This is a small book, easy to read in a day, but with power beyond its size. There are no details of experiences with mental suffering, just acknowledgement of how hard life can be, and that we will all be touched by it at some stage. Full of grace and hope, it is deeply practical, and not at all dismissive of reality and experience. Light and beauty in the darkness.

This is a book I will return to again and again and gift often to friends.

To choose to go on is to proclaim with your life, at at the risk of tremendous suffering, that it is good. Even when it is hard, it is good. Even when you don't feel that it is good, even when that goodness is unimaginable, it is good.

This will be a semi-annual reread for me. Dr. Noble's short book seeks to answer the question, is it worth getting out of bed, from a Christian perspective. I'm loving the rise in realistic Christian books that don't mask the pain of every day banal and chronic existence. This was one of the best I've read so far. Dr. Noble walks a perfect line between acknowledging, loudly, that life is a miraculous gift, and a tremendous chore. There was so much hope in this little book and I felt so validated reading it.

Might need a re-read, which is highly doable because this was so short.

I think I found it helpful—the essential thesis is that spiritual well-being is more than just mental health, and that spiritual suffering is more than just mental illness. In short, he's trying to earnestly re-complexify modern therapeutic ways of self-understanding without throwing out the good work that psychology and pharmacology have done for us.

At times, it feels a bit too exhortative, but Noble generally tries to balance this with empathy. As is his wont, the book is framed in literary terms, especially Cormac McCarthy and T.S. Eliot, which resonates with me, but may not with all readers.

On Getting Out of Bed offers no solution to anxiety or depression. It doesn't offer you help to find the source of your suffering. It doesn't give you the solution to feeling good enough to get out of bed everyday, motivated and excited to live. It is raw and honest. But it does help you see why it is important to get out of bed, even on the days where you feel so drained mentally that you feel you physically cannot move. It's the idea of doing the next right thing. Even if you can't do something big, or you don't know what to do, make your bed, help someone carry in groceries, offer a listening ear even when you wish someone would listen to you. Do the next right thing because it honors God and testifies his goodness to your neighbor. Which is the whole point of this book - your life is not entirely your own. It is God's, and our lives are testimonies to others. In simply doing the next right thing, we can inspire others, use our own experiences to help others through what they're going through. None of us can make it without the help of others. We are to live for God and his glory, that's where we'll find fulfillment. There's more to it, so go read it for yourself, I believe everyone can get something from it.

I finished this book a few hours ago, and I’m still struggling to put into words what I liked about it. In a lot of ways it felt like sitting down with someone who also struggles with various forms of mental health and simply having a heart-breakingly honest conversation about why we should keep getting out of bed each day. Because essentially that is the question the book asks repeatedly. Or rather it asks you to ask that question and answer it. This feels like a book for everyone, whether you feel like you have anxiety, depression, etc., you have diagnosed mental illnesses, or just know someone who struggles with these things and want to know how they think, what they feel, or how to think through helping them. Highly recommend