Jesus Weeps

This blog post is obviously a long time coming. I haven’t written since January. This blog has a very different tone than the hopeful 24 year old you all saw as I started this new year. My life was very different then. I have so much to include, but I obviously can’t include it all. This is a deep theological reflection based on where I am in life right now, so most of the detail life event things come in list form towards the end of the blog.

A couple things: 1) I’m sorry I did not write about my spring semester. It was the best yet, the best few months of my life actually, and someday I will have the strength to revisit that joy, but I do not have the strength to tell you those stories right now. 2) It is difficult to admit to a time of being in a depressive episode so shortly after leaving a position of prominent leadership, but it is also important to do so because my depression will go with me wherever I end up pastoring and it does not diminish my call or the effectiveness of the Gospel and the power of Jesus in our lives. So, here we go. It’s a long one.

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This weekend I participated in a 24-hour prayer vigil on our seminary campus. In all honesty, I resented this invitation at first. 24 hours? At the beginning of the school year? No thank you. I’m busy. I’m finding myself. This is some of the only time I’ll get to relax. Yeah right.

But, Friday was a hard day. Many days lately are very hard. I don’t find waking up and getting out of bed in the morning to be an easy task, but we’ll get to more of that later. The important part is that Friday was a hard day and I found myself hiding in my room. I found myself desiring a safe place. I needed a place to be sad, but I needed a place that had people. And that’s when I looked at the clock to see the prayer vigil would start in about 30 minutes.

I gathered the courage to grab my Bible, a notebook, and some tissues and I headed off to the chapel, not sure what to expect. So here is where I admit I spent 3 hours in the chapel and for about 2.5 of those, I had tears and snot pouring down my face. I wrote a bunch of notes and reflections as I sang songs with my community, imagined the love of Jesus, and cried while they lifted praise when I felt I had very little to offer with regards to worshiping God. I took myself to bed, slept a full night, and returned the next day for 6 hours of prayer and worship with my colleagues.

On Saturday, I sat in a small group with 3 other women. We each professed our struggles. One uncertain and thirsty for Jesus. One anxious and thirsty for Jesus. One feeling unworthy and thirsty for Jesus. And me, depressed and thirsty for Jesus. We sat around each other and we prayed. We prayed freedom and love. We prayed acceptance. We wept with each other, and we found peace in knowing that while we wept with each other, we all held strength in Jesus for the women sitting next to us.

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When I arrived at the vigil on Friday, the first thing I did as I sat down to worship and pray with my colleagues was to take out my notebook and write, “What is worship?” I had a response almost immediately. “Offering what we have to God.” This would be my challenge as I moved through the next 24 hours and now the days to come.

I felt very dirty and unworthy as I sat in worship Friday night. I had next to nothing to offer God. I watched my friends and colleagues worship with joy and abandon. I sat stiff in the pew crying, and I was drawn to the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, and every high schooler’s favorite memory verse, “Jesus wept.” I pictured my dirty and dusty body, covered in the dust of depression, moving slowly and stiffly through the center aisle, to the front of the sanctuary, looking for the baptismal font. “I need a baptism.” I thought to myself. “I need renewal.” And then I felt the tears on my face. I realized, “My tears are my daily baptism. They are a form of renewal. They are a depressed person’s daily baptism and renewal.” This is by no means conventional, but when does the Holy Spirit ever do anything conventional?

Over the past few weeks, “Jesus wept,” has become one of the most profound verses in the Bible for me. At first I thought this verse was profound because of how it understands me as a person with depression; a person who weeps often. Then I thought it was profound because of the fact that Jesus identifies with one of the most vulnerable human expressions. We associate tears with weakness, imposition, guilt, shame…. The tears of Jesus are associated with love. Jesus weeps even before he sees Lazarus dead. Jesus weeps from seeing everyone else weep and from tapping into his own love for Lazarus. He becomes vulnerable in love, something very few of us ever truly find the courage to embrace.

As a crier, as one who processes the world through tears – happy and sad – this description of Jesus’ reaction to the people is comforting. Ask anyone who’s known me for a long time, they will tell you I’m a crier, that’s how I express my deep love for the world and for my community. I cry from excitement, happiness, sadness, and fear. I cry; it’s what I do. Hence, I feel comforted by Jesus’ reaction, and I think, “Wow. That’s a profound action.” Leaders don’t commonly weep with their people. They may shed a tear or two to convey sincerity and connection, but they don’t weep. And here Jesus stops to weep. It is profound. So much so that I can’t explain it to you. This action is profound because it is a mystery to me.

When I started reflecting on this passage, I firmly intended to write about the way Jesus’ weeping speaks to the experience of a person with depression and a person experiencing the loss of a person they love, but, as God does, my interpretation of the moment was flipped on its head as I continued to pray and sit in the presence of my family worshiping beside and around me. Jesus gets to stay Jesus as only he can, and I am Lazarus, buried in the grave.

Seriously, being in depression feels like being Lazarus in the grave. This is the scene: His family takes the appropriate measures to reach out to Jesus for help, telling him, “The one you love is sick.” The one he loves! Jesus is moved but he does not leave right away to go help Lazarus and his family. Jesus knows Lazarus’ sickness will not end in death so there is no sense of urgency. How many of us have family members petition and expect Jesus will respond to our sickness right away?

Jesus waits two days before leaving to head towards Lazarus. By the time he leaves with his disciples, he announces that Lazarus is dead; sickness has completely overwhelmed Lazarus’ life. When Jesus arrives, Martha meets him saying, “If you’d been here, he wouldn’t have died!”  He reminds her that he is the resurrection and the life. When Mary learns of his arrival, she goes out to meeting him, with the crowd following her. Mary says the same thing, “If you’d been here, he would not have died.” Again, how many of us have family members who finally see Jesus show up in our life only to have them shout at him and say, “It’s too little too late, Jesus!”?

This time, after Mary’s expression of anger and frustration, Jesus’ response is to look around and see the grieving people. He sees desperate family members, and weeping friends and family. His reaction is not to remind them of resurrection, but to weep alongside them.

When Jesus has done this, he then goes to the grave to free and wake up Lazarus. After four days in the tomb, the stone is moved and Lazarus is called to come out by the words of Jesus. Lazarus walks out of the tomb, and then Jesus tells the community to free him from his bondage.

What a beautiful image: Jesus will raise us to life out of our depression and yet we still need our community to help us take off the remaining binds that came with being in the tomb for four days. We need our community to clean us up upon being raised and called back to life. ** I owe this communal imagery to my dear colleague Walter. He placed this image in my mind this past Wednesday and it has been a source of encouragement for me ever since. **

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I had sinus surgery on April 15. I spent nearly two weeks in recovery, mostly in pain and mostly in my room. This time sent me plummeting into a bout of depression and there was nothing I could do about it.

I’ve dealt with chronic depression since I was 14, so 10 years now. I’ve had major episodes at 17, 19, and now 24. It took me a long time to be okay with the fact that this is chemical and this is a real sickness of the body. If I’m honest, I’m still not fully okay with it.

So, here I am, willingly sitting in the grave; I am sitting in the tomb with Lazarus. I’ve been here since April and I don’t know how long I’ll stay. My friends and family have petitioned Jesus to no avail and they watched me spiral deeper and deeper. Now, all they can do for me is weep. I have friends and family weeping for me, and I know Jesus is weeping too. (I had a friend at dinner today tell me that as she’s been praying for me she saw images of Jesus weeping with me and I felt grateful to her for confirming my reflections on my own depression.) But see, I don’t know how long their weeping will take.

The passage tells us that Jesus wept. This is a significant transition in the text. It is a marker of time. Weeping does not happen quickly. It takes time. It takes attention. It takes embracing the circumstance for what it is. It takes surrender. Sometimes the most appropriate response is to weep with those who are weeping. To not say anything but simply join in with the people and weep. To demonstrate love through tears.

Jesus is weeping, not because he has no control, not because he doesn’t have hope, but because he loves me and he is sad that I am currently in the midst of death and despair. His tears for me demonstrate his love for me. He does not sit weeping because the resurrection promise is any less true, but because it is not the most helpful truth for me right now. The most helpful truth is a recognition of my pain and his willingness, and even power, to allow depression to take the course it needs to take this time, while he weeps alongside my family and me, and continues on the path to the tomb.

I have learned that, even with medicine, we do not raise ourselves from the grave. That is an act of Jesus. It is solely an act of Jesus. Only divine intervention is powerful enough to pull me from the depths of this episode. I know the people who care about me want the weeping to stop, theirs and mine. So do I; I have lost control and I am actively surrendering; I am waiting.

It is difficult for me to give up blaming myself. Over and over and over again I’ve done the “attitude check” thing, and it’s just not effective. The reality of depression is so much deeper than an attitude check. Clinical and chronic depression is manageable and can also do whatever it pleases without our permission. It is hard for me to accept this and surrender it. It is also hard for me to give up blaming myself for the hard things I faced this summer. I wish to change my depression. I have this allusion that if I could change my depression, I wouldn’t have experienced some of the losses I experienced this summer. That if I could have stopped the tears things would have been different. Yet, as I look to the paragraph above, I know this is just not true. I do not raise myself from the grave. I surrender and wait on Jesus.

In this time of depression, I’ve had the greatest moments of my life and the worst. I was pastor to a wonderful congregation all summer. They filled me with life, they trusted me to lead them, and they challenged my faith. Through this, I lived in absolute grace all summer. We expected God to move, and God certainly did. My daily prayer was, “Jesus, please take care of my people when I feel so very incapable of providing for them. Jesus, be their provider.” In this, my depression was a blessing to all of us because I sincerely connected to our true Redeemer and Leader on a daily basis, and I trusted him to cover us with his grace. I had no room to live in an allusion that I would adequately quench their thirst. I found myself, daily, at the foot of the cross, living a life of faith alongside the people I’d been called to lead.

I finished my second year of seminary. I sat at graduation and watched many friends finish seminary completely. I had the vacation of a lifetime with someone very dear to my heart to kick off my summer. My best friend of 13 years finally got engaged to her wonderful partner, and I also happened to live with her all summer. Living the childhood dream! I served my family communion for the first time. I taught a lesson to staff at another church on the basics of pastoral care. I hosted a 3-day wake for community members in grief and in need of a safe space. I hung out with Jr. High kids for VBS and watched them serve and learn about various NGO’s in our area. I spent quality time with my sister-in-law every week, which turned into extra time with my brother as well. I had multiple lunches with my former youth pastor as he worked through his chaplaincy internship, and I watched it grow his relationship with Jesus in very powerful and encouraging ways. I participated in a service of reconciliation in a church holding onto deep wounds. I spent 3 more months watching me dear sweet pea, Selah, grow up. I held her in my arms and allowed her new, curious life inspire me in the moments where inspiration was hard to find. I spent far more time with my parents than I thought I would. They took care of me in the most sincere ways. They became intimately involved with this time in the grave. I witnessed their weeping. They are the closest to the tomb; their love is tangible through the barrier that is depression. I had a beautiful summer.

I also watched my parents work through health struggles. I lost a relationship with someone I loved very deeply. I learned devastating news about a leader and I lost trust in them, and because of that I lost a sense of safety I once had in similar leadership relationships. I walked with my friends and colleagues through spiritual and career struggles. I became acutely aware of the reality that not all people who say they are your friend will actually treat you like a friend. I watched, and prayed for, a dear friend as his parents succumbed to age and poor health. We had a family member commit an act violating trust and commitment to those they love. My childhood best friend’s grandfather suddenly passed away. The world beat me up a bit this summer, and I will be feeling those affects for quite some time.

After all this, I transitioned back to school by way of L.A. to see my high school best friend. She took me under her wing. She sat with me while I felt numb. She asked me hard questions. She held me while I sobbed. She provided me with plenty of Starbucks and junk food, and she took me to Disneyland! All the while, she saw my devastation. She did not ignore it. She did not seek to change it. She loved me through it.

I am not out of the grave yet. I am firmly buried in the tomb of depression. It is both an isolating and connected place. Yes, I am in the tomb alone, but I hear my family, friends, and Jesus weeping for me outside the tomb. Having been through this before, I know it is not time for me to be raised, and I don’t know how long this episode will last. What I do know, is that when it is time, the weeping will end, Jesus will call my dusty body out of the tomb, back into life, and he will look at my community to say, “Unbind her.” And I will have a hoard of people clamoring to take every thing binding me from the tomb off my body.

Being depressed is like being Lazarus in the grave. Just as Jesus weeps for Lazarus, Jesus weeps for us too.