I received a formal depression and anxiety diagnosis in the fall of 1999 when I was 19 years old. I had been struggling with it since the age of 13, but I never received help for it because I never had the words to describe what was going on. I also had some trauma in my past, so I arrived at college with PTSD as well as the depression and anxiety that I was trying to hide. My first year was really difficult for me, and everything came to a head in September 1999 when I had a breakdown that I just could not shake. I was crying all the time, I was having a really hard time sleeping, and I could not keep food down. I was put on medication, but it took a little bit of time before that kicked in.

My roommate had her own mental health issues and a situation was created where we were feeding off of each other’s stress. Eventually, we had a really bad fight one night, and she left the room really quickly the next morning without talking to me. I was feeling really defeated and I was in tears when I walked into the dining hall to find my friend Amy sitting at a table. She asked me why I was crying, and I explained that my roommate and I were fighting. She then said the magic words that bring me to tears remembering them 20 years later:

“Jen, do you want to pray about it?”

The reason those words made me cry harder and can still bring me to tears is that Amy was not religious. She was not a practicing Christian at that point, but she had been watching me silently praying over my food at communal meals with our group of friends. The fact that she asked me if I wanted to pray about it was her telling me through her actions that she knew that my faith was a huge part of my life, and she understood that praying about what was going on would be something incredibly meaningful to me. She closed her eyes and sat there quietly holding my hand while I silently railed at God about how anxious and depressed I was.

Amy and I are still good friends 20 years later. When we lived in the same apartment during our last year at UC Santa Cruz, she would always ask to say grace with me if we were eating at the same time, and she occasionally went to church with me. I have told her how much I appreciated her that day, but I really don’t think she understands the gift she gave me that day.

Gracious God, thank you for the amazing people you put in our lives that show us how much you love us and know us. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.” -Psalm 66:20

As human beings, we know rejection. We know what it is to apply for a job and lose it to another candidate. We know what it is to fall in and out of love or to find our love rejected. We know what it is like to suffer violation of body or soul at the hands of those we thought were friends. We know what it is like to grow older and even our own minds and bodies fail us.

Despite all of that, we keep the faith. Deep down, we know that life comes with seasons, and people can be fickle – but not all people. We know we are subject to disease and decay, but most of us have known far more health than ill-health. We lift up our hands to God in prayer, and we may wonder if God listens; we may wonder if God hears; we may wonder if God knows; we may wonder if God will answer.

The psalmist says, “Blessed be God …” which really means, “I am thankful.” I thank God for not turning a deaf ear to my prayers or turning away from me in my time of need. I need not be anxious, because God’s love penetrates to the deepest levels of my soul – and heals.

Thank you, God, in this time of Lent, for calling me home to abide in your presence. You comfort me more than I can ever know, realize, or repay. Thank you for your Agape love. Amen.
-Keith Axberg

“But I will sing of your might; I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been a fortress for me and a refuge in the day of my distress.”-Psalm 59:16

David was in BIG TROUBLE! He’d made a mortal enemy of King Saul, who sent a band of assassins to kill him. All through the night (and for many more days and nights) David feared for his life. He called upon God for help and sanctuary. David pictured God as a fortress or high tower that would lift him up and protect him. All through the night and into the morning David sang songs of praise of God’s power, mercy, and strength.

I’ve never feared for my life as David did, but there have been times in my life when I worried about the safety of those I care most about. Nighttime was and is always the hardest. When activity ceases and we are in bed trying to sleep, the mind conjures up worst-case scenarios. Singing or listening to songs of praise to God helps me interrupt that downward spiral and to finally fall asleep secure in God’s love and care.

Dear God, help me to always remember to sing: “Praise to the Lord! O let all that is in me adore him! All that has life and breath, come now with praises before him. Let the Amen sound from his people again, gladly forever adore him.”[1] Amen.
-Cathey Frederick

[1] Hymnal 1982, #390

I grew up with the childhood hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” But it’s one thing to read about God’s love in a book, and another thing entirely to experience it in the form of God’s “voice.”

My father passed away when I was in my late 30s. We did not have a particularly close relationship, and throughout my entire life, I cannot think of a single time when he told me he loved me. I can, however, recall any one of a number of very hurtful things he said. As I got older, I realized that he said these things not because he was a cruel person, but because of his own feelings of insecurity and fear. That said, he showed tremendous dignity and courage in facing death from a very nasty form of cancer.

A day or two before he died, I was visiting with him while he lay in bed. He was at a point where he simply couldn’t get up any longer. We spoke mostly about how Mom was doing, and what would happen with the family business going forward. When it came time to leave, I walked to the door and turned to say goodbye. “I’ll see you later, Dad,” I said. As I reached the door, however, I heard God’s voice saying, “You don’t know that you’ll see him again. You have to go back in there and tell him you love him.” I did. And he told me he loved me. Those were the last words we said to one another.

That was the first time I can really remember hearing God’s voice, but thankfully not the last. It is the love that God has expressed at those times that has enabled me to overcome the fears and insecurities that keep me from not only loving others but loving myself.

Lord, I thank you for speaking to us. Help us to realize that your voice is always below the surface of our fears, and grant us the serenity to listen. Amen.
-Michael Boss

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” -Psalm 51:1

This psalm was uttered in the aftermath of David’s behavior in sending Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to war and having him die on the front line of battle so that he (David) could have Bathsheba as a wife. David knew that he had sinned grievously, and there were consequences from that sin. (The story is in 2 Samuel 11:1-12:23 if you need more context.)

The Greek word for sin is άμαρτια (“hamartia”) and according to Strong’s Biblical Lexicon, one of the definitions is “to miss the mark”. This jives with the inclusion of this verse as part of the opening words in the Morning Prayer section of the “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” in the Book of Common Prayer. (It is on page 137 for those reading this in manuscript form and is here for those who are reading this online.) I find its inclusion appropriate because I know I miss the mark with my life way more often than I like to admit, and I think it helps us to start off the day with a clean slate while reminding us that our God is a God of mercy.

The agape aspect of this comes in the form of our sins being put on Christ who died for them, giving us life instead of death. God loves us so incredibly much that He sent His son to die for us. That is the deep-reaching and soul-changing aspect of why the Greek language distinguishes this form of love from the others.

Gracious God, thank you so much for your mercy and forgiveness. Help us remember that we can come to you and confess our sin to you when we miss the mark with our lives. Amen.
-Jen McCabe

“But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation.” -Psalm 13:5

I had attended a missions conference called Urbana during my Christmas break in 2000 with 20,000 other college students and missionaries, and my entire chapter of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a pan-Christian organization for college students, came home with varying degrees of bronchitis and pneumonia. I had already ended up in the emergency room needing nebulizer treatments before I even attended the conference, so my bronchitis was hitting me harder than most people. Because I was so sick, the energy that usually went to keeping my brain chemistry balanced was diverted to help my body heal, and this was causing me to deal with serious depression.

That particular day, my mom had taken me back to the campus of UC Santa Cruz where I was finishing up my senior year. When she left my dorm, she handed me a late Christmas present, a calendar with pictures of nature interspersed with quotations from the book of Psalms. When I unwrapped it, today’s Scripture appeared on the picture for the month of January. I decided to look up the Psalm and was astonished at what I found:

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider and answer me, O Lord my God! Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, “I have prevailed”; my foes will rejoice because I am shaken.

I wept because it was exactly how I was feeling. I mean, where was God in this situation where I was suffering so much? Then, I read the last two verses and started weeping harder:

But I trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.

It was a reminder that we are to trust in God’s love and that we can approach God with the things that are causing us trouble.

The lesson of that calendar page has stuck with me, and even on days like today when the panic and anxiety get to be too much, I know I can call out to God for help. As Jim Wallis, editor of “Sojourners” magazine said at the end of a podcast, “God is so much bigger than all the things we fear.”

Gracious God, thank you for dealing bountifully with us even when we just cannot see it through the tears and the panic. Amen.
-Jen McCabe