When I finally got the nerve to accept an invitation back to church at the age of 26, after I'd avoided Christianity like the plague for about 15 years of my life, I had the strangely God-ordained advantage of walking in the door with the principles of a program of spiritual recovery under my belt. About nine months sober by then, working the Twelve Steps with a sponsor, I'd been through the wringer. I'd come to believe a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, and I'd made the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God, as I understood Him. Right there, I'd begun to learn just how much I had to un-learn, if I was ever going to come to terms with the God I'd abandoned as a youth.

It helped that Jeff invited me to go to church with him, way before I was in the mood to have that conversation. He'd been attending for about six months at the time, and as we were exploring spiritual principles together, we were kinda thinking we might end up dating sometime, too, while we were at it. I was supportive of his experimentation, and interested in hearing about what he was getting out of church, but when he asked me if I wanted to check it out, my response was a firm "I'll think about it."

I had no intention of thinking about it. Jeff never asked me again. I was so impressed that he didn't bug me about it, I actually did give it some thought. In fact, as I was working through Steps Two and Three with my sponsor, I found myself thinking about church a lot... tracing the downward spiral of my life all the way back to the moment I turned away from God at the age of 11.

Several months later, after we'd tentatively decided we were dating after all, I found out Jeff had stopped going to church for a few weeks. Life was getting him down, and he was withdrawing, the way we in recovery know all too well. Equal parts concerned and curious, I felt inspired to brighten Jeff's day—by taking him up on that offer to "try church." It worked; he was disproportionately excited to come pick me up on Sunday morning. (Years later, I found out my coming around to the idea of church right then was the answer to Jeff's prayers about whether he should continue a relationship with me or not. It's like God does these things on purpose or something!)

For my part, at this point, I'd done some deep work on the first eight of the Twelve Steps, and I knew if I was going to make an honest start on the rest of them, it was time to go face God in His own house. I'd believed in Jesus when I was a kid; I knew where to find Him. So, despite a laundry list of hurts and hang-ups prejudicing my past experiences with "church people," I took the leap of faith. I was ready to hear, prepared to keep an open mind, and willing to take whatever I could get from a Sunday sermon.

"A wife of noble character who can find?" (Proverbs 31:10a)

Do you remember a moment when you encountered an ideal for the first time? I do. The first time was a moment several years in the making. See, I turned away from God when I was eleven years old. Some people tell me I was too young to make that decision at that age, but at eleven years old, thanks to the circumstances of my life at the time, I told God I didn’t believe in Him anymore. And I didn’t hear Him say anything right away, so I didn’t talk to Him for another 15 years.
 
Those were dark years. By the age of 26, my life was collapsing. There was addiction, there was depression, there was an empty, abusive marriage, and there was this soul rot... deep in my core... that I couldn’t escape, no matter how many substances I dumped on top of it. And I had no idea how I had gotten there. In my head, see, I was a good person. I had a house and a career and a nice car. I had all kinds of moral standards I couldn’t live up to. Everything was falling apart, and I couldn’t understand how I let it all get so bad. I didn’t know who I was anymore.
 
Toward the end of the whole mess, there came a point when I was sitting in a circle one night, looking around at the faces of a bunch of other people who’d messed everything up, too. That night, when it was my turn to introduce myself, I opened my mouth to talk about my legal troubles, and instead I heard myself saying the words “I have no integrity.”
 
And I lost it. I started bawling. I fell apart in front of a bunch of strangers. I didn’t know I was going to say those words, but there I was. It wasn’t my circumstances that got me there, it wasn’t other people, it wasn’t bad luck. It was a character issue. I got me there. I didn’t know who I was, and I was no one I wanted to be.

Fast forward a little over a year, to February of 2011. By then, I had lost my career, my marriage, my home, my entire social circle, and everything else I ever thought I knew about myself. So there I was, sitting at Perkins with a friend in recovery one night. We were talking about how our lives were falling apart in the same ways at the same time, and all of a sudden, I noticed we were talking about God, and it didn’t sound crazy.

 I had decided I wasn't going to get into the whole Andy Stanley thing, but then the headline "What is Biblical Preaching?" popped up in my inbox the other day, courtesy of Kyle Idleman, Ed Stetzer, and Christianity Today. Now, this headline might not necessarily grab you the way it grabbed me. Certainly, not every Christian is called to preach.

But every disciple of Christ is called to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19), so the question of biblical relevance is a question of relevance for all Christians. In terms of "preaching" the gospel, we can each consider whatever individual call to carry the message God has put on our hearts in our respective faith lives. So what does "preaching" look like in day-to-day life? Or rather... how does day-to-day life speak to the message being preached? I think this preacher kinda nails it:

Early in November, for one of my classes on the ordination track, I had the opportunity to receive a video sermon critique from an instructor at Oklahoma Wesleyan University, along with eight of my online classmates. Additionally, I also sought feedback from three of my local pastors, a couple of fellow ministry students in my local church, and my husband. No pressure, right? Overall, it was one of the most interesting and enlightening information-gathering adventures of my adult education experience.

Out of the loads and loads of observations, impressions, and suggestions I received, one of the most thought-provoking discourses centered on my use of my own story to build a connection through my message. Almost every one of my viewers made some reference to the value of vulnerability, authenticity, transparency, or the like, and then one viewer (a pastor of nearly 20 years) made the comment, "You know, if you preach from experience, you'll run out of stories."

Now, that really made me think. I'm a writer, so the idea of running out of stories is sort of absurd to me. I observe new stories all around me every day. But I digress.

I was talking to my husband last night about how I've been kicking around this vision of blogging and writing devotionals, but I've been feeling stuck and overwhelmed, looking for a place to start. "Why don't you start where you're at?" he asked. "How about 'I am supported and encouraged and loved, and I still think about destroying myself.' Start there."

Dang. My husband does have a unique knack for cutting to the heart of me without even batting an eye. I really like that about him.

Hi, my name is Serenity, and I live a blessed life. I also live with depression. The two do not cancel each other out. One is not a "cure" for the other. And the other does not disqualify anyone from spiritual leadership, no matter what the bumper-sticker theologians might try to tell you during the next "wounded people" branding session of the church gossip committee.

How do I know depression and Christianity are not a disqualifying mix for spiritual leadership? Well, for one thing, the Bible tells me so. See, I can name five major examples of biblical depression at the drop of a hat—Jeremiah, Isaiah, Elijah, Jonah, and David, to begin with—and even your average non-believer will recognize at least one of those guys as a major player in the history of the faith. Four big-time prophets and one greatest king; God's appointed mouthpieces and a man after His own heart. God did not deem any one of those spiritual leaders unfit for service—not even Jonah, who did everything in his power to get out of doing God's work. Not once do we ever see one of these "wounded people" scolded in Scripture for wishing they were dead, cursing the day they were born, or feeling utterly and completely forsaken.

Even Jonah, bitterly set in self and spite even after his radical reorientation experience, receives only tender questioning from the Lord in the middle of his wretched funk at the end. Instead of condemnation for these depressive souls, Scripture shows us the raw and honest confession of their emotional devastation bringing them into vital relationship with the Lord, where we see reaffirming acknowledgement of God's power and sovereignty in their lives.

Jeremiah, Isaiah, David... we quote these depressive biblical characters all the time to comfort each other in our "normal" hardships. So why is depression automatically equated with spiritual sickness? Was Elijah unfit for service when he prayed that he might die? No... an angel came and brought him food and told him to get up because he still had work to do. God met him right in the middle of his weakness and strengthened him for the road ahead. How often do I hear the Lord urging me in my times of weakness, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you”? (I Kings 19:7) Why are we so phobic about probing into the places that hurt within the Church? And how dare we deem only those who look "healthy" as fit for service?

Even Jesus, carrying the weight of the world, admitted to His closest disciples, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" (Matthew 26:38). Was Jesus "spiritually sick" at that point? When He went to the Father in earnest prayer, falling on His face in the dirt to cry out His despair over His purpose in life, we see no one in the Bible recoiling in disapproval or rebuking, "If you had more faith, God would deliver you from this." Instead, we see Jesus praying His heart out. Then we see Him getting back up with resolve to face His cross with the words, "May your will be done" (Matthew 26:42).

Here's the thing... when Jesus was at rock bottom, He didn't keep it to Himself. He shared with His three most trusted friends, "Look, guys, I'm so depressed right now, I could die."

But it's funny how the d-word will change a conversation in the church community. I can tell my story of abuse and addiction and recovery, and that's all inspiring and cool because believers get to say, "God delivered you from that!" at the end. But when I share that I've struggled with depression since I was 11—and that I still deal with it, in one way or another, at some level, on a daily basis—then the conversation gets strained and quiet and weird. Because God has not delivered me from that.

It would be neat if I could say, "And now that's all better, too!" But it's not. It's a current reality and a real struggle in my faith life. And most Christians don't know what to do with that part of my story. That's nobody's fault. It's just part of the reality. And part of the struggle.