Prayer Didn’t Fix My Depression—At Least Not at First | Mark Vroegop & Christine Chappell

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FamilyLife Today® with Dave and Ann Wilson; Podcast Transcript

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How to Process Grief and Depression with Hope in God

Guests:Mark Vroegop and Christine Chappell

Release Date:July 29, 2025

Christine:Once I say amen after my lament, I don’t feel any better—usually. The problem is unresolved. I’ve taken it to the Lord, but He hasn’t shaken a wand and changed anything. I have to live in this uncomfortable emotion for a period of time. What am I going to do now?

Ann:I think this is going to be a good conversation.

Dave:Oh, that’s how you’re going to start it.

Ann:That’s right.

Dave:Okay. Why is that?

Ann:Because we’re going to talk about some things that people don’t generally talk about often, and yet all of us experience it.

Dave:Okay.

Ann:Grief, depression, anxiety, how do we deal with that?

Dave:Sounds like a really fun day, doesn’t it?

Ann:But necessary.

Dave:Oh, it’s really, really necessary. And we don’t have one guest. We have two guests. We got—

Ann:Two friends.

Dave:Mark Vroegop and Christine Chappell, who know each other. We didn’t even know this when we—

Mark:It’s pretty crazyDave:—paired you guys up to do different interviews. Mark in the morning; Christine in the afternoon. And then you’re like, “We know each other and you both have written some of the best stuff I’ve ever read. What’s out there in this area; I’ve never read anything this good. How have you bonded about this? Because obviously you’ve listened and read each other’s stuff and you think similarly, what’s the common bond?

Mark:I think, grief, struggle, loss, I approach it from a largely theological pastoral framework. And then Christine, I think has really served the church well by figuring out how to drill that down into some really specific, timely implications that are the real world in which people live. Taking the concept of struggle more generally or grief more globally, if you will. And then, “Okay, so how actually does this work out in motherhood?” Do you agree with that?

Christine:Yeah. And even just the idea of building a theology of sadness or sorrow, I think, is also part of where this lament conversation comes in because sometimes, we can be focused on loss-related grief from death or in Mark’s case, the stillbirth of his daughter among other things. But we see sorrow express itself or manifest itself in so many other different areas of life that have nothing to do with death per se but certainly have to do with the fall, brokenness touching our lives, and how do we respond to those situations when the hurt is real? But the hope is real too.

And so how do we learn how to hold both those things at the same time, which is what Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy does such a great job at helping us to explore. And then I just take that and continue to, as Mark said, try to hammer that into real life as a mom who may be navigating grief and depression and trying to see what the scriptures have to say about how we can take our next step during those seasons.

Ann:Do you think many people have a theology of suffering? I don’t even know if I’ve really heard that term often, a theology of suffering.

Christine:Or a theology of sorrow. There’s a lot of different types of sorrow that the scriptures talk about. And so just getting comfortable with the fact that that’s a reality; that sadness is a reality, and that sometimes that sadness is an appropriate response to the situation that we’re in. And I think as Christians the temptation can be, “Well, this is a very negative feeling, emotion, and actually I shouldn’t have it because I have hope in the Lord.”

And so now we’re trying to force ourselves to live in this space of hope and we’re inept at navigating this space of sorrow, which the Bible doesn’t say one or the other. It says, “Here’s how you can grieve with hope in Christ.” And so that, I think, is something that we all have to learn; that the Lord helps us to learn how to hold those things at the same time. Which Pastor Mark’s book has been instrumental in my own life in learning how to navigate that, but I know in the lives of so many others too who have read what he’s had to say about lament.

Dave:Now I know you’ve written about it, Christine, grief is dangerous. When does it become dangerous or lament if we’re talking to Mark about it. Can it become dangerous?

Ann:Well, even in your book, Christine, you’re talking about depression and suicidal ideation. Mark, you’ve really been studying lament. How do those two, is that what you mean Dave? How do they fit together?

Christine:Yeah, I don’t think grief in and of itself is dangerous, but I think that there are things that can happen when we are responding to loss that can become dangerous. Or when I say that I mean begin to spiral us downward into a cycle of despair or hopelessness.

And so in Midnight Mercies, I talk about the distinction between a sadness that is safe, that we are through lament and through community, taking our sorrows, casting our burdens on the Lord, talking to him about our emotional overwhelm and the distress that we have, and moving through those movements of lament that Pastor Mark has talked about and has written about before. And in a way that is a safe kind of sadness. Those are good, productive responses to very real emotions that may very well be a right response to what you’re going through.

Even Psalm 16:1, David says, “Preserve me, oh God, for in you I take refuge.” So it’s the idea of turning to the Lord in our sorrow is actually a safe way of processing our sadness, but things can become dangerous when for one reason or another, the Lord doesn’t seem like a real and present refuge in the midst of our distress. And so we may, because of the discomfort that we feel and the impulse to want to escape our overwhelming emotion or our discomfort or just to seek out burden relief, we may turn to other refuges, so to speak, or other means of getting comfort or safety or whatever it is we’re looking for in our sorrow. Maybe even numbing, numbing that emotion.

We can turn to other things like in my story that was self-harm and alcohol, but for other people it could be pornography, drugs, food. So those responses to our sorrow, to our grief, actually create that distance between us and the Lord. And in that way, I would call that those are dangerous or unproductive, sometimes even destructive responses to the grief feelings that we are experiencing.

Ann:Mark, you’ve been a pastor for years. Have you seen when it turns to a dangerous side?

Mark:Well, I’d like to distinguish between, I want to preserve lament as a language that moves me to trust. So in your question, you’re connecting synonymously lament with sorrow.

Ann:Yeah.

Mark:I want to say that I’ve seen when someone’s sorrow has yes, headed in a direction that is unhealthy and is dangerous or they’re trying to find a solution to their sense of hopelessness in all kinds of ways. Lament is the language that actually leads us to a renewed confidence in the Lord. So I argue that if you just complain or if you’re just hopeless and you never end in trust, you actually haven’t lamented. So I want to preserve.

Ann:Yeah, that’s good.

Mark:Does that make sense?

Ann:That’s a good distinction.

Mark:So I think the point of your question though is having seen that, yes, and I think if you’ve ever walked through grief, it’s not only that you have seen it; you experience it—of this sense of hopelessness. I don’t know if I could feel differently again, and what if I don’t?

I think one of the helpful things is that in sections that are lament, that lead us to the right conclusion, there’s a lot of language that sounds like folks are really struggling. Like Lamentations 3, “He has made my teeth grind on gravel. My soul is bereft of peace;” Listen to this one, “I have forgotten what happiness is; so I say, ‘My endurance has perished; so has my hope from the Lord.’” Now that’s true. Then he says, “But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.” And so to me—

Ann:That’s lament.

Mark:—that’s lament. And the question is in the pivot, where is—everyone’s going to pivot somewhere? The question is what do you pivot to? Or you asked the question in a minute about a theology of suffering. I would argue everyone has a theology of suffering. The question is whether or not it’s a biblical theology.

So even if I’m not a Christian, I have a theology of suffering. There’re things that I believe about the world and the universe that are fundamental and presuppositions and the kinds of things that I apply to my life. And the question is whether or not there’s a biblical view of what suffering is.

Ann:Yeah, that’s good.

Mark:So the pivot, I think it gets dangerous or unhelpful or destructive when the pivot becomes something that’s not biblical or the solution becomes something that ultimately is disconnected from who the Lord is.

Ann:I guess my next question would be then if we’re lamenting well, we’re confessing and telling God this is what’s going on and even we’re in it—we’re in the muck, but then we turn and we pivot to trust Him, will we ever get to a dangerous place?

Christine:Well, I don’t know that you could ever predict the future about how can the dots connect on a situation that you haven’t been given the grace to face yet. But I will speak maybe on that just in my own personal experience, because like I mentioned before in the past—and Mark has written on the necessity of waiting, of learning how to wait and lament being an instrumental part of that learning to wait and growing spiritually where you can wait with hope and not just wait with being angry about it or anxious about it or apathetic about it.

But for me over the years as I have learned to lament, instead of trying to stuff down overwhelming emotion or ignore it, or the opposite way of feeling even more hopeless because I’m feeling those overwhelming emotions to begin with and I don’t think I should. And so now you’re all focused—

Ann:You don’t want to feel any of that.

Christine:Right, and so now you’re all focused on your own unrighteousness. “And I know that’s wrong, but why?”

Ann:“And I can’t even lament well.”

Christine:Right, exactly. And so it’s just totally self-focused there. But over the years of learning how to, even in the midst of that overwhelming emotion or that pain or that hurt or heartbreak, learning to put Christ at the center of those experiences instead of myself at the center of those experiences. So thinking about, I’m crying out to Him, I’m laying out what my complaint is, I’m asking for his help. I’m saying, “Lord, I want to trust you with this. Help my unbelief.”

But then you have to step into the next moment after that. And so that’s really where the change I think for me has happened is, okay, well once I say amen after my lament, I don’t feel any better usually.

Ann:Good point.

Christine:I’m still feeling this tension. The problem is unresolved. I’ve taken it to the Lord, but he hasn’t immediately shaken a wand and changed anything.

I have to live in this uncomfortable emotion for a period of time. What am I going to do now? And so seeking to even honor Christ in the midst of that moment, learning how to choose to wait on the Lord, which Mark has talked about being a choice that we make. It’s not that we’re doing nothing. It’s like, “No, this is the choice I’m making is, I can’t do anything. The Lord, I have to trust the Lord to act.”

But then the next step in terms of entrusting myself to a faithful creator while doing good. And so that working diligently component instead of ending element and then seeking immediate relief through self-harm, through a bottle of wine, or whatever the other temptation may be to kind of self-medicate.

And so in those moments that pivoting that Mark was talking about, pivoting to a God-honoring response and dying to my overwhelming emotion. You’re learning to die to that compulsion of being ruled by your emotions in the moment.

Ann:It’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Christine:And it’s hard, and it takes time. And guess what? It takes practice, which means you’re going to be given opportunities to have to wrestle in that tension.

Ann:And I’d rather just go eat something.

Christine:Well, wouldn’t we all. I mean I’m a big candy person. I would love to just eat a bunch of candy, but that’s not necessarily serving the Lord in the midst of my distress. That’s not a Christ’s centered response.

Ann:You just feel more shame after that.

Christine:Right. Then your stomach hurts and then you’re like—

Ann:—wherever you’re hiding place is.

Christine:—“Oh man, this promised me life, and it didn’t deliver.” And so, so turning away and dying to, dying to whatever choices that you would be habitually making that may be destructive is hard. It takes support. It takes time. It takes Holy Spirit empowerment. It takes the word of God, and it ultimately, I think takes this being willing to die to your own self.

Dave:And how about, because I’ve never experienced this. If you’re clinically depressed or suicidal, you’re thinking about this, you’ve been there. Is it a lot different or pretty much the same thing? I mean, is it easier to dig out or harder to dig out of deep depression where you’re really dark?

Christine:Yeah. I mean the opening chapter of Midnight Mercies; I talk about the reality that you cannot extinguish the fires of hopelessness on your own. Just as if you were having a house fire, you would call spiritual first responders to put that fire out. You have to have the support of other people.

There are instances where maybe that support is not readily available right next to you, but in my own story, the Lord is strategically placed, my husband and others. And so to try to do that pivoting on your own may work for a time for some, but obviously we want to promote safety. “Keep me safe, preserve me, oh God, for in you, I take refuge.” And sometimes that taking refuge in the Lord looks like trusting myself to Him as I seek help from other people so that I can be physically preserved in the midst of what may be a temptation to hurt myself.

Ann:Let me ask you this. You both are parents; put your parent hats on and you have a child suffering with depression or suicidal ideation. Man, I’ve talked to a lot of parents, they’re petrified, and they don’t know what to do. Can you coach them? What’s this look like? What should they be looking for? What do they say? What do they do?

Dave:Or not do.

Mark:I mean, that’s a very important and complicated question because in some cases, I think it’s just helpful for parents to not panic and to realize this is a little more common than maybe what we even would realize. And particularly in certain ages within development, there’s a lot going on inside the human body and there’s a lot of conflicting emotions and there’s a lot of thoughts and new desires that are coming in. And so some of this is just the normal maturation sort of process, but you have to kind of ride the wave with your kids.

So one is, I’m not saying don’t take it seriously—it’s a big deal—but to realize, “Look, it’s actually a good thing if this issue is on the table.” A friend of mine, one of our elders once said, “It’s the issues that are not on the table that ought to make you really nervous. The things that are on the table, that’s the keys to be sure that we’re having conversations about this.”

And then trying to get to a little bit of just some of the causes. Are we talking about a physiological issue? Is there something else that’s going on? Is there conflict or is there some kind of struggle that’s pointing us this direction? Not all depression or suicidal ideation is directly linked to some sin issue or something of that sort. We just need to have some conversations about what kind of issue are we talking about here?

And then in other cases, I think the need just to get some help from others who have experience in “So what do we do in scenarios like this?” I think sometimes parents are a little inclined to wait longer to get some help. They feel overly isolated, maybe even embarrassed or panicked. And so kind of staying out of the ditch of not a big deal or a 911 kind of emergency, and if there’s cries for help with self-harm or consideration of self-harm, that always needs to be taken serious.

But just the in-between world is something that parents I think just need to wisely, carefully manage, taking it seriously without just completely losing their ability to be present in the moment and help walk their kids through it.

Ann:It would be hard not to panic.

Christine:This is something that we have walked our oldest child through, and I’ve written a little bit about it in the past and so thankful for where she’s at today, but I was that parent. I was that parent wrestling with that sense of helplessness.

I think of King Jehosaphat saying, “The great hoard is coming. Lord, we don’t know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” And that’s how I felt. I didn’t know how to take her pain and her sorrow away. And as a parent, when our children are hurting—

Ann:It’s awful.

Christine:It’s awful. And with that care can sometimes then become not so helpful because then we want to fix them.

Ann:Yes.

Christine:And if there’s someone walking through depression, the last thing they want to feel like is they’re a problem to be solved. They’re a person that needs to be loved and that’s where the rubber meets the road is like this person’s really hard to love right now because they seem like they’re pushing me away. They seem unlovable and especially if it’s a teen situation, they can be very prickly, and it requires a lot of grace. And so in those moments, we’re learning how to love our kids like God has loved us when we are unlovable, when we’re prickly, when we’re pushing Him away.

Ann:That’s good.

Christine:And so there is a gospel opportunity even just in our own hearts as we parent children who are navigating these issues, is learning how to love as Christ loves when it seems like it’s really hard.

Ann:Christine is there anything that you did because you know about it, so it must’ve gotten on the table at some point. Is there anything you did, or a parent can do to get it on the table? Because some parents are clueless, they have no idea. And you’re right, they can see something. But for those of us that like to avoid any kind of conflict or pain, we’re looking the other way, like, “It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.”

Christine:Well, I don’t want to say that if you have open lines of communication with your child, if you have a great relationship with your child, then you will always be able to thwart depression or suicide attempt.

Dave:It can happen to anybody.

Christine:Because it happens. It can happen. Parents who have great relationships with their children never saw anything coming.

Ann:Really.

Christine:I don’t want to suggest that. Here’s the formula and that way you can make sure—

Ann:I wish there would be. We all want a formula as parents.

Christine:But I do think it is important to have those open lines of communication. And even there is an opportunity for I think evangelism just day by day as you’re navigating this because you can point to the fact that there is a God, His name is Jesus, and He Himself knows what it’s like to feel overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

And so even being able to use these opportunities in conversation to point back to the scriptures, to point to the Psalms of lament that Mark has talked about and be able to show them that there’s the living Word that’s honest about how hard life is, about how hurt we can become as we navigate our problems. And so opening up those lines of communication, normalizing their experiences of sadness and grief.

A lot of times depression is linked to loss. Maybe not death related loss, but loss of disappointment. Or in my daughter’s case, she lost a year of school to a sudden onset autoimmune disorder and so lost life she had, lost the expectation she had for her seventh-grade year. And so navigating those types of losses, they need to be equipped to do that. Nobody naturally knows how do I navigate this loss in a way that doesn’t end in despair? We need help. We need guidance to be able to do that. Our children need us to walk with them through seasons.

Dave:Well, I learned a new acronym today that you’ve got to explain EVAC. That’s new. It’s in your book.

Christine:So EVAC is derived from Pastor Mark and what he offers in Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy but I as a biblical counselor wanted to have something that I could remember because my memory is not so great. And so I changed some of the movements of lament that he offers in that book to fit EVAC, which is the first four letters of the word evacuate. And so wanting to evacuate or take refuge in the Lord when sorrow strikes, when overwhelmed.

And it’s not just sorrow, it can be anxiety, any kind of overwhelming emotion where you feel like you are in deep distress. And we want to turn to the Lord in those moments, first and foremost, for the courage that we need to take our next step in the moment.

And so EVAC is just another way of remembering. E standing for engage God, V standing for voice our complaint, A standing for ask for help, and then C, standing for choose to trust. And so that’s all again from Pastor Mark. I just changed a few words to fit into that acronym there.

So yeah, I mean you can certainly, even as you’re teaching your child this type of language, this prayer language, showing them in the scriptures that this is how we talk about pain and it’s okay to talk about pain. It’s okay to talk about sadness. We don’t have to be stoic. We don’t have to bottle it up. We also don’t have to blow up. There’re two extremes we could fall to. And talking to the Lord about pain is something that can help us. And Pastor Mark, if you want to add to that, but that’s that acronym.

Mark:EVAC is much more memorable than TCAT. So mine is turn, complaint, ask and trust, TCAT. I tried as hard as I could to figure out—

Dave:When we were talking about it today with you, I was literally trying to figure out a way because I do that a lot but yeah.

Mark:EVAC is—

Dave:Now I got TCAT and EVAC.

Mark:There you go. There we go. That’s awesome. Or for waiting yet fast. So I think the other thing just to consider in our present day and age where a kid can get on social media and they can find some—I’ll just use this term, armchair counselor, so to speak, who just starts talking in psychological terms that suddenly now sound very much like their world. There is a sense, I think that every ailment now has an amplifier opportunity in the social media space.

As a result, sometimes teens or even adults can be experiencing some normal level of human sorrow or grief and then be immediately either convinced or grab a hold of the label, “Oh, I am X.” And in doing so, it feels like it gives them agency or even worse, identity because now they’ve got cultural cachet and power because they’re this thing, and then the tragedy of the situation is they think there’s going to be hope once they find and determine that. And that doesn’t normally lead to hope.

There’s an appropriate level of saying, “Oh, this is what this is. There’s a label for this. There’s a category. That’s all true, true and true.” The challenge is, is the pace at which people and on their own are going about the process of just labeling all of that stuff. And it ends up being a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy for some folks.

Dave:I mean, I think the EVAC, TCAT actually works.

Ann:Yeah, so helpful.

Dave:Those tracks to run on that pattern. Do we often get the E and the E and the V out of order. Often, we complain without engaging God, and you’re sort of saying, no, start here so that the source of your complaint is out of a relationship in a wrestling with God. Is that what you’re saying?

Christine:Yeah. I wouldn’t say this is necessarily a formula. I like to think of this as something that helps us to have the right posture in our pain toward the Lord. So of course, if you need a framework to follow and you want to do one, two, three, four, by all means.

But in the Psalms, as you read through the Psalms of lament and you study, and I’m sure Pastor Mark can say more about this, it’s very fluid. And multiple times throughout a Psalm you’ll see a direct address to the Lord, right? All throughout different Psalms you may see a praise here and there. I mean, it’s just something that can help us to have the right posture in prayer that ultimately helps us to bow down before the Lord in our pain as opposed to buck against him because we’re not getting the immediate result or He’s not doing what it is that we want Him to be doing or accomplishing in our lives.

Dave:And when you’re voicing your complaint, you are engaging with God. That is simultaneous, whether you know it or not. And the turn often in the laments is the trust. There’s a pivot. Usually it isn’t early, usually it’s later, right?

Mark:I mean it depends. Normally it is but I was even thinking of Psalm 74. Sometimes the lament psalm, it’s a gradual prayer where there’s a little bit of a warmup and then he gets real. And other times he’s just like, “God, why do you cast us off forever? Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture?” That’s how he starts.

I mean, isn’t that like our lives? Sometimes you come to the Lord and you’re struggling and there’s the “Lord, I’m coming today. I need your help. And Lord, my life’s really hard right now. You know it is blah, blah, blah.” And a lot of times you’re just like, “God, for real.” There’s an eruption because of not an eruption out of anger, but an eruption out of prayer of like, “Look, we got to go for this right now.”

And then there’s other ones where the lament keeps flipping back and forth and he’s complaining and trusting and then complaining and trusting and complaining and trusting. And so you could see there’s just this tension that’s just very evident. So no psalm of lament is the same because no human experience with pain is the same. And I think we just have to be really okay with that; to say that grief is not tame. You can’t tame it.

Ann:That’s good.

Mark:And that’s part of the tension of it. Lament helps, but it’s not a silver bullet. It just gives you a way to process it as you’re on your pilgrimage and there’s lots of other things that you need to do besides lament.

Ann:The thing that I hear you both saying though is that engagement with God, engage with Him. He’s there. He’s with you. And I thought it was helpful for you to even say, Christine, “And you may not feel like doing that or want to or feel like after you do it, it made that big of a difference. But we do it out of necessity, out of faith.” Like, “God, I need you.” And He’s there. He’s with our kids. That’s what I need to remember. He’s with our kids. He loves them more than I do, and He always will.

Dave:And I’m also hoping a listener or a watcher today who’s been holding something in, feels the freedom after this conversation. Hit the pause button, turn it off, go engage with God, voice your complaint.

Ann:That’s good.

Dave:Ask for help and commit to trust. Oh, no. Yeah, I got them right.

Mark:You got it.

Dave:Commit to trust. EVAC works, but no, seriously, that would be a great practical step as a result of just this last 20 minutes of listen to this like, “Okay, I’m not going to hold this in anymore. I’m going to meet God.”

Christine:Yeah. If Jesus could pour out his heart before the Lord in the garden of Gethsemane, and the many other times He returned to the mountains that we didn’t get to eavesdrop on, but this is Christlike. It is Christlike to lament. We see how He did it in the garden. We see Him even echoing or quoting Psalm 22 on the cross. And so surely, if our Lord can speak this way in this posture, we are to imitate Him.

Dave:WWJD, what would Jesus do?

Ann:What did Jesus do?

Dave:He would voice His complaint. If He did it, we can do it.

Ann:Hey, thanks for watching. If you liked this episode,—

Dave:You better like it.

Ann:—just hit that “Like” button.

Dave:And we’d like you to subscribe. So all you got to do is go down and hit the “Subscribe”—I can’t say the word, “subscribe.” Hit the “Subscribe” button. I don’t think I can say this word!

Ann:Like and subscribe.

Dave:Look at that; you say it so easy. Subscribe, there it goes.

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