Throughout my journey with depression, I have come to learn many things only some of which were worth the true suffering that I faced. I have experienced and continue to experience the complete loneliness, lack of ambition and self-hate that many have also faced in silence. I lost friends at the expense of my inward crumbling some of which I never got back but I gained something more. I gained a new belief—my belief in God.

I started going to church in the winter of my sophomore year and that was the first time I heard that there was a difference between joy and happiness. It started in a conversation between a pastor and myself. When this pastor told me that I could have joy and not be happy I was extremely confused for I had grown up loving words and knew that her words didn’t fit the criteria for the popular definition of joy.

Joy: a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.

The definition itself contains the word happiness so how can we have joy and not be happy? Her simple answer was, God.

I have wrestled with this answer on and off for what is going on 4 years now (I may be a little stubborn to new ideas at times) and I’m just now thinking that I may understand what she’s talking about.

Happiness: Is an emotion, which can change from day to day from circumstance to circumstance.

In short, our emotions aren’t permanent. Emotions change often dependent upon our circumstances and sometimes it may feel impossible to control these emotions because they happen on their own accord. For instance, when you face a catastrophic loss you may feel a shift to a great deal of sadness.

Often with depression, you may wake up every day struggling to get out of bed and feel a pain so deep you can’t begin to describe it. This may happen as a result of your thought patterns or plainly from chemical imbalances, but despite the emotion, your depression can have you drowning in there can be joy. This joy isn’t something that just appears one day but it comes from following and developing a relationship with your creator.

True joy doesn’t develop until you know God.

As a result of depression in the past I would lose hope because of the way I was feeling, to me there was nothing to live for, but as I got to know God I found that there is so much to live for—he has a plan, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” as stated in Jeremiah 29:11.

God protects his children while at the same time providing us with a free will. God allows us to make our own decisions and experience setbacks that are consequential to the decisions we make.

Through acceptance of God into our lives and the development of our relationship with Him, we receive from Him our salvation.

Salvation: The deliverance from sin and its consequences through faith in Jesus Christ.

This is our hope when there is no hope at all.

It’s good to remind ourselves:

“I’m forgiven”
“I’m loved”
“I’m a child of God”

Joy doesn’t come from our circumstances. Joy isn’t fleeting.

True joy is found in God and the hope he provides through our salvation.

Joy is in you even on the worst days because it is provided in God’s gift to us all. Joy is one of the Fruits of the Spirit.

I find joy in the hope that God gives. I find joy in my salvation. Despite my depression, I have joy.