If you have ever loved someone who was sinking (into depression, anxiety, or thoughts too dark to say out loud), you know the helplessness those four friends pushed straight through.

It took me too many years in full-time ministry to learn that you cannot fix people. The most faithful thing you can do for someone who is hurting is not to fix them, and not to stand there helpless. It is to carry them to Jesus.

It is one of the stranger narratives in Mark’s gospel and I think it’s one of the most quietly radical stories as well. Jesus is early in his ministry, in a house in Capernaum, and word of his healing power has spread. Mark tells us that when Jesus saw the hole in the roof and the man on the mat, he saw their faith. Not the paralyzed man’s faith. The faith of the four friends who would not be stopped by a crowd or a roof.

With almost two decades of pastoral ministry behind me, and my own history with anxiety and depression, I have gotten weirdly familiar with what it looks like when someone gets carried well, and what it looks like when the people who love them reach for the wrong thing.

What strikes me about the four friends is the silence around them. Mark records no sermon, no advice, no diagnosis of too little faith or too much sin. He keeps only the posture: they picked up the mat and started walking, and when they hit a wall (literally), they went over it. The mat is the ministry.

The four friends had a faith that Theodore Jennings describes as “a holy impatience: this all-out, go-for-broke determination that the lame be made to walk.”

The determination is that the lame be made to walk. Not that you, personally, fix the lameness. The friends carry the mat; they do not heal the paralysis. That belongs to the God-man, the one we know as the crucified and risen Jesus. Their job is carrying.

This is what I watch people get wrong most often, and I say this with sympathy, because it is almost always love that leads them astray. When someone we love is suffering, we want to fix it. The impulse is right. What we reach for is often wrong, because we have not yet learned the difference between carrying the mat and healing the paralysis.

The fixing is not your job. The carrying is.

If you have ever struggled with mental illness, you might know what it feels like to be paralyzed in that particular way. Not literally. But the movement you know you need to make is somehow unavailable to you. The person who knows they need to get out of bed cannot make themselves get out of bed. The person who knows help is there cannot reach for it.

We do not know much about the man on the mat. We do not know if he had any faith of his own, or whether this trip was even his idea. Maybe his friends were the ones who still believed something was possible. It did not matter. Their faith did the work. Cyril of Jerusalem, writing in the fourth century, believed a lesson was living inside this passage: that some have been helped because others believed. I have lived inside that. There have been seasons when I could not pray the way I needed to, and it was alright for a while, because people were praying for me. Seasons when I could not hold out hope, but the people around me could see what I could not see, and claim what I could not claim, and speak truth into my life when I could not recognize it myself.

Sometimes the people we love cannot hold hope for themselves right now. This is not failure. This is what it means to be laid out. One of the most underestimated things about the church is that our faith can hold theirs for a while. We can believe for them, and pray for them, and carry what they cannot carry alone.

Jesus met the man at the bottom of that hole. He meets people now the same way. Not after they have gathered enough faith to perform their way to him, but where they are, carried in by someone who would not stop walking.

This is a particularly sobering lesson for Christians walking with someone who is struggling with a mental illness. When someone is depressed, anxious, or suicidal, the church meal train is less likely to get organized. Partly because it is harder to know what to do. Partly because the suffering is invisible. Partly because no one taught us.

The four friends did not have a theology degree. They had a mat and a roof and the conviction that their friend needed to get to the one who heals. You do not need to understand everything the person in front of you is going through. You need to be willing to carry the mat.

What that looks like in practice, what to actually say and what to avoid, is both simple and profound. I wrote a short, free guide called You Don’t Have to Fix It about exactly this. It is for the pastors, parents, and friends who are caring for someone in crisis and wondering what to do next. What not to say. What actually helps. Why staying matters more than solving.

Subscribe to Cruciform Hope below and it lands in your inbox. If you are already subscribed, you can download it directly here: cruciformhope.org/the-guide. It is short, it is free, and it is meant to be passed to anyone who might need it.

Mike Skinner is the founder of Cruciform Hope Ministries, where he writes about where mental illness and the Christian faith meet. He has spent nearly two decades in pastoral ministry, currently serves as a chaplain to interdenominational high school students, and holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies.

Blessed are you, even now. Not when you finally rest. Now.

Blessed are you when the prayer won’t come, when the words run out, when all you can manage is to sit in the quiet and ache. The Father who made you does not require eloquence. The Spirit who prays inside you is near to the inarticulate, and has always been fluent in groaning.

Blessed are you when faith feels less like flying and more like holding your breath underwater. The holding on counts. It counts more than you know.

May you remember today that you are not your worst fears.

You are not your heaviest morning.

You are not the version of yourself you’re ashamed of at 3am.

You are held. Fragile, and held. By a Love that, in Jesus, did not stay at a safe distance from suffering but climbed all the way down into it, and has no intention of leaving.

So rest if you can. Cry if you need to. Get up if you’re able, and if you’re not, lie still and be loved anyway.

You don’t have to earn the next breath. It’s already yours.

Healing is holy. Keep going.

Mike Skinner is the founder of Cruciform Hope Ministries and currently serves as a chaplain for interdenominational high school students. He has over fifteen years in pastoral ministry and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies.

I’m a pastor-theologian who spent twelve years as the lead pastor of a small, local congregation in the Houston area and now serves as a chaplain for high school students. I’ve spent over fifteen years in ministry, I have a couple of degrees in theology, and I spend my days sitting with teenagers and parents and ministry and school leaders in some of the hardest moments of their lives.

I also know what it’s like to be the one in the hard moment. I had crushing anxiety as a teenager. I’ve walked with what doctors call “treatment-resistant depression” for most of my adult life. I love Jesus with everything I have, and I have also laid awake at 2am wondering where he is and what he is up to with me.

That’s what this is.
A place where those two things are allowed to sit next to each other.

Cruciform Hope is honest writing about faith and mental health. It’s for the person who hasn’t stopped praying but is barely holding it together. It’s for the parent watching their kid struggle and quietly blaming themselves. It’s for the pastor who cares for everyone and is cared for by no one. It’s for the Christian who is tired of being told to just trust God a little harder.

Here’s what I’ll try never to do: hand you a platitude. Tell you your pain is a faith problem. Rush you toward a resolution you’re not in yet.

Here’s what I’ll try to do instead: tell you the truth, take both your faith and your suffering seriously at the same time, and point you toward the God we know in Jesus, who came far closer to your pain than anyone ever told you.

Deep reflections. Honest hope.

That’s the whole promise.
I ground my reflections on mental health in a robust cruciform theology, and I also love learning about the latest neuroscience and psychological truths about mental health and mental illness. I like to go deep. And I can’t live without hope.

If that sounds like something you need, subscribe. It’s free, and there’s a lot more coming. I’m really glad you’re here.

Mike Skinner is the founder of Cruciform Hope Ministries and currently serves as a chaplain for interdenominational high school students. He has over fifteen years in pastoral ministry and a Master of Arts in Theological Studies.