The doctor said I have mild anxiety and depression

Photo by Richard Stachmann on Unsplash

Annual physicals are not what they used to be.

One year, in my early 20s, the doctor gave me a 10-minute exam and told me I was the picture of health.

“Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it,” he said.

I smiled to myself as I thought of the junk food I ate every day.

I was bullet-proof.

Up-and-coming. Young.

“Look out world,” I thought. “If cholesterol, fat, and processed sugar can’t stop me, ain’t nothin’ gonna slow me down!”

That’s what I said.

But that was 25 years ago.

Yesterday, my doctor took an hour to examine my 48-year old body.

“You don’t have any problems yet, but you need to lose 25 pounds,” he said. “With your family’s medical history, you’re at risk. I want you to change your diet and start getting three hours of cardiovascular exercise every week.”

And, after putting me through a battery of questions and spending 15 minutes asking me about my emotional well-being, he said this:

“I think you have mild anxiety and depression. It’s not bad enough that I would recommend medication, but I want you to see a counselor or therapist at least every other week.”

Instead of telling me to come for my next annual physical in a year, he told me to come back in three months.

None of what he said surprised me. I expected it going in. I’m in the worst shape of my life in every way that people measure health and well-being. Some days, I wake up and I can feel the effects of the last few years in my skin, like every skin cell has its own little motor humming.

Knowing that I’m anxious and depressed just makes me more…anxious and depressed. Knowing that I’m in bad shape just makes me want to sit around and stress eat. I would call myself a dog chasing his tail, but a dog chasing his tail is getting a cardiovascular workout. That’s not me.

I can’t say that I’m not struggling with God. The truth is, I feel like God didn’t show up when I needed God most. To say that I’m disappointed is mild.

God didn’t save the life of our unborn child a few years ago. God didn’t save us from the death and isolation of the pandemic. God didn’t save my dad’s life or the life of my wife’s best friend when they got cancer. God didn’t keep me from losing a job, without explanation or warning, at the only place I ever wanted to work. God hasn’t helped me solve myself even though I’ve begged for decades for courage and discernment and stamina. I’ve begged for help and I feel like God did not give it to me.

I built my life on God. I built my life on the expectation that God would always come through, that God would always take care of me and the people I love most when we’re in crises.

But God really let me down the last few years. Oh, I let myself down way more. I’m the kind of guy who takes responsibility. In every situation, I default to blaming myself first. My wife would say I take responsibility for things that are not my responsibilities. She may be right about that. But even a guy who takes responsibility needs help sometimes.

Sometimes he needs a lot of help.

I did my best. I wasn’t good enough. I called on God. And…

Now I’m anxious, depressed, fat, and old, with some of the people and places I love and need most taken from me forever.

Jesus said: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (Gospel of John 8:31b - 32).

Yes, I will continue in Jesus’s word. As his disciples said to him once in a time of great confusion and trouble: “Lord, to whom [else] can we go?” (Gospel of John 6:68).

I’ve pursued Jesus my whole life. To whom else can I go?

But I’m in a wilderness now and in no shape to survive it on my own. I need help. That’s the truth.

But will I be free?

I know from my Bible that those who are free must first pass through the wilderness. Sometimes, they sojourn there for years. So I can work up a little bit of faith to believe that this wilderness of mine is the way to freedom.

But I so need a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

I need the very real presence of a covenant God right in the middle of my camp. I need a God to deliver me and fight for me because I’m too clueless and weak to see my way through this.

I can’t deliver myself. I can’t save myself. No diet change, no exercise regimen, no therapy is enough. What I need is beyond me.

That’s the truth.

God, can I be free?