Thirty minutes before the evening service, just as I always did, I was conversing with people and waiting for the service to begin. From nowhere, in an instant, all my strength went out of me. My body went limp in the chair, my heart rate skyrocketed, and my blood pressure rose so high that I could feel my entire body shake. I wasn't sure what was happening. • I went to my office and lay down on a couch. In about 15 minutes, everything subsided, and I went out and preached. I noticed that afterward I had an unquenchably dry mouth. Something wasn't right. I went to the doctor, who had me hospitalized. I eventually learned I was having an anxiety attack or panic attack.
Upon reflection, I can see I'd had signs of its approach for two years. There were mysterious instances of what I can only describe as a strange and frightening feeling. Now I know that it was the approach of anxiety produced by high stress and overwork—an anxiety that would ultimately crescendo into panic attacks and full-blown depression.
I had noticed that in the spring and fall, my body would ache. I thought I was developing allergies, but the fact is that while the post-Christmas season and summertime gave me a chance to rest, church programs always cranked back up in the spring and fall, and the aching would begin again.
After three days in the hospital, I felt some rest and relief. I had taken a break from preaching on Sundays, but on the horizon was the 800-person conference on the book of Romans called "Romans, Texas Style." The conference was going to be taped for a high-quality video series. The people coming had paid for admission. The pressure was on. In 12 sessions, I would teach a book that I normally take a year of Sundays to preach.
The most important attribute in all the world to me is duty—fulfilling my responsibility. So this was like getting the flu fifteen minutes before game time. It was something I couldn't control. I could preach in a cast or from a gurney, but not when in the grip of this "thing" that was struggling for control of my life.
My hope was that as "game time" approached, my body would rise to the challenge, adrenaline would kick in, and I would muscle my way through Romans. Then maybe I could take some serious time off. But that Sunday night something went terribly wrong. Sleep was impossible. At 2 a.m., an intense heightening of anxiety (although I still had not defined it as such) jolted me awake. All I knew was that it was a god-awful feeling I could only call sinister. It was as though something was hijacking my being. I read a book until about 6 a.m., then I tried to go to sleep again. But another jolt of distress hit me, rousing me from bed.
I went outside to take a walk. The feeling was building in intensity. As I walked, I recited Scripture—Psalm 23, Romans 8—constantly looking to God as this whatever-it-was enveloped me. My wife, Teresa, was up by now and said we should go out for breakfast to take my mind off of what was happening to me. As she dressed, the anxiety hit me like a full-blown tornado.
I had heard of the term panic attack, but it was always something that could happen to someone else, not me. Your body reacts to continual stress by going into a fight-or-flight response. All your blood goes into the legs, and your vision becomes tunneled. You become lightheaded, and your blood pressure skyrockets. The anxiety crests to first-class panic for no reason whatsoever.
Your first thought is that you are losing your mind. The attack lasts only for twenty minutes or so and then begins to subside, but it leaves an aftereffect called anxiety disorder, because you are constantly worried about the attack recurring. The worst part is that if a panic attack is a 10, then the continuing anxiety is a 6. It's like a persistent toothache.
And the anxiety is only half of it. The other side of the coin is clinical depression. It is a black hole where all emotion seems to be removed from you. The worst part, though, is that you have nothing to compare it to. You simply have no clue what is wrong. This all started with me early that Monday morning in June 2006.
By nine that morning, I was sitting on my patio with my heart crying out to God. In four days, 800 people would show up for Romans, and here I was, not able even to sit still for thirty seconds. I was in a constant state of agitation, with no ability to sleep or even think straight. Two months earlier, my paths, as Job put it, "were bathed in butter," and now I was like Jonah, "beneath the roots of the mountains" in the belly of the beast.
My wife said I reminded her of the horse Barbaro, who won the 2006 Kentucky Derby but then broke his leg at the start of the Preakness two weeks later. The race was over for him, but he just kept trying to run. Finally, they had to tie his foreleg to his upper leg so he would not hurt himself further. As painful and fruitless as his attempt was, I know why he did it. He was trained to run. He was expected to run. So was I.
I called the elders of my church together and confessed to them that I was toast and could not keep going. I told them I needed at least three months off to rest and try to get rid of whatever it was that had me in its grip. These men were with me all the way. They said that anything I needed would be provided. I truly don't know what I would've done without them.
Not only did we call off the Romans conference, but I was going to have to call off the upcoming Song of Solomon conferences too, and that was hard for me. It wasn't just the loss of income, which was real, but it was also the failure to follow through on what I considered my duty.
Once I dropped the conferences, however, it felt as though a tremendous load had been lifted off of me.
I began to find out some things. Stress makes the body run on adrenaline, which is okay for a short time but not over a long period, because adrenaline produces cortisol, and cortisol inhibits the proper production and use of serotonin—a neurotransmitter that makes your brain function as it should. What has to be done is to locate the source of the long-term stress and begin to eliminate it.
In my case, it was easy to identify the problem—overwork—and then eliminate it by tossing everything off my schedule. But even when you've removed the source, the horrific symptoms of depression and anxiety continue. They must ebb away like flood waters—slowly and steadily—and that can be distressing.
It is terrifying when your mind—your very means of perception—becomes impaired. We sometimes think of the mind as some objective, free mechanism that floats outside of sensory data and informs us about the world we are in. The fact is, our mind operates within an organ—the brain—and is fallen like every part of our being. It can become impaired, and that is scary.
During the day, I could rarely sit for more than a minute or so, because my legs felt as though they were just awakening after "falling asleep."
Reading was nearly impossible, because my mind simply could not rest upon a page or sentence and think on it. My greatest joy in life was my Bible, yet I could not read it for over thirty seconds. I couldn't read a paper or even watch TV, because my mind would not stay on a subject.
But I discovered the depth of God's mercy through other means. For example, one thing God did was to allow my son John, who played Triple A minor league baseball for the Memphis Redbirds, to have a tremendous year of baseball at the very time that my anxiety was reaching a crest. My wife and I watched him on a computer feed, and whenever he made a great play or got a hit, we would rejoice.
For some reason, nighttime's approach gave me comfort, because I knew a sleeping pill would give me some brief relief. My body would relax before sleep, and I could lie there and finally read. I read Charles Spurgeon's devotional Morning and Evening. This famous preacher had been through depression, and somehow I felt comfort from him a century removed.
I would fall asleep at about ten, and then at three in the morning, I could literally feel the anxiety crawl onto me. Natural sleep was now impossible. For four months, I did not fall asleep without help from medication.
People going through depression usually have a safe person or safe place where the depression feels lighter. My wife was my safe person. Sometimes Teresa would go to shop for groceries, and I would follow along with her like a handi-capped child—which is what I was.
But God continued to touch me in ways that went beyond the Scriptures I could not read. One day, I heard Buddy, my Jack Russell terrier, barking and jumping around our screen-enclosed back porch. A hummingbird had flown in through the open screen door and could not find its way out. Time and again it flew into one barrier and then another. Below him, Buddy was expecting the bird to exhaust itself and fall into his waiting jaws.
I tried to help the little bird, but it flew away from me. Finally, when it was completely spent, I took it in my hands. A hummingbird is amazingly small and delicate when you look at one up close. It lay still in my hands. I took it outside, and once it revived, I let it go.
I felt much the same before God. I was trapped in a place I could not see, understand, or escape from. All around me was despair and death, and the only One who could help me was the One I now feared most, wondering if I had offended him in some way. And yet, I sensed that somehow, someday, I too would be released to new life. Hummingbirds can sometimes be as comforting as all the truth written.
At this point, I realized the great dilemma a Christian faces with this problem. Try as you may to quote Bible verses on anxiousness, your body simply will not respond. You may as well tell a quadriplegic to work through the numbness and walk. Something more is wrong with a depressed person than one's will and attitude, but it can't be detected with an MRI.
I called a close friend on the Baylor Medical Board and asked him the name of the best doctor he knew. The doctor was a fine internist who was also a deacon at First Baptist Dallas. After the doctor put me through a battery of tests, he gave me his evaluation. "There is nothing physically wrong with you. You have gone through classic anxiety and panic attacks." That was what I knew to be true deep within me but did not want to admit. Anxiety—something for the weak.
"You might," he suggested, "sit down with a counselor or find a Christian psychiatrist." I was the man who had just finished addressing an association of Christian counselors. I had written books on marriage and success in life. I had written an entire overview of the Bible, and yet here I was needing someone to counsel me.
Your mind is fallen like every part of you. It can become impaired, and that is scary.
It was the lowest point in my life. Would I come out of this? Was this the "nervous breakdown" I had always heard about? Would I continue downward and go insane? Would I have to be shepherded by my wife? Would I enjoy my family ever again? Would my church take care of me? Was all that I had striven for finished?
Though a doctor had given counsel to me, I could not bring myself to act on it. I just continued day after day as Marley's ghost. I could not go forward and reclaim my life, but I was not about to go to a hospital either. I spent each day pouring out my heart to God. I was like cracked and dry ground crying to heaven for rain and life. The answers would come from an unexpected place.
More than once I said to my wife, "Baby, I'm so sad that you have to go through this. You didn't sign on for this." Her reply was, "I said 'better or worse,' and this is one of the worsers." But at times her voice would crack when talking to her family on the phone, and I knew that it was out of sheer strain. Often a mate can compound the problem by an insensitive reaction. But I was blessed to have a wife and son who saw me as a casualty of being responsible. My wife never wavered.
A friend who is also my doctor called my wife one day to ask how I was doing. But on this occasion, Teresa answered with desperation in her voice, "We've got to do something, because Tommy just cannot go on like he is."
Perhaps sensing that Teresa was near breaking, my friend sought advice from an Indian friend who was both a Hindu and a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist calmly seemed to suggest that there was something tangible, something medical, I could do. This was a turning point.
In retrospect, I was being exposed to two different worlds—the world of regular people and the world of the experienced who had been through or understood what I was going through. Those within that world understood what to do, while those on the outside just worked as best as they could with common sense and observation. This Hindu psychiatrist was poles away from me theologically, but he dealt every day with what I had experienced only once in my 56 years. His calm response was, "Yes, Tommy has simple clinical anxiety and depression. He needs Ativan for short-term relief, and he needs Lexapro to build back his serotonin balance. The Lexapro will kick in after three to four weeks, and in the meantime, Ativan will take away the anxiety."
Something was clinically and empirically and scientifically and medically wrong with me. I knew it! And something could be done about it. Ativan has the effect of easing the "anxiety about anxiety," because you no longer fear it. You know you can take something to ease its effects, and it does not have control of you. The Lexapro slowly lets your body build back serotonin, and you see the effects after about three weeks. He also prescribed Ativan as a sleep aid, instructing me how often to take a pill.
This is not intended as medical counsel that others should follow, because each person is different. But for me, this was the ticket. The psychiatrist felt that my case was rather "garden variety."
I began on Lexapro, and indeed there was no immediate effect until but about two weeks later, when Teresa and I were at a restaurant. For the first time since May (it was now the end of July), the anxiety and depression had lifted. It was like having an intense toothache for which all of a sudden the novocaine takes effect. The clouds had parted, and the sun had broken through. A load had shifted off of me.
I looked at Teresa, and she looked at me. She said, "What's the matter?"
I said, "I feel like me again!"
In the following days, the anxiousness would revisit occasionally, but it was not as strong as before. And when it sub-sided, it would stay away longer. I had my life back, and I had hope. It was wonderful.
When we go through times of weeping, we are only passing through.
People in general and Christians in particular need to understand something important. Anxiety/depression is a hybrid condition—it is spiritual/mental/emotional in its causes but physical/medical in its symptoms and manifestation. It must be treated with this understanding to be effective.
If all you do is try to get at what caused the depression, then the treatment won't work. You might just as well exhort a diabetic not to be ill. On the other hand, if you merely administer medication and do not deal with what created the problem, then that treatment will also be lacking.
Christian counseling can deal with the over-scheduling, the worry, the fear, or whatever else might have contributed to one's depression. But often Christians have a bias against doing anything medical. They feel guilty about taking drugs for a problem that was caused by an emotional or spiritual crisis. They need to realize that the medications are not some sort of "happy pills" but rather necessary tools for bringing one's body chemistry back to normal. They also need to realize that truly bad results can come from withholding medicine and trying to will oneself back to an equilibrium. The symptoms of depression and anxiety will linger, and the inability to live goes right along with it.
On the other hand, medications can clinically treat the physical symptoms but often not deal adequately with the causes. Both are essential. Pastors and Christian counselors should have at their disposal either an understanding doctor or a credible psychiatrist—both of whom can prescribe something to ease the symptoms and give a person hope so that he or she can begin to deal with the causes. A pastor should also have someone in his congregation who has experienced depression/anxiety so that the one suffering from it can have someone to talk to.
A fellow in my church named Carl had, years earlier, been through all I was now experiencing. When he came to me, he told me everything I was feeling, because he had been there. I would say to him, "Tell me I'm going to make it through this." Carl always answered, "You're gonna make it—I promise you."
I've heard it said that a person can go forty days without food, three days without water, three minutes without air, but only a few seconds without hope. "Abandon all hope" were the words that met Dante as he entered hell in the epic poem Inferno. Yet hope is exactly what you receive when someone who has successfully navigated depression is there to talk you through it.
I know there will come a day when other pains will befall me, and someday I'll hear the inevitable command to "get your affairs in order." But I will navigate that day, because I have been to the bottom of the sea and He was there. As Corrie ten Boom said, "There is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."
Psalm 84:6 says, "As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs." Baca means weeping. When we go through times of weeping, we are only passing through. But God will turn the pain into a place of blessing for all who go that way. Our pain can become a future blessing to others.
Tommy Nelson is pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas. This article is adapted by permission from Walking on Water When You Feel Like You're Drowning by Tommy Nelson and Steve Leavitt (Tyndale, 2012).
Copyright © 2013 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
