On February 6, Desiring God posted this tweet:

And Christian Twitter blew up.

Most of the comments and retweets expressed concern that Desiring God would be promoting mental health as a metric for spiritual wellness. This statement seems to imply that depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses are the result of selfish fixation, and the solution is to turn one’s focus to God.*

Many Christians shared personal stories of God blessing them in times of mental illness through therapy or medicine, not solely through prayer. Over and over, there was an emphasis on God’s providence through human hands, not just through divine intervention.

As important as these conversations are, they always leave me feeling conflicted.

My depression wasn’t cured by medicine or therapy. My depression was cured when I turned my focus to Christ.

This makes me an anomaly, and a dangerous one. When discussions about mental illness in the church come up, I don’t tell my story. I worry that God’s grace in my life will be used as a weapon to further shame those who go to therapy. Or even worse, to make someone think that they are a failure when their prayers aren’t answered, driving them further into desolation.

Mental health is still a taboo topic in many churches. Depression and anxiety may be blamed on selfishness and sin, and treatment from a psychiatrist or through medicine may even be viewed as a lack of faith in God.

This stigma kills God's family. And I don't want to be a part of that in any way.

I experienced depression for years without medicine or therapy (by my own choice). I was in a safe and loving community that kept me from acting, but that didn’t cure the emptiness and apathy. But when I began to seek God, I felt alive in a way I hadn’t since I was child, and over a few months I began feeling joy again.

I don’t often tell Christians my story because I am met with one of two responses:

1. “See, that’s what I’ve been saying! All you have to do is seek God, and then your depression will be healed!”
2. “Your depression wasn’t real if you didn’t need therapy or medicine to get through it. You must’ve just been moody.”

The first response is dangerous because it advocates for ignoring the common grace that God has given us in medicine and advances in psychology. Just as we are meant to treat a broken leg, we are meant to treat a broken mind. While prayer is always necessary, sometimes God answers prayer through humans hands.

The second response denies the existence of spiritual depression and the power of God to intervene in despondency. My journal entries and doctor's reports testify to the reality of my mental illness, and I praise God for intervening in my stubborn refusal of treatment and saving me through his grace alone.

And yet that last sentence is the rub. I praise God for saving me through prayer; yet if that praise were public, it could be used to hurt my friends and family who are utilizing other tools of common grace to seek healing.

My healing does not mean that I am a better Christian, or that I prayed harder, or that my depression wasn’t real. My healing is an example of God’s abundant grace. His grace doesn’t come to all his children in all the same ways or in all the same times. But it always comes.

American suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255.
Find a therapist: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists
Find a Christian therapist/counselor: http://www.christiancounselordirectory.com/FindATh...

*In an effort to stem the tide of criticism, Desiring God posted a follow-up tweet linking to an article detailing Clyde Kilby’s "10 Resolutions for Mental Health" from a speech given in 1976. While the context might have helped, the article linked did not contain the quote from the original tweet, nor could I find that quote anywhere other than Desiring God’s Twitter.