Dealing with Mental Health as a Christian
SEELE’s Hazzy Redgard opens up about her struggles with depression and how, with God’s help she overcame, and how you can too…
According to the World Health Organization’s 2022 World Mental Health Report, 970 million people worldwide live with a mental health disorder. That’s about 1 in 8 people in the world. We are facing a mental health crisis in our world today.
Maybe you’re reading this article as someone who struggles with their mental health, or maybe you’re the friend, parent or relative of someone who struggles with their mental health. Today, I am sharing my story of how I battled with depression for 9 years and won.
My name is Hazzy. I’m a 26-year-old animal management technician, university graduate, friend, daughter, sister, but most importantly, I am a devout child of God. However, this wasn’t always who I was - my life once told a very different story.
I had a very happy childhood. I never experienced any abuse or crazy traumas other than the death of a couple family members. But at the age of 13 I developed very severe depression. There were issues happening within my family dynamic at the time, which led to the decline of my mental health. As a result, I built up a lot of resentment towards my parents and our relationship was more or less estranged even though we still lived in the same house. My parents were arguing more and their relationship was slowly falling apart. At the same time, I fell out with my friends at school which left me isolated and having to deal with this depression alone. The members of the church I went to - the adults around me - were fully aware of the situation I was in at home and my declining mental health, but no adult came to my aid.
I was 13, depressed, alone, and thinking about taking my life.
How does a teenage girl deal with severe depression by herself? The same way that most of us do - I ran to sin. I was taught that if a Christian commits suicide they go to hell, so suicide was out of the question. I began self-harming and drinking alcohol at age 14. At age 16, I would smoke weed on the weekends with friends, somehow hiding this from my parents. I got my first boyfriend when I was 17 and began sleeping with him, knowing in the back of my mind that I was deeply in sin and my behaviour didn’t please God.
I wanted to be close to God, I wanted God to heal me of my depression, but I wasn’t equipped with Biblical knowledge of how to deal with my pain. I didn’t have a mentor or anyone to help me get closer to God. But He was someone who was always in the back of my mind, someone I would pray to for forgiveness after I sinned, and someone I could occasionally cry to.
One of the darkest nights I experienced was when I begged God to take my life. I couldn’t have been older than 16. I couldn’t take it anymore, I just wanted my life to end. I remember praying, begging God to kill me in my sleep. I prayed deeply and I believed that He would. I played worship music and I went to sleep peacefully, believing that my suffering would end that night and I would join Jesus in heaven.
I can’t begin to explain the disappointment I felt when I woke up to my alarm going off. Why was I still here? Why was I still alive? Had I not begged God the night before to take my life? Did God not listen to me? Had God abandoned me? I felt let down by God. I was so angry! I just wanted to die.
I lost a lot of faith after that. I continued drinking, smoking weed and self-harming to try and numb my pain. Drinking and getting high were the only times I felt a sense of enjoyment. And in the dark of the night I would drag a blade across my skin so that I could focus on physical pain and distract myself from the emotional pain that I lived with day in and day out.
When I went to university, that’s when I really hit rock bottom. I was 19, I wanted to embrace the uni lifestyle. I was embracing being a fresher and partying daily. But I was naive. The first 3 months of university came with some surprises I didn’t expect - long story short, it was pretty traumatising. I made the decision at university to throw all my Christian morals out of the window and just numb out. It was either that or suicide - they felt like my only two options. For 3 years I drank and took drugs every day. I lost a scary amount of weight. For 3 years I tried to get clean and sober but I couldn’t. Drugs and alcohol were my only escape.
Towards the end of university, I had some scary wake up calls. I had put my life in danger a couple of times and came to face the fact that if I continued like this, I wouldn’t live to the age of 30. I knew I needed God and I knew I needed Him now. God was my last resort. I did everything I could to try and numb my pain, but it wasn’t about my pain anymore, I needed God to rescue me. I needed to fully give my life to Christ so that I didn’t end up killing myself, whether on purpose or by accident.
I had a friend at university who was a Christian and I reached out to her to do Bible studies. The first Scripture we looked at was Psalm 119:1-2:
“Blessed are those whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD. Blessed are those who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart.”
The Hebrew word for “blessed” is ‘esher’ and it means extraordinary happiness. What this Scripture was telling me was that if I lived by the Bible and sought God with all my heart, then I would be superlatively happy. I didn’t believe it for a second. I was now 21 years old and I had been depressed for 9 years. I had tried everything to try and get better. Doctors didn’t help. Therapists didn’t help. Drugs and alcohol didn’t help. God was not going to help. I decided to seek God with all my heart, not because I wanted to be happy, but because I wanted to be close to God.
Change didn’t happen overnight, it happened slowly. I began praying and reading my Bible every day. I gave up drugs, alcohol and sexual immorality and instead pursued righteousness. I joined Bible studies twice a week with a group of girls who were specifically focused on helping me in my walk with God. It was weird. I no longer wanted to die. I wasn’t happy per se, but I wasn’t suicidal. I wasn’t thinking of taking my own life and I wasn’t even hating my life anymore. Seeking God with all my heart had now given my life meaning. I was truly learning what it meant and what it looked like to fall in love with God. I kept on pursuing the Lord, and the more I sought Him, the happier I became.
God was able to take away a crippling disease that had controlled me for 9 years. The Scripture was true. I sought God with all my heart and I became happy, and I continue to do so.
I have been seeking God with all my heart for 4 years now and I can confidently say that I have beaten depression. I have a joy that lives inside of me that doesn’t make sense. I am happy to be alive. God has driven the demon of depression out of me. However, there have been periods in these 4 years where I haven’t sought God with all my heart, and during those times I’ve felt low and down. My natural state is depressed, that’s who I am without God, but with God, I am healed.
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.”
I share this story, this victory story about my battle with depression, to inspire those who are currently fighting the same battle and feel like they are losing. I want you to know that there is light, there is a way out, and it is through Jesus. But we were never meant to fight this journey alone, we were created for fellowship (1 Peter 2:9). I needed women in my life to help me get closer to God, to show me scriptures and to hold me accountable.
If you’re someone who is battling with their mental health right now and wants to join a Christian community for help, or if you know someone who is struggling and want to be able to provide support, please don’t hesitate to reach out:
Email: 1hazzyr@googlmail.com | Instagram: hazzyredgard
As a little extra, I also wanted to visually portray just how God changed me:
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Depression
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SEELE’s Hazzy Redgard opens up about her struggles with depression and how, with God’s help she overcame, and how you can too…