except the burden of my own life and the exhaustion, the
apparent futility, of trying to sustain it.
I understand why some depressed people kill themselves:
they need the rest. But I do not understand why others are
able to find new life in the midst of a living death, though I
am one of them. I can tell you what I did to survive and,
eventually, to thrive-but I cannot tell you why I was able to
do those things before it was too late.
Because of my not knowing, perhaps I have learned
something about the relation of depression to faith, as this
story may illustrate. I once met a woman who had wrestled
with depression for much of her adult life. Toward the end
of a long and searching conversation, during which we
talked about our shared Christian beliefs, she asked, in a
voice full of misery, "Why do some people kill themselves
yet others get well?"
I knew that her question came from her own struggle to
stay alive, so I wanted to answer with care. But I could
come up with only one response.
"I have no idea. I really have no idea."After she left, I was haunted by regret. Couldn't I have
found something more hopeful to say, even if it were not
true?
A few days later, she sent me a letter saying that of all the
things we had talked about, the words that stayed with her