John Mark Comer - My Name Is Hope: Anxiety, Depression, and Life After Melancholy

MY NAME IS HOPE

Copyright 2011 John Mark Comer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV, Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN-10: 0615565654

ISBN-13: 978-0-615-56565-1

Preface

Some people wake up happy.

Others wake up sad.

I am one of those other people . You knowdepressed people. The ones who walk around the planet with puffy eyes and frizzy hair.

Or maybe, better said, I was one of those people.

My story is one of failure and success.

Defeat and victory.

Ignorance and wisdom.

But more than anything, my story is one of healing.

Growing up, I was a happy enough kid. Healthy family. Great parents. Middle-class comforts. I was the archetypal artistintroverted, creative, passionate, melancholy. But depressed? Never.

Fast-forward to the year after high school. Nineteen years old. Wrapping up my first year of Bible college. Something inside me changed.

Almost overnight.

It was May of 1999. I was living in Mexico for a few months, working at an orphanage for handicapped children. Life was good. I was with a crew of 30 guys, all close friends. We spent the mornings learning the scriptures and the afternoons working around the orphanage. After growing up in Oregon where it rains year-round, I was soaking up the Baja sun. But something inside me turned dark.

I started feeling sad.

Really sad.

I remember laying in my bunk at night and thinking, Why am I down?

Maybe Im having a bad day, turned into maybe Im having a bad week , turned into maybe Im having a bad month , turned into what now?

By the fall I was a wreck. Completely falling apart. My emotions were slugging through the mud. On the outside, my life was really good. I was walking with God, surrounded by family and friends. But on the inside, I was a nervous wreckstressed out, scared, uptight, wound up, driven to insomnia by the what-ifs that plagued my mind.

My friends and family were at a loss. They had no clue how to help. Nothing was working.

I was miserable, unhappy, tired, despairing. It was my first real brush with anxiety and depression.

I still remember the feelings...

My chest feels like it weighs a million pounds. I feel pressure on the back of my neck. Breathing takes effort. My mind spins and leaves me dizzy. My hands hang down, heavy and numb.

I was barely functional. I would sleep for ten hours a night and wake up dead tired. I would read the scriptures for two hours a day and walk away breathing at best. I would pray and rant and hope and scream, but God was a concrete wall in the sky.

Dark.

Demonic.

Hellish.

These are accurate words to sum up two years of my life.

And hope starts flickering out. Will I always be miserable? Will I always feel sad? Is this just who I am?

Suicide sounds crazy and illogicaluntil you know what hell on earth is like.

Its like drowning. Like someone holding your head under water as fear screams through your body.

Its like suffocating. Like someone pushing your head into a pillow as you thrash about in violent panic.

Its when you get so down, so miserable, that death sounds like the ultimate release. You will do anything to stop the pain.

Every night I would drive over the I-5 freeway on my way home. I remember the taunting roar of the overpass

Yank the steering wheel to the right.

End the pain.

Why go on living? You will be like this forever. There is no hope.

Death is the only escape.

By the grace of God, my tires stayed inside the white lines.

I was, and still am, a follower of Jesus. I knew right from wrong. Suicide is the easy way out, for the lazy and weak.

I remember thinking, I can stay alive, but I cant go on living like this.

After a few years, it came to a head. I hit rock bottom.

And he found me there. Torn apart. Beaten up. All that was left were scraps and pieces of the man I used to be.

I will never forget the day. Right in the middle of all my misery. Despair was looming like a monster in the dark. I was at church. I had just finished teaching for a Friday night gathering of college students called The Way . I was standing by the stage, faking it to a huge crowd of people pressed all around me, when a stranger walked up to me. She looked at me in a really awkward way and said nothing. I stretched out my hand to break the silence, still faking a smile and hiding the all-too-real pain inside.

Hey, my names John Mark.

I will never forget her short, terse words

My name is Hope.

Everything was a blur after that. I think she turned around and walked away, melting into the crowd. I have no idea who she was. I never saw her again. But when she spoke those four words, it was like God was shouting at me from heaven.

Hope!

John Mark, dont give up. Healing is possiblein me.

I wish I could say healing came then and therethat God hit me with a lightning bolt, knocked me out, and when I came out of it I was as sanguine and happy as San Diego on the Fourth of July.

In reality, that day marked the beginning. God started me down the long, hard, brutal, difficult, amazing, transforming, saving path toward healing. It would take many years, include highs and lows, and follow the pattern of three steps forward, two steps back. But at least now I was going somewhere. Hope breathed motion into my sails and catapulted me onto the longest journey of my short life.

This book was born out of my story. My journey from brokenness to healing. From anxiety to peace. From depression to joy.

I am not a doctor.

I am not a therapist.

I am not a psychologist.

I am a follower of Jesus who went through the horrors of anxiety and depression and came out the other sidestronger, wiser, and with more joy than I ever thought possible.

Dont get me wrong. There are still days when I fight to wake up on the right side of the bed. I am a work in progress. But Jesus is remaking me from the inside out. I am a new man.

My goal through this book is to pass on the wisdom I learned from my years in the valley of the shadow of death. My prayer is that youwherever you are coming from would find hope in the healing, saving, redeeming Person called Jesus.

MOVEMENT ONE

The Power of Solidarity

You are not alone.

I repeat

You are not alone.

For years I thought I was the only one who struggled with anxiety and depression.

Questions were always lurking in the back of my mind, haunting me.