When her husband experienced a mental health crisis and family life became overwhelming, Emily Darby found herself desperate for things to change. She shares how an unexpected move, the support of loved ones and a return to song writing helped her discover God’s healing and hope in the midst of heartbreak.
It was an exciting adventure moving to London to start our married life. My husband Jon had done a training course with a church there the year before, and we were eager to see what God had in store for us. I started my training as a secondary school French teacher, and after a while, Jon began working for our church.
Our weeks were full, fast-paced and intense, and we chose to revolve our time and energy around church ministries and activities, trying to love Jesus and others through all we were doing. We were burning the candle at both ends, though. In 2017, Jon had a breakdown and was diagnosed with severe depression, which he had, in fact, been suffering from for some years. We had a toddler who didn’t sleep, and I was seven months pregnant with our second son. I remember crying myself to sleep, feeling trapped and desperate for life to be different.
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One day, I was speaking to my mum on the phone, who was really worried about us. ‘Why don’t you come and move in with us while you’re on maternity leave, so we can support you?’
In a matter of weeks, we had given away furniture, packed our boxes and were moving to Lancashire, with just a few weeks to prepare for the arrival of our son, Eden – a name that pointed to the spacious place we were being led into.
Moving in with my parents felt like I could breathe again
Moving in with my parents felt like I could breathe again. It was a place of refuge and a time to heal. Jon was able to recover slowly, and I was so grateful for support with our little boys. I reconnected with friends I had grown up with and quickly knew that we would stay in Lancashire. I had written songs since my teens, but I found myself at the piano more than ever, asking God to make us whole.
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After a couple of years of living with my mum and dad, we experienced another family trauma, and I was utterly heartbroken at what someone so close to me had been through. The pain, grief, anger and anxiety that I experienced were overwhelming. It was songwriting that gave a voice to my pain, and sitting at the piano became my main place of therapy. Little did I know that many of these songs would become an album some years later and would be a source of peace and hope to others.
It was Jon who encouraged me to start recording them. Once the boys were asleep in the evenings, we would set about recording in our little makeshift studio. We soon realised, though, that it would be years before we could record an album’s worth of songs, and we couldn’t take them to the level of quality we wanted. We started to consider working with a music producer. One morning, I felt God say, ‘I want to give you the best.’ This person was Pete Yelland-Brown, an incredibly gifted producer who journeyed with us to create my album, Making Me Whole.
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I have been amazed at the many stories I’ve heard of the way these songs have touched people as they have been listened to around the world
I have been amazed at the many stories I’ve heard of the way these songs have touched people as they have been listened to around the world, in the cars of my work colleagues, on hospital and local radio stations, and as we have performed them at church events, in school assemblies and at a local music festival.
I have particularly loved partnering with churches to host lovely evening events, where I perform my album with a live band and share the stories behind the songs. My heart is for people who don’t know Jesus yet to experience his love through our music and to have the opportunity to experience the same process of healing and wholeness that I was led through as I wrote these songs.
Like the kintsugi pot I chose for my album cover, life can feel so cracked, but it can also shine with the golden work of God as he carries us through our pain, tenderly restoring our lives and leading us to spacious places in which we can flourish.
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