Faith, Depression, and Anxiety

Growing up, my faith was super important to me. Though many might say that my faith and involvement in church could be credited to my parents, I felt ownership of my faith from a very young age. It was always something deep and meaningful to me, though exactly what "deep" and "meaningful" meant continually evolved as I got older. All in all, outside of the time I spent at AWANA at a close friend's church, I felt like I had an abnormally strong faith in comparison to my peers. I mean, I was the preschooler who on car rides to anywhere would ask my parents to "tell me about Moses," the middle schooler who worked my faith into every school project possible, and the high schooler who carried my Bible around in my backpack and took it out whenever I was having a bad day.
But as I reached the end of high school and moved on to college and young adulthood, I became more and more like my peers. It started out as a time thing. So over-involved in other aspects of my life, especially academically, time with God fell to the wayside. And when I tried to build time for Christian community back into my life, I found that it was uninviting. The different groups on campus were often highly exclusive, where people only really reached out to the people who were involved in most every aspect of campus ministry. In the meantime, the church I grew up in was experiencing a culmination of turmoil that had been building up for several years, and going to church at home became a high-anxiety, sometimes high-anger experience. And while there was a church I loved near my college where some family friends attended, I had no transportation to get there for my first three years of college. And by the time I had the transportation, I had other barriers to deal with.
During my fourth year of college, for whatever reason, Sundays became my worst mental health day of the week. I got to this point where I would practically wake up in tears and not be able to stop crying for almost the entire day. And there was no way I was leaving my dorm room where other people might see me for anything more than to go to the bathroom down the hall. Which usually meant no church. And somewhere in the midst of all this, my faith became a painful thing. While I never doubted that God was there for me and loved me, I had a greater tendency to fall apart when I reached out to Him. Even having a good-intentioned friend or family member tell me that they were praying for me was enough to send my straight to tears and into a day of depression. And when many times in the last few years I've struggled to stay barely functional, opening myself up to falling apart for even a moment meant risking the loss of my functionality for a day or more, and I quite frankly couldn't afford that. So my faith fell by the wayside not because I didn't want it or didn't have time for it but because I was at least functional without it.
Last fall/winter (I don't remember which), I listened to a sermon where the pastor who declared in their sermon that people who didn't want to go to church didn't understand what church was all about, that these people hadn't heard and/or understood the message of hope that church brings. I walked out of church royally ticked off that day at the broad generalization. I know the message of hope. I felt that hope for the majority of my life. But one day I woke up, and I couldn't feel that hope anymore. And when people around me who struggle with depression and/or anxiety still find hope in their faith, when people across the internet with depression and/or anxiety still find hope in their faith, when my counselor refers to other patients (as a generalization) who are able to find hope in their faith in an attempt to offer me a place of positivity in my life, and I for reasons I cannot understand find no hope, no comfort, only pain in my faith, I feel more alone than ever. I felt flawed. And that sermon made me feel even worse because it was a finger pointing at me saying "there's something wrong with you!" which, by the way, didn't make me want to re-strengthen my faith nor go back to attending church even occasionally.
There were times when I could make it through. Outside of the anxiety-inducing chaos of set-up and take-down, I was able to reconnect with my faith when helping to lead a handful of youth retreats. And I somehow managed to lead a youth group for almost a year at the church where I grew up. And I was starting to feel like I might be ready to find a new faith community closer to where I lived. But situations that led me to feel rejected in both of those settings became the straws that broke this camel's back, and I am still rather gun-shy about faith communities in general. It wasn't necessarily even situations that would have affected a normal person so deeply, but to someone with social anxiety who already has massive trust issues, the situations were the final driving force that led me to have no desire to be part of a Christian community.
Between the pain of my faith and the fear of other believers, I avoided church almost completely, and half the time that I made it there, I wouldn't manage to stay more than 5 minutes without retreating to the bathroom to have a panic attack for the entirety of worship. It took worshiping with a bunch of Lynx fans and a couple of my favorite Lynx players at Faith and Family night after one of the Lynx games last summer to realize how much I missed worship - not the going-through-the-motions worship that Sunday mornings at my home church usually felt like but a group of people worshiping with their hearts and souls and focusing on nothing else. It was the most authentic worship I'd experienced in a long time. And I realized that I missed that type of worship.
So suddenly I fell into the group of many of my peers: the ones who believe wholeheartedly but want nothing to do with the Church. Who describe themselves as spiritual, not religious. Of whom it is said "They love Jesus, but not the Church." I had spent most of my life not understanding that viewpoint, but suddenly I found myself right in the midst of it. But not for all of the same reasons. While it was my disgust at the corruption that happens behind closed doors at churches that led me to decide that I didn't want to work at a church, it wasn't this that drove me away. And it wasn't the holier-than-thou snobs that made me feel unwelcome. It was feeling rejected by people who were supposed to be my friends, who I had claimed as family, who became the final push out the door. But it was also more than that.
After having three weeks straight of feeling generally happy for the first time since I don't even know when, I decided to finally check out a new church on Sunday. I realized when I got there that it's the first time I've ever gone to a completely new church completely by myself, and that alone was a big step for me. And after months of trying to convince myself to show up, I finally made it on Sunday. And it was fantastic. And I'm excited to go back. This could be the fit I've been looking for which, at least from what I've seen so far, is the church that's Lutheran in theology but non-denominational (or similar) in worship that I've been searching for for years. And I experienced worship that was authentic and relevant, what I've been looking for, rather than ritualistic and tied to tradition for tradition's sake, what I've been trying to get away from for a number of years. But I cried almost the entire time I was there.
And I suddenly realized why all things faith-related have become so painful. Because it requires opening up. And when you have depression and anxiety (especially social anxiety), you close yourself off from everything and everyone because it's the only way you know how to function anymore. It's taken the last few days of reflection to realize how closed off I've been. Outside of some blog posts and Facebook statuses, I've frequently avoided other people as a general rule. I've ignored phone calls and texts and Facebook messages/wall posts from nearly everyone but my parents (whom I still shut out when they're saying or doing things that only make me feel worse). I eat lunch with other teachers but avoid talking at all costs. I've come to avoid conversing with students when I can. I've even avoided emotional movies and TV shows for fear of opening myself to the emotions those might bring and not being able to turn the emotions off. Because more often than not lately I've felt anxious or depressed, and the realization that moments of happiness have been so fleeting over the past year leaves me even further depressed as if long-term happiness was no longer a possibility for me. So I closed myself off from people and emotion because it was the only way I could get through the day.
But having faith means fully opening up to God. Prayer, worship, reading the Bible, being in community with other Christians, all of these things require you to open yourself fully. It's a risky business when you're feeling pretty good about your life. It becomes riskier when your life feels like a load of crap. I've closed myself off so fully that opening up even a little bit means releasing those emotions that I've been bottling up inside for months, some even for years. It's like a shaken can of pop that you've avoided opening that proceeds to explode even when you just barely open it. And once opened, it doesn't stop until it's done exploding.
I haven't really been ready for that. I still don't know that I'm quite ready for that. But identifying it helps. And the fact that I've been a relatively happy person for about 3 weeks straight also helps. And having a place that I can go to worship and be surrounded by other believers but not be smothered by the concerns of people who know me well and know of all of my struggles is also a comfort. I can go and focus on God and me and be reminded that there are others there when I'm ready for them, but that doesn't have to be right now. And I know that being a Christ-follower isn't just about God and me but should include others as well, but that's not where I am right now. Right now I need the renewal on a God-and-me level before I can include others in that. Even Jesus left the crowds, sometimes even his disciples, in order to refresh and regroup sometimes. I try to keep reminding myself of that and not feel guilty for taking care of me right now. (Growing up in the Church has not helped my self-care skills, but I'll save that rant for some other time)
I've been thinking about writing a post like this for quite some time, now. I've felt this deep need to just explain to the world that, while I know my faith is supposed to make life feel better and that other people's faith usually works that way, in recent years even acknowledging my faith has been more painful than the pain of life, so I've shut it away. But at least I'm starting to figure out why it's so painful. So maybe I can start finding a way through the pain and find the hope again.