Thanking God for Depression, Lessons on Marriage, and Being Teachable

"I had to say, Lord, thank you that I'm depressed. And I'm willing to thank you for this. And if I never get better, I'm still going to praise you."

Below is a snippet of a conversation with Barb Turner, a 77-year-old woman of God. In middle school, she went through an emotionally traumatic experience that haunted her into adulthood and later catapulted her into a deep depression. If you prefer listening, you can listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

What have you learned about God that you wish you’d known when you were younger?

One of the biggest things I've learned is that He is wise and He wants us to be wise. Proverbs is full of wisdom, but you know, He wanted Samuel and Saul and David and all of them to be wise as they were making decisions and they would go against Him.

So what I've learned is that He really wants to be in your life. He wants to fully be in your life and He has wisdom for you and He has guidance for you and direction and you just have to tap into Him. He's right there and then, as you grow older in the Lord, you understand the Holy Spirit is actually living inside of you and he is prompting your mind and your thoughts and so forth.

This phrase that has become one of my life phrases is asking the question, ‘What is the wise thing for me to do based on my present circumstances, based on my past experiences, and based on my future hopes and dreams?’ And that is such a tremendous statement that I have lived my life now on what is the wise thing for me to do at this point.

What’s the most important lesson(s) the Lord has taught you over the years?

One of the most important character qualities is to be teachable, to realize you don't know everything and the willingness of your heart and mind to learn from all different sources.

And one of the things that I learned in a very hard way was in my marriage. We had the most amazing love story. It was one of those God-given love stories and we just thought we were going to be happily ever after. And we came down here 53 years ago and my husband got in the real estate business and he literally just completely turned.

He just became obsessed with making money. His language changed, his values changed. So I'm like, I was married to a Christian and now this man is just totally different. He didn’t want me to read the Bible, didn't want me going to church.

So one of the biggest things that God did in my life is put me in a class where this woman was teaching about Christian marriage and I'm like, I already know all that. I've been a Christian since I'm five years old. What is it I don't know?

And I really honestly, I had that attitude. I kept thinking, I don't know what it is I don't know. And I sat there and as I listened to this gal teach from her heart, I mean, my heart was broken because I realized that I had no idea some of these principles like the differences between men and women.

And one of the biggest differences is that men need to be respected and they need to sense your respect from them and let them lead you. And they're really designed to be respected. And I think we women have gotten our little power going and we don't express that to them. So that was huge in my life was a marriage.

And I remember being in the car after I left that class and I just was weeping and I put my head on the steering wheel and I said, God, I really guess I don't know anything about marriage. And if you're willing to teach me, I'm willing to listen.

So I went home that night and I thought, okay, the first thing I've got to work on is respecting my husband. I literally could not think of anything at that point in the marriage because he was disgusting me. And I remember going in and telling him something that I respected him about and almost vomited because I felt so weird talking to him that way.

But anyway, I went on a journey. It was a long journey of just loving him, not just loving him, respecting him, and letting him be the leader. You know, men are more into facts, and I'd want to have these big, long emotional discussions. And I learned that that is not the way they function. You know, they want to fix things, where you need to talk through things. And I learned those principles and all of that. But that was huge…and it was really a surrender to Lord, teach me your ways and not my ways.

In what area of your life has the Lord been most victorious?

Well, when we were one of the ones starting Hilton Head Christian Academy, everybody wasn't happy. I mean, trying to start a school is like, we were crazy. And, you know, we wanted to start a school with teachers and curriculum and all of that stuff. And it was just one of the hardest things that we've ever done.

But, my point is that I was still trying to make everybody happy. If the students weren't happy, I'd try to think of something fun we could do. If the teachers weren't happy, we'd try to get a new teacher.

Well, what ended up happening was I ended up with a very serious clinical depression. But this is where the Lord was so amazing, because I couldn't even lift my head off of the washing machine. I didn't want to live, I had no desire to live.

And God did several things. One, I was on the way over to Savannah one night. I wanted to lean out the door and fall out the door, but I didn't, thank God. And we went into a bookstore and I was thinking, I'm looking at all these Christian books going, I've read that, I've read that.

And there was a little book in the corner called A Joy I’d Never Known by Jan Dravecky. And she had suffered with clinical depression. And that book literally saved my life. And I just found this book in this little corner of a bookstore.

And then another thing that happened that was unbelievable, there was this awesome counselor in Savannah that many people on the island had gone to. And he called me. And he said he never calls patients. And he said he had heard about me and he said he wanted to help me.

So I met with him for six months and he put me in isolation. I couldn't see anyone for six months. And all of the pain from all of the junior high experiences all came out, a lot of the suffering that I'd gone through during those years all came out. He began to teach me God's ways and dealing with this obsession of getting people to like me.

He has a phrase he used to say, because I was always afraid of people being mad at me, and he used to say, ‘If they're mad, they're just going to have to get glad.’ And that little phrase would get me through things.

Anyway, I would say that was really the biggest thing that came out of that. I mean, it was so horrible. Depression is a horrible thing to have. And no one really understands it until you've gone through it. It's just, you just don't want to live.

But what I had to learn, and this was huge for me, and it has been huge since then, is I had to say, Lord, thank you that I'm depressed. And I'm willing to thank you for this. And if I never get better, I'm still going to praise you. And I remember that being a real moment of surrender.

And I've had to surrender on other things. I had to surrender on my marriage. I had to surrender with kids on different things. But that was huge for me to go, Lord, I may never get better. Well, I did get better and I ended up teaching curriculum for 14 years and I was so happy and God was using all that pain for His glory and His good.

A Word on Friendships:

“Not everybody can be your best friend. So there are actually levels in friendship. There's close, there's intimate, there's casual. And I learned that you can be casual friends with people. They don't have to like you…But if you learn what level you're on, then you can be wiser about everybody not liking you all the time because they're just a casual friend.

And I learned that intimate friends are very few. You only have a few intimate friends. And they can speak the truth to you, and you can speak the truth to them. But close friends need to be paddling the same direction that you're going.”

Other Wise Words Worth Echoing:

-“There needs to be character development in you growing in the Lord. And one of the most important character qualities is to be teachable, to realize you don't know everything and the willingness of your heart and mind to learn from all different sources.”

-“Me is not the center of life. And we have been really sort of duped into that thinking, what about me? When really, it's about God. And He wants to live in you. You know, ‘I'm crucified with Christ. It's no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me.’ And that's such a big difference, looking at it that way.”

-“It’s very important the decisions we make because they follow us down the timeline of life. That's why I believe it is so important to be soaked in the Word of God and to really be hungry to learn.”

-“He's a God that loves us and knows us, so He knows what we need. We just have to be willing to say, ‘Lord, You've got my house, You've got my kids, You've got my looks, You've got my clothes, You've got my everything.’ You just give Him everything. Let Him have it and then He’ll do amazing, amazing things.”

-“I know this sounds maybe trite, but I really think being teachable is huge. I just think it really is. If we're not teachable, we miss out on so much that's there. And being willing to surrender, really being willing to say, Lord, I don't like this in my life, but I'm going to thank you for it, and I surrender it to you.”

- “We can't conform to the way the world is thinking. We need to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, and then we can live that life that is righteous before Him. But your thinking has to be filled with truth because it's a battle. And Kay Arthur, she was a famous Bible teacher, she said, ‘You need to know that you know that you know the Word.’”

Listen to the full conversation on Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube.

Thank you for being here,

Katharine

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