And With His Stripes

Christ offers relief from the deep loneliness of depression. He waits to succor us, for He suffered for that exact purpose.
The atonement covers everything, yet somehow we often tend to think that depression is unique—that since it is not sin, since it partly physical and partly spiritual, the atonement might not be able to figure it out. Yet Christ knows and understands. As Elder Holland has put it, “When He says to the poor in spirit, “Come unto me,” He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way.”
Isaiah’s description of Christ’s work in Isaiah 53:3-4 provides us a unique view of our Savior’s sacrifice and love for us: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Perhaps we have not often thought of Christ as “a man of sorrows.” We forget that he had a hard life. He was well-acquainted with rejection, dejection, and difficulties. More importantly, though, the sorrow He experienced was ours. People thought of Him as a poor man who was “stricken, smitten of God”—perhaps being punished by God somehow. But that wasn’t the case. Christ suffered, in a very real and literal way, every sorrow we have ever or will ever suffer. He doesn’t merely sympathize in our pain; He feels it. The scripture continues, “Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows”; “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him” (emphasis added). It wasn’t His problem, but He took it upon himself. He knows how we feel.
I am especially struck by the words “the chastisement of our peace” in this scripture. The destruction or removal of peace is, as far as I’m concerned, a perfect description of what happens in any mental illness. Christ took it all upon him, and the culmination of the message of hope in this scripture is the last seven words: “and with his stripes we are healed.” Because he suffered, we can be healed.
The struggle with this concept is that we may not be healed in the sense we desire or expect. Perhaps we are not healed soon enough or completely, a removal of the illness. Perhaps we are in so deep that all we can do is pray and hope. As long as we have hope, we have something. “Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world, yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men” (Ether 12:4). No matter how much we lose, how black it seems, we can always have hope, and we can always have faith. We can know that God is there, that He still loves us, and that He is aware of us. “For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee” (Isaiah 54:7).