Bless This Brain has recently gotten the chance to partner with Pastor David Drum of J17 Ministries. In early April on Silent Saturday, Dave wrote about his mental health journey in J17’s 4/2/24 Newsletter. This story consists of years of suffering, reflecting and learning. Dave has given Bless This Brain permission to share his article. You can learn more about J17 Ministries and it’s founder David Drum by visiting their website.
Stories like Dave’s have a great impact on reducing mental health stigma. They speak clearly of the reach that mental illness has. It’s unwillingness keep to assumed stereotypes that mental illness only effects the faithless, the lazy, the weak or the uneducated. Mental illness is complex and widespread no one is immune to it. But as Dave shares below there is hope, there are resources that help and if you suffer you’re certainly not alone. David Drum is a ministry leader, pastor of pastors, husband and father. This testimony is especially significant to Bless This Brain’s readers because it is the story of suffering from the perspective of a respected man in church leadership. There are so many elements of his story that we believe will be enlightening and freeing to those that hear it.
We are so grateful to Dave for the bravery and vulnerability it took to put his journey into words and offer it to readers.
This is Part One of a Two Part story. You can find Part 2 Here
Part One: My Personal Ongoing Testimony of Healing
God is the Ultimate Story Teller, and every good story is filled with tension. (Thank you, Paul Miller, for that life-changing insight from A Praying Life.) When we’re in the middle of the tension, it can feel excruciatingly painful, and we wonder how it can ever resolve. Consider this the Silent Saturday of Holy Week… where the pain and anguish of Good Friday is hauntingly present, and the future is completely unknown and unanticipated. My goal today is to accurately paint a picture of the pain and anguish part of the story! If you or someone you love suffers from depression, I pray this helps you feel seen and heard.
I suspect depression always has at least three components to it: biochemical, spiritual, and volitional. Mine certainly does. The biochemical part seems to have a genetic tendency to it. My grandmother died of undiagnosed depression, from my observation. My mother suffered with it, though it was never treated to my knowledge. I’ve had it my whole adult life, first diagnosed in 1998 – ironically, right after my first three-month sabbatical from pastoral ministry. And all four of our adult children struggle with it to varying degrees. Does God heal through medicine or miracles? Yes! He isn’t limited to one or the other. But if the professionals are honest, I think they’d say there’s more they don’t know about mental health than what they do know. I’m super grateful for the progress made, but treatment seems to always be like throwing darts blindfolded. “Try this drug – but understand that if it’s the wrong one, your depression could get worse. If that happens and you become suicidal, by all means call us immediately, and we’ll try a different one.” The medical treatment process is very trial and error, even though we’ve learned a ton about the brain chemicals involved with depression.
The fact that depression was first diagnosed for me after a sabbatical, at a time when circumstances were as good as ever, lets me know that there’s a biochemical component to it. That’s important, because the spiritual and volitional aspects of depression, which are also real, can lead to a tragic journey of guilt and shame when it comes to mental health if the biochemical component is ignored. And what’s more, this problem often becomes even worse in the Christian community.
If “the joy of the Lord is our strength,” what’s the matter with me that I’m struggling with depression? “Have more faith! Grow in obedience! Repent! Draw near to Jesus!” can be the messages either that we tell ourselves or that others tell us when it comes to depression.
This is all good advice and true, but Satan is a master at twisting biblical truth to make us feel even more hopeless. We don’t do that with diabetes or asthma, usually, but we certainly do with mental health issues. Nobody ever got extricated from the pit of depression through guilt and shame.
I’ve been on various drugs for depression since 1998. Most have unfortunate side effects, forcing us into very ugly decisions. To compensate for the low energy, it’s incredibly tempting to seek out artificial adrenaline rushes. Anyone in full-time paid ministry knows that our profession is filled with such opportunities. Workaholism is an occupational hazard for pastors, made even more tempting by struggles with energy, mood, and motivation. Seek the next high – ministry has plenty of them.
Poor functional theology on my part led me to one of my biggest mistakes. I believed it was primarily my job as a pastor to build the church. (It’s not, it’s His.) And since my wife’s calling was to be a homemaker, that could be her primary responsibility. I gave congregational ministry all my best energy while my wife and kids got the leftover scraps. I have repented of this, both to the Lord, my wife, and my kids, but it came with a high cost. Guilt over knowing I wasn’t spiritually leading my family only deepened the depression.
That wasn’t my only sin issue, of course. There are plenty of forbidden fruits the enemy offers that promise relief or pleasure in the short run, and only leave us feeling worse afterwards. And then, of course, the corresponding guilt and shame dig the depression hole deeper.
There are as many sins of omission as there are commission. We all know some of the things that will help depression, but the nature of depression makes it harder to do them. Diet and exercise are well documented aids for those who struggle with depression. Neither are very attractive from the pit. Drawing closer to Jesus helps everything, of course. But depression puts a blanket over our spiritual disciplines also, making them that much more difficult.
My struggles with depression weren’t nearly as serious as many I’ve known. I rarely struggled with suicidal thoughts, knowing deeply that such a course of action would be wrong, and would greatly hurt the people I love even more. And I remained functional through it all, although there were days my battles with depression often resulted in my not being very efficient. It felt like I was climbing uphill with a bag of rocks. However, most people saw me as effective and productive. As I mentioned before, home life suffered the most. My wife, more than anything, longed and prayed for my healing, but began to wonder if it would ever come.
It’s not surprising, then, that during all of this, the enemy of our souls piles on the voices of accusation which have a ring of truth to them. Condemnation only adds to the feelings of hopelessness and despair. The Psalms seem to paint a picture of depression far more often than they use the word. I believe “the pit” is perhaps the most descriptive biblical picture of life with depression. In a pit there’s not much sunlight. The walls are slippery and it’s hard to get any traction.
The world feels like it’s closing in on you and on everything that is good. Everything is significantly harder than it would have been otherwise.
Almost done with part one! The last few years got even harder. I am an extrovert, so the pandemic was especially hard on my depression. Opportunities to be with dear friends were all stripped away. My physical health challenges forced me to be extra careful and isolate even longer and more. During that season, I was also having to work through exceptionally difficult family-of-origin issues. And then I was struggling with many unanswered prayers — for dear Christian friends who died anyway; for a reprieve from depression, the likes of which kept getting worse; and for kids who weren’t moving any closer to Jesus.
My meds weren’t really doing much, and my spiritual life was not very healthy, although I knew how to hide that fairly well and most of you reading this probably didn’t know. There was a tearful evening with my wife about a year and a half ago, where she encouraged me to keep trying, maybe find a new doctor, see if there could be another med.
And I expressed my hopelessness, believing erroneously, that this must be God‘s plan for some inexplicable reason, and apparently depression would just be my thorn in the flesh.
That’s enough for Silent Saturday. I will share the resurrection story next week.
Dave Drum, Founder of J17 Ministries
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