Ben Patterson

   Ministers experience depression, too. Ben Patterson has been in either full-time or part-time professional ministry for almost 20 years at the time of this writing. Much of that time has been spent in youth ministries, though for some years now he has been a senior pastor. Here Patterson speaks of two major encounters with depression. This testimonial is taken from an interview recorded in January 1981. [As of 2002, he is the campus pastor at Westmont College.]

   My first serious encounter with depression occurred 11 or 12 years ago. At the time, I was area director for Young Life in Riverside, California, the head resident of a men's dorm at Azusa Pacific College, and on retainer with the Forest Home Christian camp as a youth speaker. In addition, I was a full-time seminary student and was also going through a painful breakup with a girl who had been pretty much the focus of my energies up to that point. Further, I was in conflict with the church in which I had grown up and was going through some real changes in my life theologically. I was in tension, overinvolved, and just plain "stretched out."

   One night I had a horrible nightmare. I woke up from the dream really shaken. It was still early, probably about 11:30 P.M. and the sounds of the dorm were all around me, but I had to tell myself, "Hey, look. It's okay. It was just a dream." I was quite shaken. When I did get back to sleep, I slept heavily till about 10:00 the next morning,

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then woke up feeling drugged.

   I was used to shaking off my low feelings with physical activity, so I went over to the college track to run for a while. On this particular occasion, the gate to the track was locked. That wasn't unusual; I had often found the gate locked, but I would just climb over the fence and do my running. This time, however, I remember walking up to the gate and looking at it, and the thought of having to climb over the fence to run around the track just seemed impossible. I started to cry.

   I thought, Hey, man, you're in trouble. You've got to deal with this, and you need help. The fact that I would consider going to a professional counselor indicated how serious I thought the situation was. It was extremely difficult for me to do, because I had always despised that kind of weakness. It was okay for others — I was really patronizing in my attitude — but I could handle my own problems. Seeing a counselor was an admission of failure.

   I not only had to admit failure there, but I also quit a lot of what I was doing. I dropped out of seminary, but probably the most painful experience was quitting Young Life. What made this difficult was that I was supposed to be the key man, the one who held it all together. Now I just quit, apparently because I couldn't tough it out. That was hard on me as an ex-jock. I didn't feel free to tell headquarters the real reason for quitting — that if I didn't I was going to go bonkers. I just told them I was tired, and in my mind that made me a quitter, a bad guy.

   My spiritual life dwindled down to the bare essentials during this time. I didn't reject anything, but I more or less said to God that I was not going to deal with certain things between us. I held on to my belief in Him and continued to trust Christ as His Son, but in my life-style, I completely rebelled against the traditional Christian behavior of my upbringing.

   During this time of depression and recovery, I think I tried about everything. I drank a lot, I tried a lot of drugs experimentally, and I went through a period of sexual promiscuity. I had always driven a Volkswagen, but I went out and bought a Mustang with a big engine. (After I got married a couple of years later, I spent the first two years of our marriage trying to get down into an affordable insurance bracket because of all the tickets I had received during this time.)

   If you had met me before this time, you would have met a responsible young man who really had his act together and was going somewhere. But while I was trying to deal with this huge depression, not able to cope with all the things I was trying to do and getting counseled, I was really a different guy. When I got married,

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a lot of people looked at my girl, shook their heads, and thought, That poor girl — she's married a wild man.

   From what I know about depression, my reactions don't seem to be the norm. Rather than retreating into myself and slowing down, I became frenetic in my activity. Far from becoming immobilized, I kept in constant motion. I had a lot of friends and spent a lot of time with them. In fact, I avoided being alone. Whenever I was alone, I felt hopeless, and when I stopped moving, I felt myself spiraling downward. I guess I felt a little like a gyroscope: as long as I was spinning along, I thought I was maintaining my equilibrium. When I slowed down, I thought I was going to tip over.

   Two things stand out in my mind as I battled with the depression and began to recover from it. Both were important in my recovery from that traumatic time. First, my counselor was a supportive, nurturing kind of man. Although I had taken enough counseling classes to know what he was doing — the various techniques, voice tone changes, and so forth —  I just gave myself over to the counseling. What he did for me more than anything else was to give me permission to not have to be strong. He kept saying it was okay to quit what I was doing, it was okay to fail, it was okay to fall down and cry. I didn't need to be the athlete, the leader, the spiritual whatever I felt I had to be. It was okay to be weak.

   The second important thing was the acceptance of my friends. Not all my friends, mind you. With some, the premise of our relationship was the integrity of my Christian life. When that began to wane, so did their friendship. Some of my friends' theology was very liberal, and they had no problem with what I was doing, so I really liked to be with them. Since I've gotten back to my old self in many ways, though, those friends have also dropped away.

   But one friend in particular stood by me during this difficult time. He loathed what I was doing, but there was no question that he loved me and was my friend. He was against my drinking and my other activities, but he was for Ben Patterson. When my behavior got me fired from a job, he did his best to find work for me and to make sure I was okay financially. His support was probably the single most helpful thing in my recovery from depression.

   My second major encounter with depression occurred about two years ago now. I had what is known as a herniated disk, which was pushing against the sciatic nerve in my back, causing me a great deal of pain. The doctor ordered three weeks of total bed rest, which turned out to be floor rest since the bed wasn't firm enough. I stayed on the floor for three weeks, and then it took another three weeks

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before I could go back to work.

   Nights were the hardest. I'd fall asleep, only to wake up several times during the night. There's something about lying there alone in the dark and cold, and you're in pain. I never realized before how people in pain could get into a really abusive drug dependency. All that stood between me and relief was a little vial of drugs. I would have taken my last pain pill before going to bed, with the next one not due until maybe four in the morning, and I remember many times just watching the clock until it came time for my next pain pill.

   I lost control over my emotions, too. On several occasions, friends called me on the phone to see how I was doing, and though I hadn't felt emotional, the moment I put the phone to my ear, I would break down and weep to the extent that I would have to hand the phone back to my wife. I couldn't pull myself together — I was really a basket case.

   Several aspects of this illness contributed to my depression. I had used activity to counter my previous depression. I could work out or play some sports. I could get out and do things. But this time I couldn't move. I was stuck in my room, and that in itself was awful. The brutal fact of being immobile, for one who valued his physical strength and athletic ability, was a real downer. Until then, I hadn't realized how much identity, my masculinity, was tied to my physical prowess.

   On top of these problems was the guilt I felt as I saw how hard my wife had to work to take care of me. We had two children, one about three and a half, the other about a year old. They were into everything, and the younger one needed to be picked up and handled a lot. Not only could I not help my wife with these chores, but I was an added burden. It just killed me to see how much she was giving when I couldn't give anything back.

   Probably the key to my depression, though, was the way this immobilizing back problem reminded me of my own mortality. This was the first real taste of death I'd had. My father had died earlier, but that hadn't affected me the way my own body's deterioration did. I was brought face to face with the fact that the control of the essential things of life, even life itself, was out of my hands.

   During this time, the most helpful counsel came from the same friend who had stood by me in my previous depression. He had suffered through a back injury himself and was able to minister to me in a way that no one else did. Many visitors came and left me feeling worn out. This man would spend three or four hours with me, and when he left, I felt as if I'd been given new life.

   What he did was to gently put his finger on everything I feared — of being disabled for

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the rest of my life, of being an intolerable burden on my family for years to come, and so on. He helped me work through my fear of being at least partially responsible for the condition. Because he had been there, he was able to gently touch all the real sore spots. By bringing them into the light, he really provided healing.

   Many other people were involved in easing the depression, too. I can't begin to estimate the value of people who took care of some basic needs. They cleaned the house, brought meals, baby-sat our kids so my wife could go out for a walk on the beach or get her hair cut — things like that.

   I must relate one specific event that happened. One morning when I awakened, I couldn't get up and around, and I started weeping and couldn't stop. My wife sat there on the floor with me, comforting me. And apparently while this was going on, some friends knocked on our back door. We didn't hear them, so they went away, but they left a big box of doughnuts with a note attached.

   When I got my cry over, my wife went out to get the paper and found the doughnuts. It's crazy, but that was almost as good as the conversation with my friend that I referred to. My world was confined to that bedroom, but here was evidence that something was going on outside. Even in the midst of my tears, someone out there was thinking about me and had left something for me. Simple as that act was, it was a powerful medicine to me.

   So while my counselor/friend who sat down beside me and got right to my heart was the superstar in my recovery, so to speak, I had this large supporting cast of beautiful people who helped in very practical ways. Both were important through the depression and in my recovery.

   The fact that I tend to be a purposeful person both intensified and relieved the depression at turns. On the one hand, I was greatly frustrated and depressed by being unable to carry out many of my plans. On the other hand, though, even when I was down, I started to structure my time. I embarked on a huge reading program, and when that didn't work too well because of my position on the floor, I laid out a plan to become familiar with some classical music (which was a beautiful experience). I always tried to do something, to be going somewhere, even though I couldn't go anywhere. Focusing on these things relieved my depression, although my concentration often wandered.

   I came to realize that God was more concerned about what He could teach me through my depression than He was about the way my depression was relieved. While I did learn many spiritual lessons from my depression, I can't point

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to a spiritual turning point in my recovery. I learned about God and myself from the depression. He really dealt with my pride. He made it clear that I am really a creature. I am not God, and I'm not going to last forever on this earth.

   I learned to cling to God. I felt a great need for Him, although it took a long time into my illness before I really relaxed and let Him minister to me and teach me.

   Besides my personal relationship to God, the most significant learning was in prayer. Through this experience, God released me to long periods of fellowship with Him and to intercessory prayer. Before it had been hard for me to pray for people and for things, because I wanted to get out and do it. God began to teach me that through prayer I was doing it. That gave me tremendous purpose — I was getting something done. In one conversation with God, I told Him it was too bad I didn't have time to do this when I was well. He said, "You have as much time when you're well as when you're sick. It's the same 24 hours in a day." Today, I'm a much different man in regard to prayer.

   One problem I didn't have to deal with was worrying about how God was involved in all of this. I had done a lot of study on the problem of evil, and that was tremendous preparation for my experience with suffering and depression. I never questioned whether God was punishing me or anything like that. I didn't say, "Why me?" In fact, I really felt, "Why not me?" I'm as liable to suffering as anyone else.

   But others were wondering about these questions, and I was in the position of having to interpret my illness to them. That was hard, for not only was I down, but I was having to explain to my parishioners, as their pastor, why I was down. I was quite willing to accept that God's hand was right in the middle of my illness, and I was willing to share the lessons I learned.

   Beyond that, trying to find the hand of God in my experience in some ultimate sense was a dead end. My first sermon when I got back was entitled "Since You Asked . . . " in response to all the questions I had received. In it I pointed out that I didn't think it did anyone any good to know why you get sick or depressed unless it reveals something in your actions or life-style that contributed to it. Trying to find the reason in some cosmic sense doesn't get you anywhere.

   Looking back on my experiences with depression, I can see that I've learned some lessons that will help me to deal more effectively with depression if and when it comes again. I would be willing to let go and let the depression come. I wouldn't try to fight it or ignore it or run away from it. My depression was worst when I tried to fight it off. I think that a lot of the emotional problems I've had have been intensified because I was afraid that if I really looked at them and let them come,

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they would devour me. When I was finally able to accept depression as part of life, it really helped me get over it.

   I would also be quicker in yelling for help. I would cling to God and keep open the communication between us. I would ask my church and friends for help in very practical things — housecleaning, baby-sitting, meals. I would not let pride dig us into a hole. In short, I would struggle to have some reference point outside myself. While we often talk about the centrifugal tendencies in people's lives that split them apart, the opposite is just as bad — the tendency to turn everything inward. That's depression with a capital D. Whether it was the primary force of prayer, the kind acts of friends, or a Beethoven symphony, those external reference points were critical in modifying the centrifugal tendencies of my depression. I would work hard at developing and maintaining them in a future encounter.

   Depression is by definition a movement away from growth. For many it is much more — a devastating experience that can mark their lives with uncertainty and fear. I thank God that He has used my depressions to move me in the direction of ultimate growth. 

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