When winter settles in and the days shrink to slivers of gray light, something shifts. For millions of people, it’s not just the weather that changes — it’s their entire internal landscape. The clinical term is seasonal affective disorder, or SAD, a form of depression that shows up like clockwork when the temperatures drop and the sun disappears behind cloud cover for months at a time.
But here’s what the diagnostic manuals don’t tell you: When depression moves in, it doesn’t just affect your mood or energy levels. It fundamentally alters your spiritual life. Your ability to pray, to feel God’s presence, to believe in anything beyond the suffocating weight of winter — all of it gets scrambled.
And yet, for years, the church has treated this like a crisis of faith rather than a medical reality.
When Winter Hijacks Your Faith
Seasonal affective disorder affects up to 3% of the general population, according to Dr. Michelle Bengtson, a clinical neuropsychologist who specializes in faith and mental health. But for people already prone to depression, the risk skyrockets — they’re 10 to 20 times more likely to experience SAD during the winter months.
“Biologically, studies have proven that changes in the amount of sunlight significantly impact our hormones and our mood,” Bengtson explains. Less sunlight means less serotonin production and disrupted circadian rhythms. Your brain chemistry literally shifts.
The symptoms are predictable: crushing fatigue, pervasive sadness, increased loneliness, lack of motivation, changes in appetite and sleep. But there’s more to it than biology. There’s the post-holiday crash, the disruption of routines, the accumulated sleep deprivation.
“Then come January 2nd, we wonder ‘what now? What do I have to look forward to now?'” Bengtson says.
Here’s the part that gets complicated: Seasonal affective disorder doesn’t just make you tired. It can fundamentally impact your ability to hear God’s voice.
“Seasonal affective disorder can impact our ability to hear God’s voice,” Bengtson says plainly. Not because God has gone anywhere, but because depression creates a thick fog between you and everything else — including the spiritual practices that once felt natural.
Prayer becomes exhausting. Reading Scripture feels impossible. Church? You can barely get out of bed, let alone show up and pretend you’re fine.
And if you’re in a church culture that treats mental health struggles as evidence of weak faith, this only compounds the problem. You start to wonder: Am I not praying hard enough? Is this my fault?
“For many, there’s this implicit assumption that if you’re really walking with God, you shouldn’t struggle with depression,” says Judah Smith, lead pastor of Churchome. “But that’s just not biblical.”
“If we were to apply current clinical diagnostic criteria 2,000 years ago, there are several biblical figures who probably would have been diagnosed with depression: Jeremiah, Job, David,” Bengtson notes. These weren’t people lacking in faith. They were deeply devoted to God. And they still wrestled with despair.
Bengtson offers a reframe: Think of winter not as death, but as dormancy.
“The winter months look so barren. Everything appears dead, but it’s not. It’s a season of wintering,” she explains. “If the land doesn’t have winter rest, the soil gets depleted.”
The metaphor works because it resists the impulse to spiritualize away the struggle. Winter is real. Depression is real. But neither negates God’s presence — even when you can’t feel it.
She points to John 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.” But — and this is crucial — she acknowledges the cognitive dissonance.
“When we’re struggling with seasonal affective disorder, it can feel like darkness has overcome us,” she says.
That tension matters. Because faith isn’t about denying reality. It’s about believing something true even when everything in your immediate experience suggests otherwise.
“Mental health is the message of Jesus,” Smith says. He points to the story of Mary and Martha. When Martha is anxiously running around, Jesus doesn’t tell her to pray harder. He says, “You’re anxious. You’re worried. Come, sit with me.”
“Jesus cared about the state of people’s minds,” Smith explains. “He saw their anxieties, their inner turmoil. He didn’t brush it off. He made space for it.”
What Actually Helps
Bengtson provides concrete strategies: light therapy lamps. Getting outside for 10- to 15-minute walks, even when it’s cloudy. Vitamin D supplementation. Planning small joys — she and her daughter schedule “Saturday fun days” with simple activities to look forward to. Starting with just 5 minutes of exercise.
These aren’t substitutes for faith. They’re acknowledgments that we are embodied creatures whose spiritual lives are inseparable from our physical and mental well-being.
Smith has become increasingly transparent about his own mental health practices. He talks about therapy from the pulpit. He texts friends asking them to pray about intrusive thoughts.
Smith shared recently, “I texted my friend the other day, ‘All I can think about is other beautiful women. Will you pray for me?’ Because I’m married to one, and I’d like to think about her, but my mind is distracted. We all have impulses, desires and feelings. Can we talk about them?”
This kind of honesty makes some Christians uncomfortable. But Smith also gets emails from people who have never felt like they could belong in a church saying, “That’s the first time I’ve felt like I could.”
The church is slowly changing its posture toward mental health. But slowly isn’t fast enough for the people who are suffering right now, in the dark months of winter, wondering if God has abandoned them.
The answer is no. But arriving at that truth requires more than Bible verses. It requires an honest reckoning with how depression works and how faith communities can actually help.
“If pastors aren’t willing to talk about their own struggles, how can we expect others to?” Smith says. “If we keep treating mental health like a secondary issue, how can we claim to be following Jesus, who centered his ministry on healing the broken?”
The church has spent too long offering spiritual band-aids for wounds that need actual treatment. What people with seasonal depression need isn’t more theology about suffering. It’s communities willing to sit in the dark with them without demanding they pretend the light is on.
