Program: FamilyLife Today

Tommy: I was like Barbaro, remember when he broke his leg?

Teresa: I mean, he was down, but he jumped back up.

Tommy: I kept trying to go.

Teresa: He said, "No, I can do it, I can do it," and we were just, it was, like, "No."

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Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, August 27th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Tommy and Teresa Nelson join us today to talk about what happened when the big draft horse went down. Stay with us.

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And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. You've had times when you've been down, when you've been depressed, right?

Dennis: No doubt, no doubt.

Bob: I mean, everybody's had times like that. Do you think you've ever battled with a prolonged period of depression?

Dennis: I used to would have said yes to that question, but I've now talked to people who have really been there, and I think I've experienced a darkness and a period of darkness and have been through that, but compared to others, I don't think I've ever faced what they would call a true depression in a dark place that they've been and entered into and have stayed there for a long time and still go back to that point.

And it's part of why I was excited about our guests today on the broadcast, really peeling back their hearts and telling their story. They are no strangers to FamilyLife Today. In fact, it would be interesting to know how many times Tommy Nelson has been on FamilyLife Today.

Bob: A whole bunch.

Dennis: A whole bunch of times. Tommy and Teresa Nelson join us on the broadcast. Teresa, Tommy, welcome.

Tommy: Thank you, delighted to be here.

Teresa: Thank you.

Bob: This is actually your first time to join us, isn't it?

Teresa: It's my first time.

Bob: Yes, and I know you're thrilled to be here, aren't you?

Teresa: Yes, I am.

[laughter]

Bob: A little, little …

Teresa: A little nervous.

Dennis: It's all right, it's all right. Tommy and Teresa have been in ministry for more than three decades, been married for more than 30 years, and they have had their ups and their downs and, well, I want to take you back, Tommy, to a message you gave at Dallas Seminary on the subject of depression, and you had some notes that you referred to before you gave that message that prompted you to speak on that subject at Dallas, and I think you mentioned earlier that maybe no one else had ever spoken on depression at Dallas Seminary Chapel?

Tommy: The only person that had spoken on depression at Dallas Seminary Chapel was me about two years earlier from Elijah's experience in the wilderness, and, of course, that was the theoretical deal of what can get you into depression, and then I found myself about a year ago right now, as a matter of fact, just hit me like a ton of bricks; found myself in a clinical – I'm not talking about down, discouraged, under-the-weather. I'm talking about you know there is something wrong with you; that you're depressed, and you don't know why, but it physically hits you. And so it was the first time anyone had done anything on depression other than me in the 70-year history of the seminary.

Bob: I remember hearing about this from a distance, because I had heard that you were gearing up to do like a week-long class on Romans that was going to be videotaped, and you were pretty excited about this whole deal?

Tommy: Yes, I was [inaudible].

Bob: And then the next thing I heart is that's canceled, and Tommy's out of the pulpit …

Tommy: Yup.

Bob: And I though, "Uh-oh."

Tommy: And it literally hit me – if you'd asked me about what depression was, I couldn't have told you. I've been 35 years, almost, in the ministry and been through rough times, tough times, but if you'd asked me about depression, I would have said, "Well, you know, you need to go take a nap and memorize Scripture and quit being depressed."

And that's probably what 90-plus percent of all evangelical pastors in – what – I'm on the Dallas Seminary Board. I know my stuff. I've been through Dallas Seminary, but I didn't really know what people went through when they got hit with – physically – going through a depression.

Dennis: Teresa, you'd watched Tommy in ministry for more than three decades, and you'd been through a lot of things in your marriage and family – he shared some of those things here on FamilyLife Today. Would you have ever described your husband as being someone who ever struggled with depression until this hit?

Teresa: No, and I don't think he did struggle with depression until this hit, but I think maybe he had been kind of, if you want to say, "revving up to it" for a few years just from stress, but it didn't show itself.

Tommy: There was no reason for it – overtly. I mean, it wasn't like a sin, it wasn't like worry, it wasn't like this or that, but it was basically, Dennis, it was overwork. Depression comes – and you're getting a layman here talking to you about depression – me – but depression comes from stress. And it can be stress at an event, sometimes there's huge things that can happen to you, and then other times there's just stress that comes in the ministry.

And guys in the ministry are the worst about it because we deal with struggles, and sometimes if you deal with them over and over, long, long, long, years and years, and you never really take time off, but you just keep doing more and more and more, at some point your body is going to stop you and say, "That's all. We're not going to do that anymore."

Dennis: I think you'll take this in the right way, but because you've been on the broadcast a number of times, and our ministry has partnered with you on a number of occasions, we've followed – both Bob and I – have followed your ministry with great delight, and we've know some of the things you've done. The Bible study – what's it called – Metro?

Tommy: Yes, we did that for seven years; 2,000 people in Bible study.

Dennis: Yes, just this massive Bible study, and then your discipleship group …

Tommy: The Young Guns, yeah.

Dennis: You take the Young Guns and meet with them at six in the morning.

Tommy: Four mornings a week, 500 hours of Bible.

Dennis: And leading a church – how big is your church? How many people attending?

Tommy: There are about 3,500 people show up on a Sunday.

Dennis: And I have to tell you …

Bob: Now, wait, Song of Solomon conferences all around the country.

Tommy: Ten Song of Solomon conferences a year, to about 2,000 people a pop.

Dennis: A little writing on the side.

Tommy: A little writing on the side.

Dennis: A little family on the side.

Tommy: Yeah, two grown sons, two grandkids.

Dennis: Yeah, there you go.

Tommy: I struggled with elation more than depression. I just loved what I was doing.

Dennis: Yes, but I peered back in from a distance, and I go, "Some guys are bionic, and they can just do it." And we were not judging you. I've got more in my own life I can judge than to have time to go judge you, but I just wondered how could you do it all?

Bob: How did you keep the pace up?

Dennis: How did you keep the pace up?

Tommy: I did it because I loved it, and I would run four miles a day, lift weights every day, plus everything else I did just out of pure love. I loved what I was doing.

Dennis: How many hours a night did you sleep?

Tommy: I would go – I'd go to bed, I'd crash at about 10, 10:30, and then I was always up at 5, never would sleep much 5, usually get up about 4, because I was excited about that day because at 6 I got to handle the word with 40 top guys. And so at 6 I would take off and teach until 7. Then I would usually go and answer e-mail, then I would go work out, and then I'd come back and usually take a nap in the afternoon, and then get ready for a weekend conference and head off on a Friday, do three times Friday night, three times Saturday morning, come back – four times on Sunday on preaching, get up and go 6 a.m., and I loved it just because – just – the idea of the Gospel, being expended for the Gospel was wonderful.

Dennis: Oh, yes.

Tommy: And I was doing stuff – that Romans conference, I was in the middle of getting ready to video Romans, and I was just living for that when it hit me sitting in a chair.

Dennis: Okay.

Tommy: Are you going to stop me now?

Dennis: I want to stop you before you talk about the chair, because I want to turn to Teresa – Barbara, in my life, has what I call "anchors." And when I've outrun my coverage, pushed it past the margins, she has this unmistakable way of throwing out anchors, and they usually hit me in the head, because it's got to get my attention.

While this was all going on, did Teresa throw out anchors?

Teresa: Yes, and looking back at it, I think that's why – somebody said, "Well, didn't you see it coming?" And I'd go, "Not like it hit him," but in his unwillingness to listen to what I was saying, that was different, because Tommy always valued my opinion or my counsel or whatever, but he had – I mean – it was like he had closed ears, and I was saying, "You're doing too much, don't take that, why do you want to do it?" And, yeah, he would say I love to do it, but I'd say it's too much, and he wasn't listening. And that's why I think he was already ramping up to what really happened to him, because he was like a big old workhorse.

Bob: Do you remember these conversations she's talking about?

Tommy: I did, I very rarely ever – Teresa has enormous wisdom, and I walked past a couple of things that she said, and she was nice to me, because she's a motivated – I mean – Teresa burns on all cylinders, and so we run the race together. But, in retrospect, she would never try to hold me back, but she was cautioning me. I just went ahead on – if I had listened to her, it probably wouldn't have hit me.

Teresa: Because I'd say, "I think you're doing too much, maybe you should do this," but Tommy is like a big drafthorse. When I was a little bitty girl growing up, my dad still plowed with a big old plowhorse, and that's how Tommy was. And it was, like, just put on more, just put on more, and, honestly, when he went down, he tried to get back up to do that Romans conference and …

Tommy: I was like Barbaro, remember when he broke his leg?

Teresa: He was down, but he jumped back up.

Tommy: I kept trying to go.

Teresa: He said, "No, I can do it, I can do it," and were just – it was, like, "No." And then he really fell.

Dennis: Leading up to that moment in the chair when Tommy realized he was in trouble, did you see signs that said, "Whoa, something is going on here?"

Bob: Not just that he was busy, but did you see things starting to come through?

Teresa: Yeah, like anger. I mean, not just all the time, but the little things making him angry – maybe irritated would be better – that there was just irritation, like, and things that would come into alter his schedule or whatever – those were kind of irritating, and so I did, I began to see little things that, you know, until we were in the hospital, and he started saying, "I've got" – well, we weren't in the hospital, but at the doctor's office where he said, "I have got to go to the hospital." That's when I knew something was not right with Tommy, because it wasn't, "I need to go to the hospital to," you know, whatever. It was, "I've got to go there to sleep, because I'm not sleeping."

And, in my eyes, Tommy was sleeping, and so it was just like it was unreal to me that he was so – just wanted to go to the hospital to get well.

Tommy: It's like you're accelerator is hung.

Teresa: And it was.

Tommy: And my accelerator was hung with the emergency brake on. That's what the experience is.

Dennis: So you're looking at the tachometer, and you see the RPMs are way over there, but the wheels are slipping.

Tommy: You can't stop, and it's like your body – it's not like you've got a mental problem with giving way to stuff, I mean, your body gets hung in adrenalin mode, and you need to shutdown.

Teresa: We thought he had allergies or sinus infections or something …

Tommy: Because I'd get flu-like.

Teresa: Because there was something flu-like going on with him.

Tommy: My body would hurt, and what it was, was adrenalin.

Teresa: I saw panic in him, or panic to get a medication that the doctor – I mean – you know, to where it was causing conflict between us, because I didn't recognize – and there was no reason to recognize, because I didn't know what it was, what was really going on with him, but it was, like, a panic to get medication.

Tommy: And my body wouldn't behave. I was pushing it to do this stuff …

Teresa: Yeah, he couldn't control …

Tommy: And my body was shutting down. Like a big tree, it was creaking and falling, and it wouldn't cooperate.

Teresa: I saw he was totally out of control and not isolated but where he was so preoccupied.

Dennis: Withdrawn.

Teresa: Yes, and like – because he was already thinking, "What's wrong with me, what's wrong with me?" Like, he couldn't hear, he couldn't relate, and as it progressed, I mean, it got worse and worse to where he couldn't enjoy the kids, the grandkids, anybody.

Tommy: The thing was, you don't really – when something like that hits you – in my case, anyway – there was really acute clinical – where your body shuts down. And you don't know what it is. They tested me for diabetes, they thought tumors, they thought stroke, they thought diabetes, trying to find out what it is. All my blood comes back perfect, all urinalysis, it's perfect, all the MRIs, all the x-rays, I'm perfect, but I know something has happened to me, but you don't know what it is that it's produced. All I can say is, and every guy that's been through this knows what I'm talking about when I say, "Your accelerator is hung."

The guy explained it to me, because I had sat down with some specialists in it, and they said – and here is the layman's translation – is that when you go through intense stress your body produces adrenalin. Just like when the jack slips, and the car falls on somebody, and you pick it up – all right, now, your adrenalin hits.

And you produce, they said, what is called cortisol from stress, and that's okay here and there, here and there, here and there. But the fellow said when you do that continually, when you're always in that stress adrenalin mode, what happens is that cortisol shuts down – the leading neurotransmitter in your body that's called serotonin, that he said it was kind of like – and the specialist told me – he said it's like oil to a car.

Your central nervous system works on this, and when it's depleted, what you experience is the phenomenon of depression and of anxiety. They're the same coin, different sides, and they come and go, and it's when your body is stuck, and then it shuts down into depression, and the scary thing is you don't know what it is and all you can do is start pulling back on the stuff. But your body won't respond immediately. It's not like you can stop and Friday and feel better Monday. You have to shut down sometimes for a year.

Spurgeon had it, Luther had it, Alfred Lord Tennyson had it, Sir Isaac Newton had it, Charlotte Bronte had it. It's just amazing the people that have – in the old days they called it "melancholy," but there is something – it's not discouragement – there is something wrong with you, and what's scary is you don't know what it is.

Dennis: You know, I recently had a physical, and I went to my doctor, and we just had a lengthy conversation about a lot of matters related to life and after we'd pretty much finished my physical, he began to talk about what he was observing in other people. And he was talking about how stress today – that most – it was, like, 90 percent of the illnesses he saw as a physician – nine-oh, were related to stress.

And I think, as a culture, we do get addicted to adrenalin and to the next event and the next thing and the next thing and even in the ministry, I mean, Bob knows. There is a tremendous honor, privilege, sanctified moment where God uses a broken pot to minister to other broken pots and helps them and there is that elation that you spoke of.

Bob: Kind of a spiritual rush.

Dennis: Yes, and you can get addicted to that over a period of time, and if you're not careful, as you just described, there is a payback.

Bob: Well, and that's a – that's what I'm trying – am I hearing you right? Because I'm hearing you say, "This came on me," but I'm also hearing you say …

Tommy: Ramping up after a while.

Bob: "I brought this on me."

Tommy: I can look, in retrospect, and see three years before it was continual putting myself in unrelenting pushing without any rest is what did it, and I could see it happening over about three years, but it did hit me, literally, n a moment. My body said, "That's all."

Bob: In that process of going for the stress, going after this stuff, did you let any of your spiritual discipline slide?

Tommy: No. Reading the Bible was my love, my joy, and so …

Bob: Beyond just the vocational side of it?

Tommy: Yes, and vocationally I did everything that I should have done. I was reading my Bible and loving what I was doing, but …

Bob: But it doesn't sound like there were a lot of Sabbaths in your life.

Tommy: Oh, no, there were no Sabbaths. I was – I am an effort guy, and I love being stretched. The old Vince Lombardi deal of life being lying exhausted in victory on a field of battle, I love it. I love being pushed like that. And, also, I'm a quarterback. I was a quarterback in high school, college, and so you've got 30 seconds in the huddle, nobody talks but me, all right? I love to be in control.

You walk up to the line, nobody moves until you all bow – I want everybody to bow, and then I wipe my hands on your rear end, and nobody moves in the stadium until I say. So being a pastor and being a quarterback were great complements.

[laughter]

And Teresa, to be honest, is the same kind of person, her father was the same kind of person. Teresa is driven. If I had died, she'd grieve two or three hours, and then she'd be on her way – maybe a day – and she'd be on her way. She is an old-school Texan, and so we both love producing. I didn't like stopping for stuff.

Bob: Are you living differently today than you were?

Tommy: Oh, gracious, I had to get rid of about 70 percent of what I was doing.

Bob: So you've made some adjustments.

Tommy: I'm a typical preacher now, it's disgusting.

Dennis: We're going to come back and talk more about that and, Tommy, forgive me, because I do not want to, in wrapping today's broadcast up here, I don't want to simplify or quickly spiritualize, but there is a message that you just sent a lot of people – there is a reason for Sabbath rest.

Tommy: Yes.

Dennis: And we do need to embrace that aspect of God's Word, and, quite honestly, I may not be a drafthorse like you, but I'm married to a wife, she communicates to me Teresa, over and over and over again about Sabbath rest – setting a day apart, getting an island in the midst of the activity, in the midst of the pace of life. And we didn't do it perfectly. You know what? She would jerk my chain when I'd go too far, and there has been occasion because, like Teresa, Barbara is pretty goal-oriented herself, and I'd need to pull her back.

But there is a great lesson for all of us, whether or not you struggle with depression or regardless of your lifestyle, you need to honor what God told us to honor in the Ten Commandments – setting apart a day and honoring him.

Bob: A few years ago, Tommy, when you taught through the Book of Ecclesiastes, of course, the end of that book, Solomon says when it's all said and done at the end of things, this is clear – fear God and keep His commandments, and there's a reason why He wants us to keep His commandments. It's for our own good, so that we don't wind up as you wound up – in a period of exhaustion and depression and having to recalibrate your body.

I know when you taught through Ecclesiastes, that was put on video. In fact, we've got both the CDs and the DVDs of your messages from Ecclesiastes available in our FamilyLife Resource Center. It's a great study. Twelve lessons on Ecclesiastes taught by Pastor Tommy Nelson, and you can get more information about those CDs or the DVDs on our website at FamilyLife.com.

You also wrote a book on Ecclesiastes called "The Problem of Life With God," and we've got that book in our FamilyLife Resource Center as well. Go to our website, FamilyLife.com, and if you click the red button that you see in the middle of the screen that says "Go," that will take you to the area of the site where you can get more information about these resources on the Book of Ecclesiastes from Pastor Tommy Nelson.

There is also information about a book written by Ed Welch called "Depression, a Stubborn Darkness," and I know that you would agree that if you want to address the issue of depression in your life, you have to address the spiritual issues right alongside whatever medical or physical issues you're going through.

And, again, if our listeners are interested in more information about Ed Welch's book, again, it's called "Depression, A Stubborn Darkness," and you'll find information about it on our website at FamilyLife.com. Click the red button that says "Go." That will take you to the area of the site where there is more information about these resources. Or you can call us at 1-800-358-6329. That's 1-800-F-as-in-family, L-as-in-life, and then the word TODAY, and someone on our team can let you know how you can have any of these resources sent out to you.

You know, we've got a lot of folks we need to thank this month, Dennis – folks who have been making donations to the ministry of FamilyLife Today during the month of August and have been participating in our 2007 Challenge Fund.

We heard from a listener who has been involved in a Homebuilders Bible study group and said, "I want to challenge others who have gone through the Homebuilders material or who have gone to a Weekend to Remember Marriage Conference. I want to challenge them to match my donation of $20, and some of you have already called in and responded to that challenge, and we appreciate hearing from you.

This is a crucial month for us because it marks the end of our fiscal year, and we're hoping that by the end of this week we will have heard from as many of you as possible as we seek to end our fiscal year in as good a financial position as we possibly can.

So thanks to those of you who have already responded to one of the challenges from our Challenge Fund. Let me encourage the rest of you if you've not made a donation this month, you can do that online at FamilyLife.com or you can call 1-800-FLTODAY. We appreciate your support, and we appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for getting in touch with us.

Well, tomorrow Pastor Tommy Nelson and his wife, Teresa, are going to be back with us. We're going to continue to hear about your journey through a season of depression. I hope our listener can be with us for that.

I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.