“When I was at my lowest of lows depression, there was a point where I believe the enemy was trying to take me out.”
WITH HER SHINING SMILE AND BUBBLY PERSONALITY, YOU WOULDN’T GUESS THAT MANDISA HAS EMERGED FROM A THREE-YEAR BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION THAT LED HER TO ALMOST TAKING HER LIFE.
Now, she has returned to the stage with new songs of hope. She is also sharing her journey to give others the assurance that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Audiences across the country have received her return with a warm welcome that has promoted her single, “Unfinished,” to the top 10 in Christian radio airplay and opened the doors for her sharing inspiring story with Good Morning America, People Magazine, Fox News and many more.
“I called my album Out of the Dark because that is exactly where God pulled me out of,” she says. Mandisa suffered from depression and the question of her beliefs after the loss of her best friend, Kisha, whose battle with breast cancer inspired the hit “Overcomer.”
Mandisa felt angered and disappointed because she believed that God would heal Kisha.
But Kisha’s death shook the foundation of her faith. She turned everyone away and began to question, doubt and wonder about God’s goodness. She even began to question His existence, and if He did exist, then why did He allow things like this to happen?
“When I was at my lowest of lows during my battle of depression, there was a point where I believe the enemy was trying to take me out,” Mandisa says. “There was a point where if I continued on that journey, I probably would not be here today. I felt utterly helpless. I felt like there was no way that I could see my way out.”
During this time, she secluded herself at home, keeping her headphones in to tune out the world. The enemy fed her a lie by twisting Scripture, saying that she could immediately be free to spend eternity with Jesus if she would just end her own life.
She started to believe that Jesus would not want her to suffer this way.
Then came a holy intervention, of sorts. “I went into the movie theatre. I saw two movies. One was War Room, and I can’t even remember what the second one was. So, I was there for four hours,” she says.
“When I came out I saw that my car had a whole bunch of sticky notes on it with messages like ‘we love you,’ ‘we miss you,’ and ‘come back to us.’ Then, when I walked around to my car door, there stood eight of my friends. They had waited outside of the theatre four hours for me, and they had an intervention.
“Essentially their message was, ‘We love you just as you are, but we love you too much to leave you there.’ So, they forced me to get counseling, and that finally helped me to deal with the grief that I had been shoving down.”
That intervention and the consistent, intentional displays of affection and prayers from her family, friends and complete strangers eventually led Mandisa to the realization that she needed to seek additional guidance to get out of the pit.
When she was overwhelmed with darkness, it took only one little flicker of light to dispel the gloom.
“Once I let the light of Jesus shine down on me, that was when God began to lift me out of that pit, out of the darkness. That is what I wanted to base the album on, the story of how good my God is and how He is able to bring anybody, including you and me, Out of the Dark.” S
Today, Mandisa refers to Psalm 40:2-3 as her life verse,
“He lifted me out of the pit of despair, out of the mud and the mire. He set my feet on solid ground and steadied me as I walked along. He has given me a new song to sing, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see what he has done and be amazed. They will put their trust in the Lord” (NLT).
Like her current hit single, “Unfinished,” she knows that her heart is still beating because God is not done with her yet. “My story is still being written, and I am still here.”
Mandisa encourages others to be aware and respond courageously to the Holy Spirit’s promptings to pray for another because she knows it was those prayers that helped her out of the pit. “You never know what your prayers or your little act of obedience can do. You could be saving a life, just like you did for me.”
“When I was in the deepest pit of depression and despair, that’s all I could see. I felt hopeless. I felt ashamed. I felt like there was no way that I could get myself out of it. However, the great thing about our God is that He can lift somebody out of the deepest pit of despair; that is exactly what He did for me. Now I feel like I have new eyes to see the greatness and glory of our God.”
