When the Pit Has a Name

🕯️ I've been sitting with this image for a while now — Elijah, collapsed beneath a juniper tree, done. Just utterly, completely done. Head in his hands. The great prophet of fire and faith, the one who called down rain from a cloudless sky, the one who outran a chariot — lying in the dust, asking God to take his life.

I know that posture. I've worn it.

There was a season in my life when the darkness wasn't just around me — it was in me. Depression doesn't announce itself politely. It seeps in quietly, like water through old stone walls, until one day you realise you're standing in the middle of a flood and you don't quite know how you got there. Everything feels grey. Even the things you once loved. Even worship. Even prayer — which frightened me more than the darkness itself.

I was a Christian. I wasn't supposed to feel this way.

✍️ And then I did something terrifyingly brave: I told someone. I reached across the silence and I said, I'm not okay. I opened the door just a crack, hoping for light — and instead, I got a sentence I've never quite forgotten. A pastor I trusted looked at me and said, gently but firmly, that as a Christian, I "should be beyond this."

I remember the air going out of the room.

I closed the door again. Quietly. And I carried it alone for longer than I should have.

🕊️ Here's what I know now, sitting here with my tea going cold and my heart full of something I can only describe as gratitude: that pastor was wrong. Not with malice — I truly believe that — but wrong nonetheless.

Years later, I was sweeping the kitchen floor as I watched the girls walk out of the front door, taking the baby, who would normally stay with me, with them. I felt it before I understood it — a wave of worthlessness so complete I heard myself scream: "I'm not even good enough to look after the baby anymore." I reached for the dining room chair to move it out of the way but found myself hurling it out of the sliding door onto the deck, and then I collapsed onto the floor.

The volcano that had been holding its breath finally erupted. All the tears I'd held in for decades came gushing out. Every instance of emotional neglect, criticism, displacement trauma, rejection, abandonment, grief and loss. All the pain I'd been too busy to feel, and every emotion that had been waiting patiently for a moment just like this one — came out on the floor.

And in that undignified, completely unplanned, and absolutely not Pinterest-worthy moment, God met me — not with judgment, but with a grace that simply said: "Finally. Now we can begin.”

Depression is not evidence of weak faith. It is not spiritual failure dressed in medical language. Elijah believed he was the only one left, that God had forgotten him, that death was preferable to continuing. Was Elijah faithless?🤔 No. He was exhausted, isolated, and broken — and God's response was not condemnation. It was an angel, crouching beside him in the dirt. Food. Water. "The journey is too great for you." Sleep. And then, in the still small voice, a question that felt like a hand on the shoulder: What are you doing here?🤔

God didn't shame Elijah for being in the wilderness. He met him there.

🪨 This is the anchor truth I return to again and again: God meets us in our suffering with His presence, not shame. He is not standing at the edge of the pit with a clipboard, assessing whether you've prayed hard enough to deserve rescue. He climbs down into our deepest despair to lift us up. The God who took on flesh and walked dusty roads, who wept at a graveside, who cried out from the cross — 📖 "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" — Matthew 27:46 (NKJV) — is not a stranger to sorrow. He is the Light that darkness cannot overcome.

📖 "He heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds." — Psalm 147:3 (NKJV)

🌱 He pulled me out of that pit. Not all at once — healing rarely works the way we want it to, quick and clean and tidy. It came through counselling, through people who sat with me without flinching, through medication that steadied the chemistry my body couldn't balance on its own, through rest I finally allowed myself to receive. Through worship, even when the words felt hollow. Through pursuing my healing one prayer ministry appointment at a time, laying the axe to the root of my habitual ways of self-protection. Through facing and dealing with trauma that had been pushed down and emotions that had been boxed up and numbed for decades. Through small moments of grace — sunlight on water, Clive's hand in mine, a verse that landed differently than it ever had before, and daily messages and songs sent by my brother who had ignored me for three decades.

Faith did not make those things unnecessary. Faith is what helped me receive them.

🕯️ I think of all the people sitting in church pews right now, carrying the same weight I carried, terrified to say a word. Terrified of the very response I received. And my heart aches — not with anger, but with the longing for the church to be what she is called to be: a place where the broken find not judgment, but the same crouching angel Elijah found. Food. Rest. Presence. You are not alone. The journey doesn't have to end here.

📖 "A bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench." — Isaiah 42:3 (NKJV)

✍️ Darkness can be absolutely real — and hope in Christ can be absolutely real at the same moment. They are not mutually exclusive. The Psalms understood this long before we did. Psalm 22 begins in abandonment and ends in praise. Psalm 88 never quite gets there — and it's still in the canon. God is big enough for all of it.

🕊️ If you are reading this and you recognise yourself in Elijah under the tree — I want you to hear this: your struggle is not a verdict on your faith. Seeking help is not spiritual failure. Asking for prayer and seeing a doctor is not a contradiction. Trusting God includes receiving the care He has made available to you through the people and provision He has placed in your path.

And if someone has ever told you that you "should be beyond this" — I'm so sorry. That was not the voice of the Shepherd. The Shepherd leaves the ninety-nine and goes after the one who is lost. He doesn't stand at the gate and tell the lost sheep it should have known better.

🌱 He pulls us out of the pit. He sets our feet on a rock. He establishes our steps — one at a time, at the pace our healing requires, with more patience than we could ever ask or imagine.

He did it for me. He will do it for you.