Why I Wrote Companions in the Darkness

I’m asked often why I wrote my book, Companions in the Darkness. The stories in it are unusual, I’ve heard. It’s not often we hear about depression and faith or about the struggles of our spiritual heroes and mental health. What led you to this?

I suppose the short answer is that Companions in the Darkness is a book I needed. I needed these stories in the past, when depression first took hold of me. I need them today, as I navigate (with all of you) a season of lingering uncertainty and stress. And I will need them in the future, regardless of what it may hold.

When I first struggled with depression, I did not know the stories in this book. But how I wish I had. It’s impossible to know looking back, but I can’t help but wonder how the stories of the companions may have encouraged me, how they may have assuaged some of the guilt that came with depression, how they may have pointed me towards small steps I could take as I journeyed back into the light.

I heard the first of these stories in a seminary classroom, and in them I heard something I recognized. These heroes, these saints, had struggled with depression much as I did. So I set out to learn more about these companions and found others along the way. They became stories I treasured, stories I learned from, stories I needed to share.

“I’ve come to realize that the stories we choose to tell communicate something. Ignoring a struggle like depression in the lives of people in church history—those we still talk about today, those we may call heroes—communicates something. It says those stories don’t matter, or, worse, that we should be ashamed of them.

“That is why this book exists.… [The stories in this book] need to be told so that we can be heirs of the wisdom and comfort these brothers and sisters have to share. They need to be told so that we find the courage and freedom to tell our own stories. They need to be told so that we are reminded that God can still use us, that depression will not be our life’s epitaph.”

I am delighted and honored to finally be able to share these stories with you, as Companions in the Darkness finally releases next week. I pray they shine a bit of light for any of you in the dark.

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Vulnerability Begets Vulnerability

My natural inclination is to maintain the illusion that I have it all together. I would prefer people to look on and see someone who is confident, competent, and self-assured. I would prefer them to see my successes, to perceive perfection, to find no cracks in the facade.

Of course, reality is far from this image I would care to project. My house is not perfectly clean. I get stains on my clothes. I still cannot write words like “maintenance” without verifying their spelling. My child is not always perfectly behaved, and, if I’m honest, neither am I. There are some issues or struggles I have more questions about than answers. I wrestle with self-doubt and impostor syndrome, and there are days when simple things provoke stress and anxiety. And this just scratches the surface. I don’t even fully succeed at consistently admitting my imperfections.

I do not have it all together. And I’ve found that I’m not the only one who benefits when I admit and embrace that fact.

Somewhere along the line, I came to believe that I was best able to help people if I didn’t struggle myself. I assumed confidence would invite people to trust me. But in practice, projected perfection alienates more than it invites. When I need someone to confide in, I want someone who understands. I want someone who can empathize with my weakness, someone who can relate to my pain. I need someone with scars. And other people do as well.

I wrote a book about depression. In it, I share some of my own story, some of my own pain and doubt and darkness. At one time, I would have found that vulnerability to be terrifying, but not any more. Because what I have seen is this: the most common voices I hear when I share my own struggles are not those of criticism and shame, but rather ones who say, “me too.” I’ve seen it play out time and time again: vulnerability begets vulnerability. When I muster up the courage to share my story and my struggles, I see other people find the courage to share theirs as well. Leading with vulnerability creates a safe space for others to enter into, and in that safe space we can take a small step toward healing together.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t need to be discerning about when, what, and to whom we share. The reality is that there are some people with whom it is not “safe” to share our most raw pain. There are also times when we aren’t ready to fully disclose a painful season we’re still in the midst of.* And there are some details we may not find appropriate to share with everyone. But these factors are a call for discernment, not for complete silence, and not for faking perfection. Even if you aren’t fully able to share, even the smallest hint or comment, even being slightly more vulnerable than you would be inclined to be, may be enough to give someone else who’s struggling the indication that you’re someone they can trust, someone else who has been (or still is) where they are.

I do not have it all together. And I can confidently say, neither do you. So admit it. And share your story. Yours may just be the story someone else needs to hear.

*As a writer, I once received what I have found in my own experience to be great advice: Be careful what you share publicly about a painful circumstance you’re still currently in the midst of. Don’t share fully (or possibly at all) publicly until you’ve come to enough resolution of your pain that you don’t need your readers to be your therapist and you will not be deeply affected emotionally based on their response (or lack of one). In that season, I wrote privately, and I shared honestly with trusted friends and briefly with those I was acquainted with, but I waited to write/speak publicly until I was in a more stable place.

I Need Stories From the Dark

I heard the first threads of their stories in a seminary classroom. Just months before, I had emerged from another bout of depression, and the taste of that darkness still lingered. The isolation. The tears—then the numbness. The heavy weight pulling me to stay in bed, to not think, to disappear. I wonder now if I would have noticed them if it hadn’t been fresh, if I wasn’t still reminded by a pill each morning of my own fragility. But in that moment, I had ears to hear.

I made extra notes in the margins of my notebooks based on this anecdote and that aside from my professor, and those wispy threads began to converge. These people in church history, the ones I was studying, the ones we still celebrated—they too knew that darkness. They too had been depressed. Why had I never heard their stories? Would my own experience with depression have been different if I had?

Looking back now, I wonder how many explicit messages I heard about depression. I don’t remember anyone specifically telling me I was a failure for succumbing to it, but it was the message I received just the same. As it tightened its grip on me during my senior year of college, I felt as though I should be able to try harder, as though I had to find a way to pull myself together. But I barely had the strength to make it to class most days—an emotional overhaul was beyond my reach. I felt guilty and weak. I felt like a “bad” Christian. I was surrounded by a culture of spiritual perfectionism and keenly aware of how far I fell short. I was broken—shattered was more like it—and the God of comfort I had known fell silent.

At the time, I didn’t hear stories about Christians suffering from depression, aside from the confided experiences of a couple close friends. I certainly didn’t hear stories about what it looked like to live in the midst of depression, those stories of what faithfulness looked like in the dark. I heard whispers and rumors of others who suffered like me, but our time in depression’s darkness was not a story to be told—or so it seemed. It felt shameful and awkward. I didn’t know what other people would make of my pain—I didn’t know what to make of it myself, of that pain that grew so great it became nothingness, numbness, the void.

But what if, in that moment, I knew the stories I would come to know later? What if I knew of the saints of the darkness, of these sisters and brothers throughout the church’s history who had traveled this road long before me, who had wept and wrestled as I did? It would not have removed depression’s darkness or dulled its ache, but it may have made it just a little less bitter—to know that this was not some strange or shameful thing that was happening to me, to know I was not alone, to know God was not finished with me yet.

I realize now that the stories we choose to tell communicate something. My experience has been that we like stories of the light, stories of victory, stories of perfectly packaged happy endings. And why not? They’re heartwarming. But when we prioritize these at the expense of stories from the opposite part of human experience—of struggle and pain—we send an implicit but clear message that those messier and more painful stories are not welcome. It is this sort of message that kept me uncertain and quiet about my own depression. It is this message that perpetuates stigma and judgment, that suggests Christians shouldn’t struggle as I did.

But there are saints among us—perhaps you’re one of them—who have stories from the dark, stories of the not-yet, stories that end with a question mark—and we need those just as much. We have these stories throughout our history, just waiting to be told. We have them living and breathing among us today. Stories like these give me permission to acknowledge and share my own struggles. They remind me I’m not alone. They remind me of how God is faithful when I can’t see him or when I wonder if I have the strength for faith left. They tell me depression will not be the end of my story.

In my own experience with depression, I have found stories of the dark in the lives of people throughout church history. They are a source of comfort, encouragement, and guidance to me. But they also give me boldness to tell my own story—because somewhere out there is a college student like I once was, weary and heavy laden with depression’s load, and my story may just be the one they need to hear.

Wrinkled Hands

I never knew her name. But I doubt I’ll forget her. She would enter the sanctuary just on time and walk to her habitual seat in the front. Her walker was left standing in the center aisle as she shuffled into the row. She was petite, and her body bowed with age. She always stood for the worship music, supported by a hand on the seat in front of her. In the dim light, I would often see her other hand raised in worship, her wrinkled fingers bent with arthritis.

Great is Thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see. All I have needed Thy hand hath provided. Great is Thy faithfulness Lord unto me. She stood in awe, in reverence, in honor of God’s glory. Her hand lifted in tribute, in affirmation, in adoration.

How many decades had she sung these words? What had those hands seen that now lifted in praise to her faithful God?

I never knew her name. I never knew her story. But I could imagine. No one is immune to the joys and sorrows that afflict humanity. Perhaps she’d had children or a husband. Perhaps she’d lived out her years going to bed alone. Surely she’d had her questions and her doubts, had weathered sickness and hardship and loneliness. She’d have stared down her own sin and begged God for mercy.

But surely she had also seen God enter her story. Seen him provide. Seen him comfort. Seen him transform her heart. Seen his faithfulness again and again. In better and worse. In sickness in health. In richer and poorer. All the days of her life.

So, for all she had seen, she was still here. Still standing. Still lifting up her hands in worship.

When the day comes that my hands wear the creases of age, I hope the same will be said of me. I pray age will not bear the fruit of bitterness or cynicism but rather of the fruit of joy, gentleness, and hope. I know there will be plenty of stories to tell or opinions to be voiced, but I pray all of them center on one refrain: Great is Thy faithfulness.

Dying With A Smile On My Face

I can’t say I’ve ever been a big shopper. I’m the friend who’s ready long before everyone else, aisles perused, selections tried on, decisions made, waiting outside of the dressing room while everyone else finishes up. This efficiency has only grown now that I have a tiny companion. She grows restless strapped to my chest or nestled in the cart in front of me. I keep moving, make my selections decisively, and go through the self-checkout when the lines are long.

On this particular day, we braved one of those big box stores in which I could get everything on my list in one stop. Groceries, toiletries, and a few items for our new living situation were piled in the cart out of reach of my daughter’s curious hands as I briskly walked to the front of the store. In the corral of self-scanning stations, I overheard a customer teasing the clerk on duty. She paused her roving amongst the beeping scanners and rustle of plastic bags to return his sarcasm with some of her own. The twinkle in her eye told me they knew each other. This wasn’t the first time they’d had such an exchange. He left, purchases in hand, with a final quip, and she continued her rounds. Her back bore the gentle arc of age. She was petite, like my grandmother, with a light in her eyes like my memories of her.

She waved a wrinkled hand at the man’s disappearing back. “They’re so mean to me.”

For a moment, I thought I’d misread the situation. Then she laughed, “Aww no, they’re great. They’re just great. I’ve known them for years down at the Elks Club.”

I was quickly sliding along barcodes. The baby was squirming, reminding me that it was naptime. I listened with partial attention, trying not to be rude, but unsure if she was actually talking to me or just to the air. I glanced over my shoulder as I placed plastic tubs of baby food in the bag. She looked me in the eye and kept talking.

“You know, I’ll be eighty-six years old this year, and I try to find something to laugh about every day. Yeah, I know hard things happen in life and things don’t always go like we want, and some people think that gives them the right to grumble and be all miserable and nasty. But I’m old, and I know life is too short to live like that. I just brush those things off and don’t think about them and find something to laugh about instead. When I die, I’m going to do it with a smile on my face.”

With her final statement, she gave an emphatic nod and what I now surmised to be her characteristic grin. I couldn’t help but smile back at her, and I left the store that day still wearing that smile as I walked to my car. Her outlook on life was contagious. But on the way home, I started wondering if I could live like that all the time.

* * *

It is not difficult to see that life can be hard. We face the effects of its broken, not-yet-fully redeemed state every day. The newsreels remind us of conflicts, poverty, and injustice on a global scale. We see it in our own lives in sickness and ailing bodies, in severed relationships and the loss of those we love. Violence, want, and the delay of justice aren’t contained in one part of the globe or a particular neighborhood. They come knocking at our doors as well in myriad forms. Who among us can escape suffering and tears?

I do not believe faithfulness to Christ or a firm grasp on joy demand that we ignore this reality of the pain our existence can bring. We need look no further in the Bible than the Psalms of lament or a book such as Lamentations to see that we are given permission to mourn and to rail against the ways life is not as it should be. We do not need to simply brush our pain aside, to ignore it, to laugh it off. We can sit with our grief, rage, and tears and call it what it is. In fact, we are given permission to bring that grief and rage and those tears in astonishing honesty and rawness to God himself. Repression is not a sanctified action.

And yet. (There is always an “and yet,” isn’t there?) And yet, even in these places in the Bible that give voice to our deepest pain and longings, there is a space held open for rejoicing. This joy does not come because we ignore the parts of life that are hard. It comes because our faith gives us comfort in the midst of a life that is hard. We have hope that is anchored in who God is and in what He has promised. As I heard someone say recently, “I read the end of the book, and that’s why I can keep smiling.”

My store clerk was right—there is no space for grumbling and misery in the face of life’s difficulties. She was right that there is always space for joy. But that joy doesn’t come from blinding ourselves to the world’s ills or numbing our hearts against the painful situations that may come our way. Joy comes from a deep-seated belief that God is who He says He is and He will do what He said He will do. Faith allows us to stare down the hard parts of life while joy still takes root in our souls. This joy is realistic but irrepressible. It is joy that can survive in the dark. It is joy that allows us to die with a smile on our face.