Book Review: When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend

This book review was included in the August 2018 Meadowcroft Monthly. For an archive of all book reviews, click here.

As someone that’s battled with anxiety and depression over the last few years especially, it can sometimes be hard to describe what it feels like - Mark Meynell hits the nail on the head with When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend.

Meynell is a pastor who had a sudden onset of almost crippling depression in the midst of changing jobs. In the middle of his struggles, he says the one thing that has sustained him is what God has allowed to be in the Bible. Specifically, he goes to the Psalms, like Psalm 88, which actually states “darkness is my closest friend.” He says:

Psalm 88’s closing words blew me away. Here is no hope; there seems no faith. It is almost blasphemous - God is meant to be so good that he is our utterly reliable friend. But to claim that ‘darkness is my closest friend’ is to appear to reject God. At the very least, it illustrates a lost confidence in him. But the fact remains that this verse is in the Bible. There it has sat for nearly 3,000 years!

The Bible has given Meynell, and all of us, permission to name and grapple with our dark feelings and thoughts. Meynell then freely moves on to articulate the experience of depression, comparing it to dwelling in a cave.

Part II of the book is called “Venturing Towards the Light.” One of the best parts of this section comes when Meynell talks about the importance of friends. “Fellow cave dwellers” - those that also struggle - are important. But so are those who do not struggle in this way. Their friendship is crucial, even if they can’t provide a fix or easy answers:

For I have found that I most want others ‘to be’ for me, rather than ‘to do’ for me. I long for them to have the confidence to know that their friendship in and of itself brings healing, that I don’t need their answers or action plans.

I highly recommend this book to anyone that deals with depression or knows and loves someone who deals with depression. In other words, almost anyone would benefit from this book.