when despairing

And there was one occasion, where he would get very melancholy, very depressed. He would go into serious bouts with depression, and she knew how to snap him out of it.

One occasion, the story is told that he was away and returning home, and she dressed in all black like a mourning widow, and opened the door, and he was sort of shocked. And she was standing there, and he asked her, “Who died?” And she said,

“Well, if the great Martin Luther is this depressed, I just assumed that God has died.”

– speaking of Martin Luther and Katharina von Bora