For some, what is not so easy to shrug off is full-blown clinical depression. In 2003, I was invalided out of a high-flying job in London, England, with just that malady. I was sent home from work by my boss, who advised me to see a doctor. For the next 14 years, because of the illness, I couldn’t hold down a job, and my wife, Liz, had to become the breadwinner of the family.

For me, it was a grueling stretch of dark, sinister twilight, year after year, as I watched my hopes, my relationships, and my ability to cope with even the most minor stress, quietly die. Sometimes, I plummeted into a pit of despair that was almost impossible to climb out of.

Eventually, we moved to the United States and found ourselves living in Lansing, where my wife got a job working for our local parish, the Church of the Resurrection. In 2017, the pastor, Father Steve Mattson, who had just come back from a life-changing retreat at the John Paul II Healing Center in Florida, asked Liz to go there to get trained in healing prayer. To qualify for the training it was necessary to first attend a Healing the Whole Person Retreat. She was sent off with the instruction, “Oh, and by the way, take your husband with you.”

A few days later I found myself at the retreat, in Ennis, Texas, struggling with feelings of loathing for everyone there, since the stress of travel had made me a rather unpleasant companion. The communal prayer session opened, and I closed my eyes and tried to pray.

Immediately what came into my mind was an incident that happened when I was eight years old, in which my father beat me with a leather belt. It was not my first beating, but it was the longest and most traumatic I had ever experienced. But as I watched the scene unfold in my mind, Jesus entered the room where the beating was taking place, put one hand on my head and his other on my father’s. At that point, I burst into tears, because suddenly that memory was filled with healing, peace, and joy.

About a week after we got back to Lansing, I turned to my long-suffering wife and said, “You’re not going to believe this, but I don’t feel depressed at all.” She said, “You’re right. I don’t believe you.” “No, seriously,” I persisted. “I haven’t felt this good in years.” It dawned on me that my depression had been somehow connected to that horrible incident so many years ago.

My wife and I were trained in Florida and began a healing ministry at our parish. About a month after that, I called my parents and told them that I had been miraculously cured (without, of course, mentioning how), and about our healing ministry. To my astonishment, my dad, who had always been cynical of “charismaticky” things, asked that I would pray with him during our upcoming visit to Scotland.

And so it happened a few months later. As he and I sat down to pray, he was nervous. I tried to allay his fears and asked him, “What’s troubling you?” He said in a quiet voice, “Well, you probably don’t remember this, but years ago, when you were about eight years old, I–” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The same incident that had tortured me had been torturing him all those years.

I told him that Jesus wanted to heal him of that episode, too. We prayed, cried, hugged. It was quite an unseemly scene! In November last year, my dad passed, and I am so glad that I had a chance to reconcile with him and repair what had been for years a thorny relationship.

There are some lessons I have taken from that whole bizarre, 14-year experience and its denouement.

The first is that, during my time of isolation and depression, God had been doing something in my character that I could never have brought about myself. I was stripped of most of the things I had relied on for self-worth and identity and came to realize that I could rely only on him to define me. Consequently, in a strange way, those grim years became an unexpected blessing.

Second, if you suffer from depression, often the source is unforgiveness of those who have hurt you in the past. You can bring that to the Lord in prayer and ask for healing for both of you. Just as Jesus forgave his murderers from the cross, he asks us to forgive our enemies. The healing is real. Jesus is real. And he wants to heal us.

Last, the crucifixion was the most disastrous event ever to happen to humanity. And yet, look at what came out of it — the Resurrection, Pentecost, salvation open for all who accept it. In the same way, God can transform our suffering and pain into a thing of beauty and a wonderful testimony to his love, if only we learn to trust in him.

At this time of year, as the leaves begin to turn, and perhaps our mood sometimes darkens along with the light, we look to Our Lady of Sorrows, the prime example of sorrow turned to joy, the epitome of healing, and the model for our trust in God.