Finally, the mentee became the mentor when our youth minister, who’d become not only someone I served, discipled, and developed in ministry, but who had become the dearest of friends. He managed to win my trust and get inside my heart. As with my wife, I couldn’t hide from him. He cared enough to want to know me. I was desperate in a way, the timing was right, and the Spirit led me to let this really young man become my crutch. He still is today. I’d thought about trying anti-depressant medication along with my other strategies for years but was woefully ignorant of how they really worked. I had an aunt while I was growing up, who obviously struggled with depression and anxiety, who was on some kind of sedatives that caused her to act “punch-drunk” much of the time (yeah, punch-drunk is an old boxing expression, but it is most descriptive). I guess I may still have had visions of that. Also, I had a counselor friend who had some kind of an aversion to them and had shared some thoughts that had affected me. But, my medical doctor, who is also a trusted friend and godly brother, had spoken to me about them during my annual physical and he’s someone I trust a lot, but I’d fairly quickly fended him off. My wife, who deserves an award for valor, had encouraged me to try them on and off for years.

One day when I was fighting a bout of depression, my young friend looked me in the eyes and simply told me I ought to at least try them. He prevailed. I set up an appointment with my doctor; he did a depression workup on me and prescribed Wellbutrin. He told me it would take at least a couple of weeks to take hold, but within the first week something dramatic began to happen within me. Previously, I had often felt that I was walking along the top edge of a cliff and one misstep could cause me to plunge into the dark canyon below. What happened after taking the medication for just a few days was that I started feeling farther away from the edge. Much safer. The edge was still in sight, but I found I had the strength to fight off depression as triggers occurred. In my experience, the medication did not shut down feelings of sadness or remorse and the things that would have normally bothered me. I just felt more normal. The dark clouds no longer formed in my head. I was able to deal with life’s issues straight up rather than having to fight through them in the darkness of depression. I stopped slipping into depression. I could breath.

One note I must make here is that antidepressant medication is not an elixir. And, it's not even an answer for everybody. Medication needs to be only a part of the overall strategy for those that it helps. Such medication needs to be tried under close medical supervision, and I believe in conjunction with a trustworthy counselor. Don't trust detractors who are not professionals. Don't trust those who push medication as the cureall either.

And now, to the spiritual side of my own journey. My mom became a Christian when I was a small boy. She took us to church regularly. We had a very strong moral teaching when I was young. I was baptized when I was nine or ten and I remember the night I was baptized her coming in to my room and reading something to us. She had tried to in the living room but my dad was trying to watch TV and made her stop. It was really an act of defiance for her to take us back into our room and continue reading. I realized that at the time and it meant a ton to me. I really don’t remember her reading to me very much growing up, but I do remember the deep feeling of joy I had in that moment that my mom was proud of me, and I certainly enjoyed the attention that night. However, after she died our Christianity waned, even though our dad did keep up his insistence on “perfect” behavior. When I went to college though, my childhood faith and conversion was no match for college life and its study of science and psychology. I developed very serious doubts, and those doubts, stirred in with my unresolved pain, destroyed my faith. It was hard to believe in a god who would let us go through such. There were too many questions I couldn’t reconcile with the simplistic and, too often and sadly, ignorant teaching I’d grown up with.

The start of my junior year in college, because of the emotional and spiritual storm I was in and for a number of other reasons, I decided to look into the Bible and church. The search was finally triggered when my physical chemistry teacher, who I’d later learn was a Christian, just mentioned the feasibility of an omnipresent being, like God. A month or so later I started going to church. My brother was going to church with his girlfriend, who is now is wife, and so I decided to go with them. During that time I borrowed a Bible from her parents and started reading. Initially, my reading and experiences with church only exacerbated my doubt and unbelief. However, eventually my involvement with the small campus ministry there and my reading and study started building a real faith. I was really saved in the fall of 1973. (It also didn’t hurt that my brother’s mother-in-law to be was an awesome cook and would often invite me out for these huge and incredibly good Sunday lunches!)

In the church community, I found the foundational pieces to the puzzle that my life had become. I was profoundly influenced by the aforementioned preacher, even though I mostly admired him from a distance. I was deeply moved by the love and guidance of the elder I mentioned above. And, then later two other elders had significant influence on me. There were quite a few others that played roles as well. I developed the first true friends I’d ever dared to have, even though I was still secretly battling the people-aversion issue that I mentioned in an earlier blog on depression. And, I was finding real answers in the Bible and a worthwhile purpose for living. I first developed a mental belief in God through the study of Christian evidences and apologetics. I came to believe in my heart through the community that surrounded me as well as through the immediate and surprising effect of a preacher from another state I met at a Christian conference.

In faith, I discovered the path to my own healing and purpose. I found the powerful words from God to be true, “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Heb. 6:19). In my Christian walk, I had a whole new battle to fight. Before, I was fighting simply for my own happiness through human efforts. It really yielded some results but was ultimately powerless against the deeper issues involved. In Christ, I found the real battlefield—the battlefield of my mind and heart. I found it to be true that, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Eph. 6:12). Yes, the world had dealt its blows. Yes, I was often my own worst enemy. But, through Christ I found the real enemy and thus the real battle. And, in Christ I found the only way to win that battle. I found that the one who was living in us, the Holy Spirit of Christ, is much greater than the one who rules this present dark world (1 John 4:4).