When Marriage Meets Depression: Replacing Isolation with God’s Design for Community

David and Tracy continue their series on depression in marriage, showing that depression is often a signal of deeper issues like isolation, “junk values,” and misplaced pursuits rather than just a biological problem. Through Scripture and the story of a small group of husbands meeting weekly around God’s Word, they highlight how genuine Christian community, gratitude, repentance, and an others-focused life in Christ bring lasting hope and joy. The episode ends with practical homework: list God’s good gifts, reject self-pity, and intentionally realign your life with biblical values together, not alone.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Depression At Home

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Vows to Keep Radio with David and Tracy Sellers. The mission of Vows to Keep is to help couples develop a biblically healthy marriage through the application of God's word and a deeper relationship with Him. They desire to help you and your spouse grow closer to each other and closer to the heart of God's design for your marriage. Now, here's David and Tracy with today's broadcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

We are David and Tracy Sellers with Vows to Keep, and we are excited to talk with you about this topic today, the topic of depression.

SPEAKER_02 0:31

This is a topic that in the research of I found some very interesting stats, Tracy. According to a Harvard Medical School article, the federal government health statisticians figured that about one in every 10 Americans takes an antidepressant. In fact, 23% of women in their 40s and 50s take antidepressants, a higher percentage than any other group.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

These are mothers and wives just like me. These are my peers. But we're here to tell you today that depression's not just this random somewhere out there statistic. This applies to David and I as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yeah, our first main point for today, in fact, is that depression is real. And at different times in both of our lives, we've asked this question why do I feel like this?

SPEAKER_00 1:12

I wonder which side of the coin you're on as you listen today. Is it you that's feeling depression and anxiety, or maybe it's your spouse?

SPEAKER_02 1:21

So many of us have been told that we have a problem with our biology, a chemical imbalance. And so we've been prescribed a medication. And at first it seems to help. Our marriage feels more normal, maybe less tense. This all seems like a good thing, right? And you listen to Vows to Keep all the time. You think the best of Tracy and I, like, we don't have any problems, we don't have any struggles.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

Or if we do, maybe you think they're not very big.

Rising Anxiety In The 80s And 90s

Tracy’s Story: Relief And Numbness

SPEAKER_02 1:44

That's just not true. We're people just like you are. For a really long time, I had these two mysteries that were hanging over my head when it came to this broad topic of mental health. And I didn't understand them, and to be honest, I was quite afraid as a Christian to look into them. This felt like an untouchable topic because I wasn't really sure where the research would lead me. Would it lead me toward God or would it lead me with thoughts that took me away from God? And maybe you're in that same spot. You know there's some risk around you, you know that that maybe this is affecting you or someone you love, but the topic is so hard to think about in any other terms but a medical term. So given that fear, I didn't do a lot of research. Things stayed in a state of, I guess you could say, a mystery. The first mystery was throughout my life, year after year, serious depression and anxiety was rising in the loved ones around me. And for a while, I thought maybe it was just my ability to actually perceive anxiety and depression. Because when I first noticed this, I was a younger teenager. But then I came to realize it wasn't, because it wasn't just my family. It was a topic that was becoming mainstream all across the United States in the late 80s and 90s. And I saw it in my own home growing up, and I wanted to understand why. My mom experienced some pretty traumatic things in her life. She broke her neck in a car accident in 1989. And it was in this recovery that at times she would just fly off the handle with rage. I'd never seen that before. All I had ever seen from her before that point was someone who I thought was stable. So why was this happening? And why is it that as each year was passing, my mom and more and more other people that I knew were finding it harder to get through the day with a smile. And I wanted to understand this because of a personal mystery as well. As a late teenager, I remember feeling a lot of anxiety about my own life, feeling bullied, unaccepted, so worthless that I couldn't even control it. I didn't understand why it was happening, but I truly didn't want to live any longer. I felt kind of ashamed of this feeling. It wasn't something I wanted other people to know, but it was true. It was the mid-90s, and I don't recall where I first heard this medical breakthrough and antidepression medications coming to my town, but it went something like this. Hey, we now know why people get depressed like this. Some people are a victim of a chemical imbalance in their brains. And so I thought to myself, well, clearly I'm one of those people. What I need to do is get some of these medications and it will help take care of that chemical imbalance and bring things back to normal. Now I want to interrupt my story to share this statistic. This is according to the same Harvard Medical School article that I had referenced earlier. The rate of antidepressant use in this country among teens and adults, we're talking people 12 years and older, increased by 400% between 1988 and 1994, and did the same thing again between 2005 and 2008. So it was true. What I was seeing was true, but the nearest doctor for anything past like the common cold was hours away from where I lived, and we didn't really have the money for health care as it was, so it wasn't really a possibility for me to get these antidepressant drugs, but I did hang my hopes and my understanding on this medical news. Someday I thought I'd be able to get treatment for this. Well, as I went to college, these feelings of depression wavered up and down. I found it was much easier to please people to be accepted, but for a long time I measured my value by how much someone else wanted my company. Let me say that again because maybe this is you. For a long time I measured my value by how much someone else wanted me, as a friend, as a confidant, just to be in their presence.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

David, it's hard for me to imagine your life before me.

SPEAKER_02 5:36

I know, me too.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Well, my first run-in with depression was as a 25-year-old with two little kids. David and I had married and had moved our young family about a thousand miles from where I'd spent my whole life. David got a new job, two kids under the age of two in a new city where I didn't know anybody. Maybe you can see where this is going. And while David was slugging through this demanding job, I was home alone. I was away from my family for the very first time in my life, and I felt so alone because my mom and I, we'd always been so close. She was a huge support system in my life. And now all of a sudden, that was gone. And to top it all off, David's job in Washington State turned south quickly. The company leadership had some really poor business ethics, and he was so stressed, working long hours. All the while we're shopping for a home in this area.

SPEAKER_02 6:27

We can't really afford everything was piling on top of each other, including Yeah, I got into a nine-car pile-up literally on I-90 when someone merged into another car and sent a whole bunch of cars spinning out of control.

Learning From Scripture And Counselors

SPEAKER_00 6:40

It was about that time where I felt like the screws of life were coming out quickly. It was at this time I was also learning that the women of my family have a history of issues with their thyroids. So I scheduled an appointment to get mine checked. Well, it turned out that mine was fine, but I told my doctor how I was feeling, and he shared the same good news that David had heard all those years before. Tracy, you've got a chemical imbalance. This prescription is gonna solve everything. That was a really fearful step for me to take, but I started taking one and the results seemed to be fairly quick. How exciting, right? Finally, some relief. But as the weeks and months came and went, the results became less and less. And I experienced all the symptoms that you hear about. The medication helped take out the lows, sure, but it also took away the highs. Eventually, things I enjoyed with great peaks didn't reach the same heights anymore. Everything had kind of flatlined. It seemed to be impacting everything from my being a mom, even to just going to church on Sundays to maintaining a household to David and I's love life. It was like I wasn't able to feel as much anymore. I actually didn't even really want to. I'd gone numb, but I still had this deep underlying sadness, and I honestly felt like I was barely functioning.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Tracy, you had always been this passionate driven person, and by this point, that was beginning to change. And I was naive. I didn't understand the medications or what they were doing. Finally, because of those company ethics, I quit the job, right? And in this desperate move to try to help my wife's oppression, I picked up our whole family and moved us back to South Dakota, near where your parents were, hoping that it was going to help.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

And surprise, surprise, it didn't. So I started asking myself, what is really going on here? Because you're doing everything you're told to do by the story that's dominating modern medicine, even the culture, taking my meds like I was told to. Why do I still feel like this?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

I hope you hear that this is something that Tracy and I have both been impacted by. Depression is a topic we don't take lightly in our home. It's also something that commonly affects the couples that we work with. To get to the bottom of these mental health mysteries that we're talking about, for our own personal experiences and for those that we love, combined with this calling we have on our lives to serve marriages, that meant we sought out to learn from leading Christian experts on what caused depression and anxiety and crucially what solves it. Now, the training that we require our staff to take is from the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. Both of us, as you've heard, have come through this depression, and I'll elaborate on that as we go, but we've also talked with a lot of others who've come through depression and anxiety in all sorts of amazing and God-honoring ways.

Life Factors Versus Biology

SPEAKER_00 9:22

We've learned a huge amount from some amazing people along the way, and also turning right to God's word to see what it says about this topic. I think one of the most alarming things we've learned so far is that very little of this is actually tied to our physiology. Your genes might make you more sensitive to these problems, sure, but they're far from righting your destiny.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah, science has shown that there are some measurable brain changes that can happen when you become depressed. But most of the factors that have been proven to cause depression and anxiety are not our biology. They are factors in the way that we live. And once you understand that, it opens up a very different mindset and a very different set of answers that should be offered to people rather than just jumping to the quick fix of chemical antidepressants. Maybe we've all asked ourselves at different times, why do I feel like this? Why am I in this funk today? Many times, though, that's the farthest we get. Because there seems like there's just no answer.

Naming Idols And False Hopes

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I think, David, too, sometimes we don't even get to the point where we're asking the question, why do I feel this way? Instead, it's easier to just self-medicate, and I don't mean with medication, I mean by numbing our feelings in front of a TV screen or the computer screen, or just by bugging out of the house for a change of scenery or tackling this huge project just to distract ourselves. But let me tell you today, you're not the only one who's ever wondered what is really going on. Check out a real man with real feelings in Psalm 42, 11. Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why are you so disturbed within me? Have you ever felt that way? For example, if you're a stay-at-home mom, you might feel a little bit isolated. I know I certainly have over the years, and you're likely to feel some depressed feelings. If you rarely get out into nature or get some exercise, that makes you susceptible to feeling depressed as well.

SPEAKER_02 11:12

And no matter how hard you try to please your spouse, boy, it feels like nothing you do is ever good enough. If your marriage relationship is in shambles, feeling depressed is not an abnormal feeling. Sometimes life's circumstances are just very overwhelming, and maybe you're doing your best to keep your head above water, but you feel like, oh, I'm in a fog. I woke up this morning and and I don't even have the motivation to tackle the most basic things that I know I should.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

We get in situations taking care of aging parents, and at that same time in life, your college-age daughter is making very poor decisions. All of a sudden, anxiety can hit hard.

The Church Body As Lifeline

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Or maybe you go to work and you don't really have any positive impacts coming from your hard work. You've just got to do what you're told, and it feels pointless. Again, these are all things that you're likely to feel some degree of depression associated with. And so we land at this conclusion that I don't feel happy, therefore I must be depressed. This only began to fall into place for me when one day I realized the actual facts of my own situation. As a teenager and a young college student, I wanted someone to value me. I desperately wanted that that someone would be a woman. Romans 1 22 says, although they claimed to be wise, and I certainly thought, boy, I I'm not doing anything wrong, and I I saw myself as wise, the verse continues, they became fools. They exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being. And as time went on, my want turned into a need for this image of a woman in my life. The passage continues, therefore, God gave them over to the sinful desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator. Well, this was me. From about 1995 through 1999, this idol of having a woman in my life ruled me. And I did have a few very short-term girlfriends, but in God's grace, he never let these women fulfill anything in me. He preserved my virginity, which I'm very grateful for. Me too. But I was still depressed. And that was because my expectations of these ladies fulfilling me were very incorrectly placed. That was something that only God was made for. And so I was believing two lies, and these lies were literally ruling my life. Galatians chapter one points out something that at the time I couldn't totally see with clarity. It says, Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or God? Am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. The first lie was that I was trying to please a woman to the degree that she would approve of me, maybe even fall in love with me. And I was the person trying to please people so that they might serve me. That of course caused me to fail to be a servant of Christ. Exodus twenty, in verse four, we see it says, You shall not make yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath, or on the waters below. You should not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. And this is where the second lie came into play. This driving need for a woman to fall in love with me, was an idol in my life that I had flat out missed, a hundred percent. And God is jealous, but it's for my good. He doesn't give the idols in our hearts. When the idols consume you, just like this drive for a woman in my life did, it was only more evidence of why I couldn't be trusted with a woman in my life. My root cause of depression, as is the case for many of us, was that I had a dysfunctional relationship with God. I had put a desire before him. And it was mainly through a misunderstanding of his word. I really hadn't dug into and understood idols in the way that I do now. This mental turmoil that I had, confusion, agitation, what usually brings about fear. And I was there as well. What if I never meet her? Fear doesn't come from God, though. Second Timothy one says, For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. So if you'd been raised to think about depression the way that I was, and most of the people listening today probably were, this sounds like a terrible joke, right? Here I am wanting a wife, I'm praying for her to be brought into my life every single day, and for four years God let my desperation to be fulfilled by a woman rather than him, actually caused depression, which made me less attractive to women. So the very thing that made me sad protected me from getting what I didn't actually need. My idol served to push away relationships with women. I thought more than one time, maybe I just need to go to a doctor and get some of these antidepressants so that I can be more soave, more calm, and better able to woo a woman. As an engineer, I'm used to this cause and effect kind of thinking, right? I've enjoyed years with my hobby of fixing cars. And when something doesn't work anymore, 99% of the time, that something is weak or already broken. And I bought the lie that the meds might fix my case. And while that never came to pass, I learned intuitively, based on my individual story, what the leading medical professionals are just starting to see. If you're depressed, if you're anxious, you're not weak, you're not losing your marbles, you're not a helpless robot with broken parts. You're a created human made in the image of God with unmet needs.

SPEAKER_00 16:50

Most, if not all, of our needs are tied to what we believe. Some beliefs are wrong and some are right.

Paul’s Jail And Our Perspective

Beyond Quick Fixes: Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 16:57

And in my case, it was just as important to think here about what God was not saying as well. Because he wasn't saying, hey, buddy, you need to pull yourself together. It's your job to figure this out, fix this problem on your own, and then I'll accept you. Nope, that was not the tone of our Lord and Savior. But spring of 2000, God finally helped me to overcome the overwhelming depression. But it wasn't through medication and it wasn't with a woman. The bottom line is you probably view depression with a degree of helplessness. Certainly, I think most of us recognize the need, but do we realize that as believers we have an active role to take? This is not something we can be passive about in any way, shape, or form. But God's word speaks to and addresses both us as depressed people as well as us supporting those people. God used these years to force me to see truth. That He was where my significance came from. It wasn't what a woman would think of me or anyone else for that matter. About the time I finally realized and recommitted myself to God, no longer to this idol of pleasing man or woman. God trusted me with Tracy coming into my life. What God is really trying to convey to us is that his word is for our good, and as we obey it, there will be fruit in our lives. I mean, I thought I needed a woman. God knew I needed him. These idols will never do in your life or mine. And we've spent some time talking about idols before. Go do a Google search for vows to keep and idols of the heart, and take time to listen to that broadcast. What I want to hone in on, though, is an interesting thing that we find in God's Word about the church body. I'm going to take us to Ephesians chapter 4, picking up in verse 15. It says, speaking the truth in love, we're to grow up in all aspects unto him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part. Can you picture this with me? It causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. Let me flip over to First Corinthians chapter twelve. It says so there may be no division in the body, so that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. The church body is here as a group to pull together with you. So that together we can support truth. We can provide accountability to stand through problems and to overcome the challenges of this world. This church body includes your family. It includes your husband, your wife. They're part of this church body. And as we read about this in scripture, we realize that we have a role to play. Not to stand back and disconnect in fear, but to approach the real issues, asking the tough but loving questions which reveal the lies. Maybe that's your position. Maybe you're listening today and your spouse is depressed. Now is the time to research your role deeper.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

This is what every depressed person needs. And according to our call in Scripture, it's what every depressed person deserves. Now, to be fair, depression isn't always that our relationship with God is weak or broken. Look at Paul in Acts chapter 16. He was thrown in prison for doing something good, for setting a girl free from a spirit. And you could imagine what prisons were like in those days. Try to picture that for a minute. If he had been like most of us today, he would have been asking, How could this have happened to us, God? Get us out of here. Look how awful my situation is. Or maybe I messed up. God must be mad at me. What would you have been thinking about if you were with Paul in that jail? But when we look at scripture, what was Paul doing? He was praising and rejoicing God. He was writing letters to people who needed to hear truth. He definitely had his eyes in the right spot. And we may be a long way from where Paul was in his thinking, but we can get on the same path that he took by thanking God. What a great place to start. This is what a committed Christian does, giving thanks even when things look bad in the natural realm.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

I guess we can't expect the world to live like God asks. It's really not what's valued in today's culture, but we're clearly seeing a trend that what we've been doing about depression in this country for the last 20, 30 years, it isn't enough. And in some ways, the cure is as uncomfortable long term as the initial problem. On World Health Day in 2017, we learned that depression has increased by over 18% between 2005 and 2015. And depression is predicted to be the number one global burden by 2030. This is why one of the leading doctors at the United Nations, in their official statement for the World Health Day in twenty seventeen, said we need to talk less about chemical imbalances. More about the imbalances in the way that we live.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

Prescription antidepressants give real relief to some people. They gave real relief to me for a while. It was short-lived, and the negative side effects were almost as bad as the help that these meds brought. Precisely because this problem goes deeper than our biology. The solutions need to go much deeper, too.

Support The Mission And Resources

SPEAKER_02 22:20

When we first hear this, I think there's a little bit of a panic for many of us, Christians and non-Christians alike, when that quick fix of medications don't do it. I mean, how do we possibly fix this? I hear husbands and wives saying, I need this fix in my marriage. I need it fixed now. The things that are bringing depression into our lives, they feel complex. So where do we even begin to get that kind of insight? If this is the question that you're wrestling with, make sure you listen to next week's broadcast. Now, if you're on these kind of antidepressant medications, please hear me. We're not telling you to stop. That's between you and your doctor. But what we are saying is that many of the underlying problems that cause us to feel the way we feel boil down to the choices that we're making. And those choices have the ability to be examined through a biblical lens and changed. These kind of changes we've seen make people realize that the medications maybe weren't what their root need was, and they might have even added to a lack of passion they had to fix the underlying issues. As we wrap up today, unfortunately we're out of time, but I want to tell you that next time we get together, we're going to share with you about the kind of training that Tracy and I have received for biblical counseling and then the frontline experiences as well. And the amazing way is that looking at our lives with an eye on biblical principles and really adhering to what God is desiring out of our lives can change everything. I'm not talking about a life that's going to be without problem. I'm talking about a life that's with purpose. A life where the hardships aren't what take us down. But we see that God has got us on a mission, an important one to be done together.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Vows to Keep is supported by a team which includes biblical coaches, writers, and pastoral advisors. If you have a desire to serve marriages in your community, we would love to hear from you. Vows to Keep is a not-for-profit marriage ministry designed to bring God's encouraging truth to the marriages of our area. As a not-for-profit organization, our commitment to Christ-like marriages includes providing much-needed services regardless of a couple's financial ability to offset the cost of Vows2Keep operations. If you are unable to donate your time or abilities, but would like to help support Vows2Keep financially, visit vows2keep.com and click on the donate link. Like what you heard today on Vows2Keep Radio? Listen to more life changing broadcasts at vowstoke.com. This program is sponsored by Vows2Keep of Zanesfield, Ohio.