Drawing Near to God’s Absence
I lay awake sometimes, and for all my life
For as long as I can remember I've heard my name in the night—
Was it You?
—John Mark McMillan, “Has It Been You?”
He waited until the room was cleared of people before approaching me. I had just given a presentation on learning to belong to God, during which I had shared openly about my ongoing struggle with depression. Though this man was a stranger to me, I recognized the sadness he carried before he began to speak.
“How do you connect with God when you’re in the midst of depression?” he asked. I paused before responding, sensing there was more he needed to say.
“I have been struggling with depression this year,” he continued, “And I don’t know how to be with God when I feel so numb. Everything takes so much effort. What spiritual practices do you use?”
The grief and longing and tiredness in his eyes reflected my own recent experience with depression. When considering how to answer, I felt my anxiety rise. I knew how devastating an easy Christian answer would be to someone who fights for hope each day, and I didn’t want to add further weight to the burden he was already carrying. I also knew how much courage and vulnerability it takes for anyone—especially men—to admit out loud, “All is not well. I don’t know what to do when God feels far.”
What do we do when the numbing weight of depression keeps us from feeling close to God—when the pressing darkness keeps us from accessing our faith in ways that were simple in the light? This is, I think, the question that pains Christians the most when experiencing depression: Did God leave, or did I? And how do I get back to a place of goodness, trust, peace, hope—even joy?
Stumbling over my words, I attempted to give a meaningful answer:
“Well, I have a spot in my house where I keep my Bible and my journal. And I just keep showing up to that spot each day, kind of in case God does too. It’s all I know to do. Sometimes I don’t read or journal; I just sit there. I put myself in the space where I have connected with God, making myself available for contact.”
All too aware of the inadequacy of my response, I concluded, “I’m sorry. I know that probably doesn’t help much.”
He nodded thoughtfully and said, “What I’m hearing you say is persistence. Persistence with God is important.”
“Yes,” I said, wishing I had given that answer to begin with. “Persistence.” After he left, I felt two things at once: gratitude for his courage and vulnerability, and the ache of not knowing if there will ever be a good enough answer for how to experience God during depression on this side of Eternity.
*
It has been several months since that conversation, and I have replayed it in my mind multiple times. With what can only be described as persistence, his soul-aching question has bothered me, plucking at the discordant strings of my soul and asking me to attend to it. In spite of its pleas for attention, I had successfully suppressed the weight of his unresolved question until I received the following text from a friend this week that stopped me in my tracks:
“How have you been accessing God or making sense of the ‘why’ in your depression?”
There it was again: the same question from a beautiful soul who wants more than anything to connect with God amidst her suffering, yet is finding that the very Person who could make it all better feels most distant. When I received her text, it was as if God was giving me a second chance to face the question from which I have been running all year, long before it was put to me by a stranger at a conference and later echoed by my friend: How do we connect with God when God seems silent or absent?
The answer, I think, is not a solution. It does not involve strategic action or effort on our part, nor will there be a neat and tidy process for working our way back into experiencing God’s presence. In the darkness of depression, we may not be able to discern where God is. But most of us can point to where God was. As irreverent as this might sound, I wonder if treating the felt experience of God’s absence like a missing person’s case might be helpful. When we don’t know where God is, what if we begin by asking, “Well, where did you last see him?” When we cannot discern where God is, can we remember and point to where God was?
Like the presence of a river leaves its trace through canyons in the desert, God, too, leaves evidences of Presence—footprints in the dust, whispers in the wind. For Elijah, it was a still, small voice. For Moses, it was the briefest glimpse of God’s back as he past the cleft in the rock where God’s own hand had placed Moses. For you, it may be the unexpected smile you received from a stranger today, the still-warm indentation of your spouse’s or child’s head upon their pillow, the contented purr of your cat, or the birdsong that greeted you when you first opened your window. The gifts and graces of love we experience each day point to where God has been—where heaven has bent down and kissed the chafing places of our soul.
*
Maybe this is what I was trying to articulate earlier, when what came out was something like “I dunno; I just go to where I used to feel and experience God, hoping God will show up.” I am not suggesting that we hunt God down like an actual missing person. I am proposing, however, that we sidle up to the empty space—the chalk outline of where we used to experience God with intimate joy—and wait for the light of God’s presence to reappear. How do we do this? With persistence.
I think of the story of the paralytic man in the Gospels—no more able to reach out to Jesus for comfort than those of us stuck in the deep valley of depression. His friends, however, had heard where God was, so—with persistence—they cut a hole in the roof and lowered him down to be near Jesus. We often applaud the boldness of his friends, but think of the courage it took for the hurting man to be willingly lowered through the roof, exposed in his weakness. It would have been much easier to hide, to seek out Jesus in secret when He was less busy. Nevertheless, true faith persists in its insistence upon where God was and will be again. This story tells me that God honors the simple act of drawing near, even when the present feels painful and the future is unclear. “Draw near to God,” wrote the apostle James, “and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8). Drawing near might look like curling up in your favorite chair, watching the wind dance in the trees. It might look like my theology professor, who, during a dark season, simply lay with his Bible open upon his chest—not reading, just being.
Dear friends, we do not draw near as an attempt to bait God to come back to us (for in all likelihood, God has never left). We draw near because in spite of everything, we have come to love and believe in the God who loves and believes in us. When we cannot find where God is, may we remember and point to where God was, even as we, with unspeakable longing, anticipate where God will be again.
Amen.