God doing in you?” Again, I immediately knew my answer. “God has healed my depression over the last year, and I have more energy, motivation, and vision than I’ve ever had in my life. But as a result, I’m needing to relearn pace and capacity!” That remains my most challenging and necessary prayer today.
Two final thoughts. Healing from depression does not immediately produce rewiring of all the unhealthy neuropathways that depression helped create. I keep discovering those, like black-and-white thinking, a failure to see options, and panic over required change. Each is a process of healing. And it’s worth repeating – healing from depression doesn’t mean a bed of roses and perpetual happiness. My UA basketball team lost… again! Some of the deepest things my wife and I are praying about daily remain visibly elusive. I regularly bump up against areas of life in the Kingdom that don’t make sense to me. But instead of retreating into self-reliance or distraction, as my depressed-self did in years past, I’m more inclined to dive deeper into honest and transparent conversation with Jesus and others, acknowledging and feeling the feelings, and allowing the Good Shepherd to beautifully guide me through the valley of the shadow of death-to-self without unacknowledged fear.
Thanks for reading!
Dave Drum, Founder of J17 Ministries
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