12 years ago, Black Friday took on a whole new meaning for me, one that has nothing to do with shopping, because 12 years ago – on the day after Thanksgiving – my mom had a brain aneurysm which led to her passing (and my brother’s just 20 days later) and I found myself on a road that I’d hoped I would never have to travel.

It’s a road that many of my friends have walked, too. Maybe even you. It’s a dark road where the streetlights are broken and “the feels” are replaced with the chills. For a few of my friends, this year is the year when they are beginning to walk on it, and if I may, I’d like to offer some insight as a sojourner on this road – this path through the valley of the shadow of death.

Think of it as my view from further down the road.

The road is real

I think I spent a lot of my early time on the road trying to convince myself that I wasn’t actually on the road at all.  It’s almost vicious the way my mind would trick me into believing – even for a split-second – that the green minivan on Highway 52 was mom returning home after a last-minute trip to Food Lion or that the phone call way too late in the night was my brother calling to see if my kids had gotten a spanking that day.

If my mind wasn’t trying to deny the road, it seemed others were. “Your mom is in a better place” – meant to somehow encourage me – actually made me feel even worse for being on this road that was the worst place I’d ever been. “It’s all going to be alright” seemed to lose sight of the fact that the road I was on made it all feel so wrong. Turkey didn’t taste the same. Christmas lights didn’t shine as bright. Birthdays, graduations, weddings, births…none of them felt quite right anymore.

This road – this path through the valley of the shadow of death – it’s real, and at the beginning of your journey on it, it’s real intimidating and overwhelming and breathtaking, and you’re not crazy to really hate it.

Take your time

I love how David described his pace on this road. It gave me a lot of comfort when I realized that he didn’t say “though I sprint through the valley of the shadow of death.”

There’s no running on this road. No skipping or jogging. This road has one speed: slow.

Others around you will struggle with that. They’ll encourage you to move faster (it will sound like “deal with it” or “haven’t you grieved long enough?”), but that’s just because they’re uncomfortable watching you be uncomfortable.

You will find yourself wanting the journey to move faster, because it’s a painful one. No one likes to travel this road, but since you can’t run on it, learn on it instead. I’ve shared with the church I lead that my entire ministry approach changed when I started walking on this road, from the way I preach to how I view the people I’m preaching to.

It’s a long, slow walk, and while I would never want to sound like we should be happy to learn the lessons along the way, I do want to be clear that the lessons we learn on this road may be the most valuable ones we’ll ever learn.

Keep moving

This will sound cliché, but on this road, “if you sit, you’ll quit.”

It doesn’t mean that you can’t take some time to catch your breath, but it does mean that getting you to give up is the only real weapon the enemy of your soul has on this road.  More on this in the next section, but the shadows on this road are only there because of the light at the end of it, and as long as you’re moving, he knows the light will grow brighter and the shadows will grow shorter.

His only shot is to get you to stop, and there’s something about sitting on the road that allows the shadows to reach you, and once they do, it’s so hard to break free. Not impossible, just hard. So, in the words of Dory, just keep swimming.

We move through so we can get to

You know what I’ve learned on this road? The value of the word “through.”  It is a word that implies not staying, a word that means what feels like the end isn’t, and a word that fills me with hope on the days when – yes, even 12 years later – my chest tightens and it feels like I just got started.

“Through” means that where you and I are today isn’t our final stop, or even where we’ll be tomorrow. There is a destination that we are being led to by a Savior who is more than able to get us where we’re going.

Some will read that and ask, “If he’s all that great, why allow us on the road in the first place? Come on, Paul, couldn’t he have healed your mom and brother, and my ____________ (fill in the blank with your lost loved one)?”  Great question, and while I don’t fully understand God’s thought process, I do know this: he hasn’t disappeared or left us alone to stumble along this road. Dark places don’t expose a distant God as much as they reveal a delivering God who is leading us through the valley and to the victory.

What does that mean for me and you and everyone else who finds themselves walking on this dark path through the valley of the shadow of death?

It means that if we keep moving at a pace that allows us to learn about God while being loved by God, we’ll find ourselves further from the confusing first steps that brought more bitter than sweet, and closer to the triumphant final steps into a place filled with the faces of those we’ve said good-bye to sooner than we wanted.

And when we see them, we’ll realize that they knew we’d make it the whole time, because the same Jesus that got them there will have led us there, too.

And that leads me to the most important lesson I’ve learned on this road:

Trust Jesus.

Allow him to do what only he can: lead you, guide you, love you, save you. He’s been down this road before, and his victory assures us of ours. He is more than able to save our souls, and that means that he can be trusted with the pain that tries to crush our souls.

After all, only Jesus was able to turn Black Friday into White as Snow Sunday!

Just to be totally up front here, this won’t be a post about Robin Williams and his suicide.  There are plenty of people out there who are writing about that, and you can Google them to read their opinions (or just go to Matt’s blog and skip the Google search).

My goal isn’t to make some judgement call about the status of Mr. Williams’ soul before he took his life, or even to paint the picture that if he really loved Jesus, he wouldn’t have chosen what for many seems to be an  unthinkable option.  Instead, I’d like to take this post to talk about me and my choice to live.

I don’t talk about it much, but I spent the majority of my high school years sitting in a tuba cubby in the band room storage closet during my lunch break.  I spent a lot of time alone, and my best friends were Charmin, Lassie, and Lady.  No, that doesn’t mean I was close to toilet paper, the television and a woman.  It just means that we picked strange dog names.

My afternoons were mostly spent behind the barn playing basketball by myself or walking in the woods by myself.  If I brought along some company, it was one of the dogs.

Looking back, I realize that I spent a lot of time alone.  At the time, I thought nobody liked me, but now, with the perspective that can only come from living long enough to get it, I realize that I spent a lot of time alone because I didn’t like me.

Bad grammar, sure, but dead on truth.  And so, while I could add to the millions of words being written by people trying to point out all the problems Robin Williams had and all of the ways he could have handled them differently, I’d rather talk about some things I’ve learned over the years that have helped me in my own fight against depression.  These aren’t scientific, mind you, but I pray that they’re helpful.

We weren’t made to deal with depression.

Proverbs 18:14 says that man can endure physical sickness, but no one can endure a crushed spirit.  I know that in my darkest times, it helped me to hold onto the promise of this truth by remembering that God didn’t make me or you or anyone else to handle depression.  It isn’t a cross to bear, because we weren’t equipped to bear it.  Sometimes, when we are in the dark places – and only those of you who fight depression at its various levels of intensity will understand that darkness – it is so easy to buy the lie that we’re trapped there.  That our “lot in life” is to be down while the fortunate ones were dealt the winning hand of happiness.  False, false, A MILLION TIMES FALSE!!!  When I feel the slightest twinge of depression coming on, I remind myself that I wasn’t made to handle it, and simply hearing myself say that can flip the switch.

God doesn’t call us out of our pain without first coming into our pain.

There are a lot of things about the gospel and the story of Jesus that I love, but this is the one that I love the most: Jesus became like us in order to bring us near a God who wants us to be like Him.  He didn’t have to do that!  God could have sat on His throne and called to us in the distance, “Hey!  What’s wrong with you!!  Get out of that pit and get close to Me!!”

He could have done that, but He didn’t.  Instead, He sent Jesus into the pain of our existence in order to raise us to the glory of God’s presence.  The author of Hebrews wrote that Jesus is able to empathize with our weaknesses (4:15) and save us because He has experienced everything we have, minus the sin (2:17-18).  No matter what some want to say about God based on how His kids keep their distance from the hurting, He is a compassionate Father who runs to the hurting.  In fact, Psalm 34:18 says that He is a God who is “near to the brokenhearted.”

Of all the tips that have helped me, knowing that God is WITH ME in the times when depression raises its ugly head has helped me the most.  Depression wants to limit our perspective, but God wants to lift up our heads and give us a greater perspective by taking the limits off.

Good stuff for sure, but let me leave you with 3 practical ways you can fight depression (and you’ll be glad to know that these will help you even if you don’t love Jesus):

1. Know your seasons.

Everyone has good days and bad days, and most people can just kind of roll with the punches.  But for people who battle depression, a bad day can turn into a bad week that becomes a bad month, then a bad year, and then a… Well, you get the picture.

But sometimes winning the fight is knowing the fight is coming, and that’s what it means to know your seasons.  What events and circumstances routinely send you to the edge of that bad cycle?  When you know that, it makes it easier to fight.

As an example, I never really understood all the excitement around New Year’s.  I get that it’s a holiday and all, but I always felt like I was in a funk around that time.  People would be happy about a NEW year and I’d be depressed at the thought of ANOTHER year.  But after a handful of bad Januarys, I realized that it’s just a bad season for me.  I could have beat myself up over it and “put on a happy face” but instead, I decided that I would never quit my job in January because I wanted to quit everything in January!  Knowing my season helped me make a plan, and sometimes that’s all it takes.

2. Open the windows.

When depression starts to grab us, the first thing we want to do is go home, pull the curtains and get in bed. But nothing ever gets better by being alone for long periods of time, because at some point you will need to talk to somebody, and usually you’ll talk to yourself.  That’s a recipe for disaster, because depressed you will never be able to talk yourself out of depression!  Instead, open the windows and let the outside in.  Depression’s biggest weapon is loneliness, and so we’ve got to refuse it!  Sometimes, physically opening the curtains and the windows is enough to remind ourselves that there’s a world out there bigger than the junk in our heads.

3.  Ask for help.

I love living in America and I think it’s the best country on the planet, but I hate the way we’ve allowed American individualism to convince us that the strongest among us never need any help.  If you’re struggling with depression, TELL SOMEBODY!!  It’s not a sign of weakness or insanity or an inability to cope. It’s a sign of wisdom that you can recognize that you weren’t equipped to deal with a crushed spirit and that others around you can provide the support you need.

James 5:16 tells us to confess our sins to each other and pray for each other so we might be healed.  I’m not calling depression a sin, but please see the principle of needing help and asking for it!  Allow others to see you – the real you – and let their strength give you strength.

My prayer for all of us is found in the challenge spoken many years ago from Deuteronomy 30:19:  “Today I have set before you life and death … now choose life…”

…and really LIVE!

When I was in middle school, something happened that impacted my life.  Well, I should say, someone, and it all started when I secured a spot on the basketball team coached by Lanny Lowder at Albemarle Middle School.  I use the word “secure” loosely, because I’m pretty sure that they simply ran out of guys before they could cut me.

Still, there’s something about trying out for a team and not finding your name on the dreaded cut sheet hanging on the locker room wall that makes you stick your chest out a little further with pride.  Of course, I didn’t really have a chest to stick out.  Mine was more like a drawer.  But still, I walked out of that gym BELONGING.  It was amazing, and something about being picked made me want to be better.

I’ll say this much, there wasn’t a guy on that team that tried harder I did even though there were guys on that team (shoot, all the rest of them) that were better than me.  A lot better than me.  So much better than me that they got to play in actual games, and when they played really well – say, well enough to get us a 30 point lead or something – sometimes I’d get to play, too.  I say “sometimes” because honestly, if there was anybody who could single-handedly lose our team a 30 point lead, it was probably me.

But there I was in practice, learning how to play basketball against guys who already knew how to play basketball.  I wasn’t a Christian then, but I sure did pray a lot.  I’d pray that no one would throw me the ball, and if they did, I’d pray that I’d catch it.  One day the girl that I was crushing on came in the gym just about the time we played shirts versus skins and my prayers got even more intense.

“Oh, God,” I whispered.  “Please let me be a shirt.”

I’d learn later in life that some prayers get answered differently than we want because God’s a lot smarter than us, but that was rough way to get exposed to that truth.

Literally.  My shirt came off along with any thread of dignity I was clinging to.  I was so skinny that my stomach appeared fat.  My lack of chest gave the appearance of a bulging gut and I remember coach making some comment about how I probably had a hard time seeing my shoes.  Everybody laughed, including my crush.

I was crushed, along with any real chance with her.

But it was middle school, and I was still on the team.  My coach – despite the shirts versus skins fiasco – was funny and talked in a way that made me want to listen.  And he paid attention to all of us, learning what made each of us tick and how we could each best contribute to the team.

Once, just before the county championship game, he gave us a pre-game pep talk and took the time to tell all of us what he appreciated about our game.  For some, it was their outside shot.  For others, their defensive prowess.  I, apparently, was a lot of fun to sit with on the bench.

It’s not really the kind of thing you want to hear in the 8th grade, but over the years I’ve come to understand the simple wisdom of that speech: everyone can – and must – contribute to the team. Paul said it best when he wrote to the Romans:

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. (Romans 12:4-8)

Not everyone gets to be the star, but no one gets to ride the coattails of one, either.  There is something about belonging to a team that should drive us to contribute to a team, and a good coach helps us see that.  It’s one of the lessons that my coach taught me that changed the way I’ve lived ever since, and over the years as I’ve struggled to find my place on all sorts of different teams, it’s helped to remember sitting on that bus and knowing that I had a role to play.

It’s also helped to remember my manners, and our coach had an interesting way of teaching us about honor and respect.  He told us that every time a referee handed us the ball to shoot free throws in a game, we were to look him in the eye and say,

“Thank you, sir.”

Every time.  It didn’t matter if we were ahead or behind, or if that same ref had made every bad call in the history of the game to that point.  When we stood at that line and got the ball, we told him thank you.  And we called him sir, because we would give respect even if it wasn’t deserved.

A lot has changed since my middle school years, both personally and culturally.  Children don’t call adults by Mr. and Mrs. anymore and respect for authority can sometimes be hard to find.  Not surprisingly, I didn’t go on to a career in the NBA or any other professional sport.  But I have grown up with a strong desire to play my part and to honor those around me to the best of my ability.

And if we’re ever playing basketball sometime in the future and you foul me, I’ll quietly step to the free throw line, and when you throw me the ball, you’ll probably hear me say, “Thank you, sir.”

All because a coach put me on the team.