Living with depression has deepened my love for Jesus.

There are times I have sat hugging my knees in my chair weeping from the intense pain of depression. (Those of you who have experienced depression know what I mean.) My soul cries out to Jesus, thinking He really doesn’t understand what I am going through.

Caravaggio’s Crowning with Thorns, 1607

Then the Holy Spirit turns my mind to the Cross. I think of the excruciating physical pain of having a crown of thorns smashed on your head, and spikes driven through your feet and wrists. Then I remember His misery as He felt the deathly blows of God’s punishment for sin and the terror of abandonment by His Father.

Jesus volunteered for His pain, and not merely to be an example of sacrificial love, but to redeem me from my sin, my brokenness, my pain.

I am silenced and awed.

As my mind fills with the huge truth of it, my heart fills with humbled gratitude. Is the depression gone? No. But as I feel my pain, I realize His pain was much more than mine is, or ever will be. I see the truth that He truly is a God who can sympathize with me. Jesus understands pain. And because He understands pain, He understands me.

And I love Him the more for it.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows , and familiar with suffering… – Isaiah 53:3

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