Choose Love: Loving Someone with Depression

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34)

​CHOOSE LOVE WHEN LOVE FEELS FAR AWAY

Before I open my eyes this morning, I hear the rain lapping on the roof. This week has been a series of storms and I am tired.

Recently, I shared a brief homily about the mandatum novum, the new command Jesus gave his disciples the night of the Last Supper: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34)

All the while I was aware of my own gaping lack.

I lost my temper early in the week. I stood in our living room and let anger course through me and out of me, falling like a dagger into his heart. When you love someone who has depression, everything becomes about them. Every decision is seen through the gray cloud of how they will be affected; problem-solving narrows down to two choices – black or white – and there is little discussion not met with predictions of certain disaster.

I buckled under the weight – and in doing so, added heavy stones of regret and shame. Love felt far away.

For Jesus, love wasn’t only a feeling. It meant action. It meant putting hand and foot to the plow of love and planting its seeds. Jesus loved by caring for the unloved – by eating with outcasts and sinners, by healing the untouchables, and by challenging legalism. He stretched the boundaries of what we know as love.

Depression makes the world very small. Possibility becomes impossible. This would appear to be a selfish thing if the one suffering was choosing this way, but they are not aware of the blinders they wear. To gently suggest alternative ways of thinking and seeing can become a heavy burden over time.

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

Jesus called it a new command, but it wasn’t new, was it? He had already told his disciples that the greatest commandment was to love – both God and neighbor. The word translated as new in the Scripture means new with respect to form or substance: fresh, uncommon, unprecedented…

Was Jesus telling us to find new ways to show love – creative ways, ways that make people sit up and notice? Was he saying, “Don’t stop with the usual. I’m calling for more than candy and flowers here. Any little way you can show love … do it!”?

Choose love when your heart feels least like doing so. Choose love. Get to know your heart intimately and let love be the antidote to every bit of ugly that beats through it. Return hate with love, let love extinguish anger, fight oppression with love. When your heart recoils in disgust, reach out in love. Hold every action up to the perfect plumb line of the life our Lord lived, even going so far as to die for us.

How? It sounds so easy. Some days it is but on other days?

That choice is a millstone around my neck. In my devotional this morning, I read an essay by Watchman Nee who wrote, “The secret of deliverance from sin is not to do something, but to rest on what God has done.” Because I believe the Easter story, I can do this. When I rest in the work of the cross, I am free. It is because of this freedom that I can then act out of love. I realize that my actions are an extension of the grace given by God, and I am free to ask forgiveness. I am free to reach across the great expanse depression creates and choose love.

PRACTICE:

• We need to be reminded regularly of the bigger picture of God’s love. Read the Good Friday story. Jesus showed love, even from the cross (“Father, forgive them … ”). Say a prayer of thanks for the redemption he bought.
• What is one way you can choose love today? Think of a new way to show love to the person with depression in your life, a way that cannot be overlooked, one that demands special thought and effort on your part.
• Are you praying Scripture?
• Begin to notice when your loved one’s thinking is black and white. Gently suggest alternative ways of seeing things that might open their eyes.

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