Before I Could Write About Hope, I Had to Need It

What My Dad Taught Me About Depression, Hope, and the God Who Stays

One of the greatest gifts my dad ever gave me wasn’t the ability to answer every question.

It was the freedom to admit that sometimes we don’t have the strength to.

There was a season not very long ago when I understood Elijah better than I ever wanted to.

For years I poured my heart into nonprofit work. I loved serving people. I loved building relationships. I loved helping organizations accomplish meaningful missions. My role as Director of Advancement wasn’t simply a job—it was part of who I was.

Then one day it was over.

Losing that position wasn’t just losing a paycheck. It felt like losing my identity.

For nearly a year, I found myself asking questions that many people quietly ask after an unexpected ending.

Is this It? Is this really how my career ends?

Some mornings it was difficult to find motivation to do much of anything. I wasn’t simply disappointed. I was grieving. I tried one idea after another to earn income. Some looked promising at first, but none of them became what I hoped they would be. Each disappointment seemed to reinforce the fear that perhaps my best years were behind me.

I don’t think I realized it at the time, but I had found my own broom tree.

Like Elijah, I wasn’t questioning whether God existed.

I was questioning what He was doing.

Then something quiet began to happen.

Instead of frantically trying to recreate the career I had lost, God slowly redirected my heart toward something I had been carrying all along.

Stories.

Family.

Legacy.

Faith.

I began looking again at the electronic file folder with my dad’s Sunday School lessons—the Christmas gift he had given me years earlier. Hundreds of pages. Decades of faithful teaching. Wisdom carefully typed, prayed over, and preserved.

It suddenly occurred to me that Dad hadn’t just left our family memories.

For years, those files had simply been “Dad’s Sunday School lessons.” I don’t think either of us imagined they would become part of God’s answer to one of the darkest seasons of my own life. What had once looked like a collection of old documents slowly became a conversation between a father and his daughter that stretched across time.

As my husband and I begin thinking about retirement and this next season of life, I’ve realized I don’t want the final chapter of my career to be measured only by job titles or promotions.

I want it to be measured by meaning.

What could possibly matter more than helping families remember what matters most?

What could be more worthwhile than preserving stories of faith, family, and legacy?

And what greater privilege could I have than sharing those stories through the eyes—and the heart—of my dad?

Looking back, I don’t believe God ended my career. I believe He redirected my calling. He closed one chapter so I would finally have time to open the files my dad had left me. Inside those file folders wasn’t just a collection of Sunday School lessons. It was the beginning of a new ministry.

For many years, Dad stood in front of a Sunday School class with his Bible open and his heart even more open. He wasn’t interested in pretending that Christians never struggled. He wanted people to know that God meets us in our struggles.

One April morning in 1999, he taught a lesson from 1 Kings 18–19 called “From Depression to Hope.”

At first glance, Elijah seems like an unlikely person to discuss depression.

This is the prophet who stood alone against 450 prophets of Baal. The man who prayed, and fire fell from heaven. The fearless servant of God who challenged kings and confronted evil.

Yet only one chapter later, Elijah was running for his life.

He sat beneath a solitary broom tree and prayed something heartbreaking:

“Lord, I’ve had enough.”

It is one of the most honest moments in all of Scripture.

Dad loved moments like that.

Not because they revealed human weakness—but because they revealed God’s faithfulness.

The Heroes We Put on Pedestals

We often imagine Bible heroes as people who never doubted, never feared, and never became overwhelmed.

Dad reminded his class that Scripture tells a different story.

Elijah wasn’t faithless.

He was exhausted.

After enormous emotional, physical, and spiritual strain, fear finally caught up with him. Instead of seeing another miracle, he could only see the threat standing in front of him.

Dad wanted everyone in that room to hear one simple truth:

If Elijah could become discouraged, any of us can.

There is tremendous comfort in that.

Our struggles do not surprise God.

God Didn’t Start with a Sermon

One of my favorite observations from Dad’s lesson is also one of the simplest.

When Elijah collapsed beneath the tree, God didn’t begin with correction.

He began with care.

He let Elijah sleep.

Then He gave him food.

Then more rest.

Then more food.

Dad pointed out that before God gave Elijah a new assignment, He first reminded him that he was still His beloved servant. God’s care came before God’s commission. That’s often His way with us as well. Our value to Him isn’t based on what we accomplish, but on whose we are.

Only after Elijah’s body began recovering did God begin restoring his spirit.

Dad noticed details many of us skim right past.

Sometimes the first step toward healing isn’t another answer. It’s eating well, resting, and allowing others to care for us.

That sounds almost too ordinary.

But perhaps that’s exactly why God chose it.

God Speaks in More Than Thunder

Eventually Elijah reached Mount Horeb.

He expected to find God in spectacular displays of power.

There was wind.

There was an earthquake.

There was fire.

But God wasn’t in any of them.

Instead, He came in a gentle whisper.

Dad loved that passage because it reminded us that God doesn’t always shout.

Sometimes His presence is found in the quiet.

In birds singing outside an open window.

In blooming flowers.

In the whisper of pine trees.

In a church family that quietly sits beside someone who’s hurting.

Those ordinary moments become sacred when our hearts have learned to recognize Him.

One Question That Changes Everything

Dad pointed out something I had never really noticed before.

God asked Elijah,

“What are you doing here?”

Of course God already knew.

The question wasn’t for God’s benefit.

It was for Elijah’s.

Sometimes healing begins when we’re finally willing to name what we’re carrying.

Dad believed that honesty was part of faith—not the opposite of it.

He also wisely acknowledged something many Christians hesitate to say aloud:

Sometimes we need help.

Sometimes trusted Christian friends help.

Sometimes pastors help.

Sometimes professional Christian counselors help.

God often ministers to His children through the hands, wisdom, and compassion of other people.

Seeking help isn’t evidence of weak faith.

It may be one of the ways God answers our prayers.

Then God Told Elijah…

Go back.

Keep serving.

Continue the work I gave you to do.

God didn’t define Elijah by one season beneath a broom tree.

Neither should we define ourselves by ours.

There are seasons when we rest.

There are seasons when others carry us.

But there are also seasons when hope quietly returns and God gently says,

“It’s time to keep walking.”

From the Porch

I’ve often wondered why Dad chose to teach this lesson.

He wasn’t speaking as a psychologist.

He was speaking as a Sunday School teacher who had spent decades watching ordinary people carry extraordinary burdens.

Families facing illness.

Parents praying for wandering children.

Financial uncertainty.

Grief.

Weariness.

Life.

He knew Scripture wasn’t written for people who always felt strong.

It was written for people who sometimes found themselves sitting beneath a broom tree wondering what God was doing.

Looking back now, I realize that’s exactly where I was.

Losing my career felt like an ending.

God saw it as a beginning.

While I was trying to rebuild the life I thought I wanted, He quietly placed before me the life He had been preparing all along—a ministry built around preserving faith, family, and the stories that point people to Him.

The greatest inheritance Dad left me wasn’t simply hundreds of Sunday School lessons.

It was a way of reading Scripture that always looked for the God who stays.

The God who feeds weary people before asking them to walk again.

The God who whispers when the world becomes too loud.

The God who never abandons His children beneath their broom trees.

And perhaps that’s the story Dad was giving me long before either of us knew I would need it.