Can depression make you feel empty?
Question:
Can our own minds push us away from God? I mean, if you're too hurt, can you feel dead? I've been really hurt lately. I haven't had the intent to do anything. My parents are worried and my friends. I'm feeling like I never did before.
I spend every minute of my day thinking about God. But I'm so hurt, that I can't feel my desire for Him; it's like it disappeared. There are still points in my day when it seems like I can feel Him again, but it comes and goes quickly. I'm scared that I might have stopped loving Him. My boyfriend says it's because of my depression and because I'm too hurt.
He's had depression and he says that one of the things depression can do is make you feel empty. Can he be right?
I don't want to leave God. Thinking about living in the world again is scary. What do you think?
Answer:
"He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, but whoever walks wisely will be delivered" (Proverbs 28:26).
God doesn't come and go based on a person's own feelings; God is always there. Love doesn't come and go based on personal feelings; love is a choice that you make. You are letting your feelings run your life and they are running away with you.
Yes, your boyfriend is right. Depression can leave you feeling empty. What is happening is that you let your feelings define your reality. What should be happening is that you have feelings in response to reality, but you've reversed this. You are seeing the world through the tinted glasses of your feelings.
As hard as it might seem to do at the moment, you have to take control back over your life. Don't trust your feelings, they are unreliable. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6). Make choices based on what is right and not on what you currently feel.
Once you start using your head instead of your emotions, you will realize that nothing can separate you from God because you are able to choose to follow God. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35-39).
"Truly the light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun; but if a man lives many years and rejoices in them all, yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. All that is coming is vanity. Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; walk in the ways of your heart, and in the sight of your eyes; but know that for all these God will bring you into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, and put away evil from your flesh, for childhood and youth are vanity" (Ecclesiastes 11:7-10).
