When Stress Won't Let Go
A little stress is actually good for us. It sharpens our focus, gets us moving, and can push us to make healthy changes.
The trouble starts when stress never lets up. Constant, chronic stress wears on our bodies, our emotions, and our thoughts, and it is closely tied to depression.
What chronic stress does
| Habits | We lose sleep, reach for comfort food, and skip exercise, the very habits that protect us from depression. |
| Body | It keeps the body inflamed. That inflammation is linked to chronic pain, diabetes, depression, and more. |
| Mind | It can leave us more prone to depression, even years after the stressful season has passed. |
Where to start
Begin by naming the sources of your stress. Then make a plan to reduce them, or to handle them better. And when you slip back into old habits, give yourself grace. Forgive yourself and keep going. Lowering chronic stress is one of the most important life-giving rules you can put into practice.
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths."
Proverbs 3:5–6 (NKJV)
Case study
A Scholar Close to Burnout
C.S. Lewis (1898–1963)
C.S. Lewis
C.S. Lewis wrote Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia. He is one of the most loved Christian writers of the last hundred years. His life was not easy. His mother died when he was nine, and he was wounded in the trenches of World War I.
A season of overload
By 1941, Britain was at war, and Lewis was doing far too much. He was teaching at Oxford, giving radio talks on the BBC (the talks that became Mere Christianity), traveling to speak to Royal Air Force airmen, and writing a novel. One writer describes him as "breathless in his activity" in those years and close to burnout at different times.
In letters to a trusted friend, Sister Penelope, Lewis was honest about how low he felt. He thought his talks to the airmen were "a complete failure." He felt his spiritual "movement has been backward not forward." He even admitted to mornings when he woke up feeling there was nothing he disliked so much as religion.
"I'm a sad Ass at the moment."
C.S. Lewis, in a letter to Sister Penelope, 1941
It was a joke with a point. Lewis was thinking of Balaam's donkey in the Bible, a humble animal God used to get a prophet's attention. Lewis felt like that donkey: tired, plodding, and still being used by God.
What helped
Lewis didn't hide his low season. He was honest with a friend he trusted, and she gave him "real help."
He also understood that feelings come in waves. In The Screwtape Letters, he called it "the law of Undulation": our feelings and energy rise and fall in peaks and troughs. A trough is normal. It is not proof that God has left you.
His deepest grief
Lewis's hardest season came later. In 1956 he married Joy Davidman, and he loved her deeply. On July 13, 1960, after her cancer returned, Joy died. It was the most painful loss of his life. Here is how he survived it.
He wrote it out. Instead of bottling up his sorrow, Lewis filled notebooks with his raw, honest thoughts: his anger, his fear, and his confusion. Writing became a release valve for his pain. Those notebooks were later published under a pen name, N.W. Clerk, as A Grief Observed.
He wasn't left alone. His brother Warnie, who shared his home at The Kilns, and his circle of friends kept him company. They made sure he wasn't isolated and kept him anchored when the grief was heaviest.
He let God rebuild his faith. At first, Lewis felt God had shut him out.
"A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside. After that, silence."
C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
But slowly he saw that some of his old, tidy ideas about God had been "a house of cards." God let them fall so He could build something stronger: a mature faith that could hold real pain. In time, Lewis found the door was no longer bolted.
Overload, darkness, and deep grief: Lewis knew them all. Honesty with trusted friends, writing out his pain, and a faith that held through the low tides carried him through. Feelings change. God doesn't.
Where are you in the wave right now?
Sources: A Pilgrim in Narnia · C.S. Lewis Institute
Your Story, God's Story
The story you tell yourself about stress
What do you tell yourself about stress? Tap any that sound familiar.
The story God is writing
Some stress is a normal part of life, and it can even motivate you. What would a healthy relationship with stress look like for you?
What does God say?
Trust Instead of Worry
Read Matthew 6:25–34 together. Jesus points to the birds and the wildflowers. Our Father feeds them and clothes them, and we matter far more to Him. Then He tells us not to carry tomorrow's worries today.
"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matthew 6:34 (NKJV)
