Give a Little, Get a Lot

Here’s the thing about depression: it leaves us feeling like we have absolutely nothing to offer.

Not only do we have zero energy, but what little energy we do have has kicked into over drive telling us what a pitiful waste of space we are. Ask almost anyone who struggles with depression and they’re going to tell you this.

So the question we begin to ask ourselves as we wake every morning and feel again the smothering weight of depression is how we can use our almost nonexistent sliver of energy to lift the load so we can manage a breath (no matter how small) to get us through the day.

Now, we have several options.

We can opt to hoard that minuscule spoonful of energy for ourselves, not using it and hoping that it’ll be like money in the bank, collecting interest if we don’t touch it. Maybe we think that we have so little energy that it’s not even worth using. But maybe we also think that if we don’t use it now, then we’ll be able to access it in an emergency.

Alternatively, we can use that bit of energy to get some exercise, hoping that the positive endorphins it creates will come from behind and multiply, replacing the energy we’ve used and giving us more.

We can use our energy to distract ourselves from how crummy we feel, restricting our physical movement to changing the channel or turning a page or starting the next episode on Netflix (oh, wait, Netflix does that for us now).

We can use our energy to feed ourselves or shower or put on real clothes or walk into the sunshine or pet the dog. All of these are viable options. Some of these will work better than others.

I have one more option for us: we can use our energy to cheer up someone else. But why—why? you ask—would we use our ridiculously small shred energy for someone else when we desperately need it for ourselves? Can you not see how we are barely pulling ourselves through each day?

First, let me tell you a story. Once, a long time ago, in the land of Israel, there was a drought. The rain had stopped. The creeks had evaporated. The crops had shriveled where they stood. The prophet Elijah, in dire need of something to eat, finds himself outside the home of a widow and her son, who live on the edge of town. He asks the widow if she could share some food with him. Unfortunately, she informs him, she has only a bit of flour and oil left in her home. She’s about to go and use what she has to make one last meal for her and her son, after which, she has reconciled herself to the fact that the two of them will die (is this the desperation of depression? because it sounds awfully familiar). He proceeds to talk her into feeding him first. Why she agrees to this, we don’t know, but she does. And lo and behold, when she bakes the cake—scraping out every grain of flour, pouring out every drop of oil—the oil and flour replenish. And continue to do so until the day that rain falls again in Israel.

The widow had next to nothing, but when she gave what she did have away, it turned out that it was more than enough. Not much more (it didn’t turn into a five course meal), but still more.

When we use our energy to encourage another, to support them, to walk with them, it is far better than the return of exercise endorphins. Why is this? I think it’s because encouraging others is a large part of what God created us to do (man is not meant to be alone!). We are meant to exist in community, and community is not community if we are fractured and broken and each desperately trying to bear our own weight to the detriment of another.

When we reach outside of our own depression and desperation and debilitating weariness, just to smile at someone else, just to tell them when they are doing a good job, just to offer them a helping hand, we may find ourselves surprised by how that encourages us and lightens our own load.

Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe you think miracles like that only happen in stories. Maybe you think you should knuckle down and focus on your own survival (putting on your own oxygen mask) before you try to help someone else.

So I’d counter by saying, start small and see. Start with a smile (even if your muscles ache and you have enough tears in you to flood the Grand Canyon)—not a fake smile that says, “Look at me! Everything is fine, fine, fine!” but a small one that says, “I see you.”

And let me tell you, you will probably still feel like curling up in a fetal position under your bed (and that is perfectly normal when we’re in this moment), but your tiny smile may have been just what that person needed. And that’s nothing to spit at.

And as you lay there in bed with your sheets over your head with your mind telling you over and over again just how worthless you are, somewhere, hiding in the back of who you are, you will remember that even in your lowest moment, you chose to smile at someone who needed it. And that is powerful. Who knows what else you are capable of doing?

Maybe tomorrow you can give someone a hug. Maybe tomorrow you can take someone a weed you’re pretending is a flower. Maybe tomorrow you can make someone a cup of coffee.

And who knows, maybe the day after that you can do something else!

Because who we are, in the middle of our aching, yawning, debilitating brokenness, can still be used for the small, every day miracles God could use to save someone else’s life.

Here is our oil and flour. Here is our speck of energy. Here is a choice that can be made…that may have farther reaching consequences than we can possibly hope for.