depression
The time my psychiatrist sent me on retreat
He leaned back and sighed. “I think what you need is a spiritual experience.”
Why can't we be friends?
A friend from seminary visited a couple of weeks ago. Her father-in-law was a pastor in the South, and she had been on a church staff for years before she became a pastor. She talked about how the male pastors of former generations would say that they were going to make visits, and they would spend the afternoon at the golf course.
Into the dark with Dante
Dante speaks to the uncertainties of every generation, to those who have awakened lost in an impenetrable darkness.
Barely enough: Manna in the wilderness of depression
We all live out our lives in the wilderness.
Brainstorm: Finding hope with William Styron
In 1992 I had a clinical depression. It was a long time in coming, but in hindsight it was inevitable. I was hunkered down in my study trying to write a sermon on the atonement. Behind the stormy sky in my mind, I saw not a smiling Providence offering a gesture of boundless love in sharing his son Jesus, but a scowling ogre, an angry, petulant father. Whether this torment was a function of the descending depression or a contribution to it, I cannot say, but I called my wife and said, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m coming unglued.”