You Were Never Supposed to Carry It Alone

Mental Health America published its report on the state of mental health in this country a few days ago. I read all forty-five pages. One finding stopped me cold: nine out of ten.

Of the teenagers in America who went through a major depression this past year and got no help at all, 92.8% gave the same reason. They thought they should have been able to handle it on their own.

They thought it was theirs to carry alone.

And among adults, it is 71%. Seven out of ten adults believed they should be able to handle it alone.

Unfortunately, I know that feeling. I have said that out loud to myself. “I should be able to handle this.”

I want to say the next part carefully, because I love the church and I have given my life to it.

We in the church have contributed to some of this thinking: that when trouble hits, when we walk through adversity, we should be able to “handle it with the Lord.”

You see, if I believe the Lord will help me handle what I’m going through as I’m going through it, that doesn’t lead me to understand that asking for help — and having someone who has walked through it — can truly help me go through it.

We haven’t done this on purpose. Nobody ever stood in a pulpit and said that needing help means your faith is weak. But we said other things, again and again, and people did the arithmetic themselves.

Give it to God.

Pray harder.

Just have more faith.

God won’t give you more than you can handle.

Say those to a person whose brain is not working right, and here is what they hear. If I still need help, I am failing.

So, they stop telling anybody, or they never tell anybody. And the one thing that would have helped them becomes the one thing they will not do.

Those sentences are not lies. Prayer is real. God is near to the brokenhearted. I believe every word of that, and I have leaned on all of it.

But a true sentence can still land wrong on somebody who is going under.

And it’s not that the Lord isn’t helping someone. He also uses and works through others in our lives to help us.

Paul wrote that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can turn around and comfort somebody else with the comfort we ourselves received. “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is our merciful Father and the source of all comfort. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When they are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.” 2a Corinthians 1:3-4 (NLT)

Here is what is so ironic about it. And it is so much like the brokenness we all live in.

The very thing that will help someone who is struggling with depression is to be able to talk about it — to express it out loud to somebody who has been there and been through it.

And the very thing we do instead is isolate. We stop talking.

Depression only gets worse that way. It can only get worse that way.

A pill is not going to work by itself. We have to work with the medicine to get out of depression, and we have to be able to talk and express it.

So what better thing is there than a friend, or a few friends, in a safe place, who are listening — and who are also offering hope, because they have been there, they got through it, and they are doing well.

Seventeen of us met in a church basement on a cold Tuesday night in February.

I was one of them. I was a pastor with bipolar disorder, and I did not know whether I could live well or not.

There were times when I tried to walk through it alone — yes, with the Lord — but in those moments I felt so alone. I knew of no one else who was walking through it.

So I went to some support group meetings.

It was a round robin of people venting the same things I was feeling, with no answers and no hope. Those group meetings actually made me worse.

Ruminating with others about how difficult something is to go through doesn’t bring hope. It reinforces the emotional pain of what someone is walking through.

That’s why my doctor finally encouraged me to start the kind of group I wanted to attend.

That was the beginning of Fresh Hope. That’s why we met on that cold February night.

What I found that night was not a technique. Nobody handed me a method.

I found out I was not the only one. I found out there was hope. I found out that it was more than just possible to live well in spite of my mental health challenges.

That is the whole thing. That is why a group does something a sermon cannot. A sermon tells you the truth. A room full of people who have been where you are shows you the truth is survivable.

Hope is caught more than it is taught.

Two more numbers from that report, and then I will stop.

Of those same teenagers, 74.3% said they were worried about what people would think or say if they got help. And 66.4% were worried that what they said would not stay private.

Read those three numbers together, and you have the whole picture. I should handle this myself. People will talk. It will not stay in the room.

A free group, led by somebody who has been there, where what is said stays in the room, answers all three. And that’s what happens in a Fresh Hope group meeting.

So here is what I want to leave you with.

If you are the one carrying something alone right now, and you have been telling yourself you ought to be able to manage it: you were never supposed to handle it alone. Not once, anywhere, has God asked you to do this by yourself.

In fact, He created us for relationship with one another. He has laid out that we should help one another.

It’s not a weak faith that asks for help. It’s a strong faith that knows others can become “Jesus with skin on” for us as we walk through troubled times.

And if you are a pastor reading this — somebody in your church is doing that arithmetic this week. They are sitting in your service working out that if they still need help, they must not have enough faith.

You can change what they hear. It will take you one sentence from the front, said like you mean it.

Nine out of ten of those teenagers believe they ought to carry it by themselves. They are wrong, and I was wrong about it too, for a long time. You were never supposed to carry it alone, and you do not have to carry it one more day.

If you are thinking about taking your life, or you are frightened by what is happening in your mind, please reach out. Call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Someone will answer, any hour of the day or night, and it costs nothing. You do not have to be in crisis to call — you only have to need somebody.