When You Just Can't Work: Depression, Self-Acceptance, and God's Love

Six years ago, I wrote a book called How to Be a Bad Christian. With that playful title I was poking fun at my own tendency to be a “good Christian” in a way that made me look very little like Jesus. When your spiritual efforts make you more anxious, fussy, and judgmental, you know that you’re not leaning into life with God the way that Jesus intended!

In the book, I wrote about how “Get Things Done” became one of the unwritten laws of my life. Productivity felt great and was a way to serve other people. But it came at a cost:

For all its advantages, though, living by the law of getting things done has also taken its toll. It has served me so well, opened so many doors, and led to so much success that I have come to deeply fear what I would do without it. What if I couldn’t get things done? Being capable in any situation has become a core aspect of my sense of identity. I’m afraid that, if I couldn’t get things done, I wouldn’t be me anymore. Behind much of my productivity is not a pure desire to love God and others, but a desperate bid for self-protection. My sense of well-being depends on maintaining my edge. It feels like if I don’t get things done, the world will fall apart. Or at least I will.

I wish I could say that the better part of a decade later, I’m in a different place. But as I read that paragraph, I feel like it could have come right out of my journal entry from this morning. Change comes slowly.

For me, the work of healing involves giving my attention to the warped patterns of my soul as often as I’m given grace to notice them. The “Get Things Done” law is a pattern that’s surfaced again and again. I anxiously believe that my ultimate well-being depends on my productivity—that I won’t be loved unless I can perform. I believe that my work is what gives me worth.

[Thanks for reading. This post continues our series The Work of Healing. Check out our other posts on faith and work and emotional health for more resources on living an integrated Christian life. Subscribe to get the next post in the series in your inbox.]

God's Love

As I mentioned in our last post, we’ll be using this series on The Work of Healing to look at the path of healing that Jesus invites us to travel, and how stepping onto that path changes our life at work.

For me, one of my major spiritual wounds is bound up with work. My anxiety that my true worth comes from my work is a distortion of reality, a sickness of the soul.

Your soul might get sick in different ways than mine. Even so, I bet that your wounds show up in your work, too.

Rather than trying to anchor your self-worth in your work output, you might be fixated on how your peers at work perceive you. You wonder if you’re really valued by the people you see each day.

Or maybe you ground your sense of worth in a specific relationship or friendship outside of work. That in turn affects the energy you can bring to the work day. If your relationship is strained, your whole sense of self feels fragile, and focused work is elusive.

Regardless of what our wound is, to receive healing, we must come to believe that there is a different source of worth and well-being for us.

As I consider my own hurting heart, I ask myself: What could that source of deep wellness be?

Of course, I’m a good enough theologian to identify the right answer: God loves me. He created me. He will care for me. The cure for my sickness of workaholic self-worth is the conviction that God accepts me just the way I am.

But it’s one thing to be able to type out that sentence, and another to let the love of God saturate my soul. I need help connecting the truth of God’s love to my lived experience.

Getting Help

One way I’ve been getting help is seeing a wonderful Christian counselor. (It’s one of the strange accidents of history that the healing ministry of the followers of Jesus has found a home in a discipline catalyzed by Sigmund Freud, but perhaps that shouldn’t surprise us.) We’ve been asking the question Why?

Why do I believe that my worth comes from my work?

Why am I so anxious about how other people perceive me and my efforts?

Why do I have such a hard time believing that I am loved just as I am?

Of course, there isn’t just one answer to all of these questions. Life is complicated, and we get bruised and burned along the way over and over.

But sometimes it can help to go back to a specific bruise, so to speak. To look at formative memories. Are there early, painful experiences that warped what I believe about myself?

No One Wants Me on the Team

A memory that I hadn’t considered in several years came up in a recent counseling session. Back in elementary school, I didn’t bring much athletic prowess to the escapades of recess. We usually picked teams for soccer or basketball by having two captains pick classmates one at a time. Most days, I would get picked next-to-last and my friend Tim would get picked last. (You can see how Tim and I became friends.)

But there was one day in second grade when I didn’t get picked last, or next-to-last. I just didn’t get picked. They started playing soccer without me and left me on the sidelines. I went and sat down on a rock at the corner of the field by myself.

It’s still hard for me to share that memory. It is so shameful to be “un-picked,” to be rejected by one’s peers. I can still feel the embarrassment. Most guys as adults don’t flatter themselves that they could have made it to the big leagues, but they also weren’t that guy during a game, not even as kids. It makes me feel pathetic, untalented. Unwanted.

Self-Acceptance

With the context of this memory, I can trace the dots of my early commitment to getting things done. If I couldn’t excel at sports, what could I get ahead in? For me, it was academics. I could get ahead in the classroom. That’s where I felt like I measured up. I would get things done there.

As an adult, instead of the classroom, it’s the workplace. That’s where I feel like I measure up.? I get things done there.

But the weight that rests on my performance is so heavy. If I don’t measure up, then I’m back on the sidelines in second grade. I feel like that unwanted, unlovable classmate all over again.

What I need is freedom from the drive to measure my self-worth in terms of my achievement at all. What I need is to accept myself.

Experiencing God's Love

This is the point at which the wisdom of Scripture goes beyond secular psychology. Some therapists would encourage their clients to find the source of self-acceptance in themselves.

This perspective is half-right. Self-acceptance is something that you do, and it is an internal process that doesn’t depend on what others think of you. But there is a much deeper and stronger ground for self-acceptance than your own convictions or affirmations: the love of God for you.

As David G. Benner writes, “Christians affirm a foundation of identity that is absolutely unique in the marketplace of spiritualities. Whether we realize it or not, our being is grounded in God’s love. . . . Allowing God to accept me just as I am helps me accept myself in the same way.”

Even if we don’t realize it, when we step into self-acceptance, we are stepping into God’s love. Properly understood, self-acceptance has little to do with the self. It is simply the mirror image of experiencing God’s love for you.

When You Just Can't Work

For me, my relationship with work presents a pain point that pokes at my need for self-acceptance grounded in God’s love. My walk with seasonal depression every winter saps my energy and makes it hard for me to get meaningful work done. There are days when I just can’t work.

I’ve started to visualize my depression as a shaggy black dog named Deppy. Sometimes he’s small enough that he’s a minor nuisance, distracting me from the task at hand by tugging on the leash. Sometimes he grows to be a giant that looms over me, an evil cousin of Clifford the Big Red Dog. On days like that, it feels like Deppy is in charge and I’m the one he’s taking for a walk. I try to move through my normal responsibilities, but he’ll stop and sit right in front of me, blocking the way entirely.

Most days of January, I’d say Deppy is about the size of a Great Dane. There are mornings when he comes and lies on top of me, and getting out of bed involves a Herculean effort to shove him off and tell him it’s time for the day to start.

Six years ago, I gave voice to my anxiety by asking, “What if I couldn’t get things done?” This is no longer a rhetorical question for me. Deppy has made sure that I have to confront it in real life.

On a day when I can’t get things done, do I still matter?

Does God still love me?

Will everything still turn out all right?

Picked for the Team

I can write a post like this that says the answer to all of those questions is “yes.”

But I need more than answers. I need to receive God’s love in the places where I have been wounded. I need God to do the work of healing in my soul.

I need him to unravel the chain I’ve knitted between my self-worth and my work performance.

There are a few ways I’ve found that can welcome that healing.

I can keep getting help, seeing my counselor and opening up in our meetings.

I can talk to trusted friends on days when Deppy is getting bigger, instead of hiding in shame.

I can practice patience with myself on those days, setting realistic expectations about my work output. I don’t have to hit it out of the park every day.

I can turn my mind toward the Scriptures that speak of God’s love for me in simple ways throughout the day. Recently, I’ve been meditating on Romans 5:8: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (NIV).

I can ask pastors and older Christians to pray for me and help me meet Jesus in prayer.

I did just that recently, on a Sunday morning after that soccer game memory came up with my counselor. My friend helped me imagine Jesus in that scene.

Jesus picked me for the team.

Not because I’m an amazing athlete.

Not because of what I can get done.

Just because he loves me.

Reflect and Practice

Take a moment to consider your own heart.

• Are there any “warped patterns” of your soul that have come up again and again in your life?
• What is your experience of God’s love like? Where do you connect with his love?
• Are there early memories that have affected your self-image and sense of self-worth? What would it be like to welcome Jesus into those memories?
• Do you think walking the path of healing can affect your life at work?

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Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.

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