I wrote this as a way of describing the agony I used to feel when the depressions were bad to a friend of mine who is going through the worst of it …
Meditation on Psalm 143
I believe that about courage. It doesn’t always roar. It doesn’t always show. It doesn’t come easy. And there are the days when it doesn’t come …
Finding the Quiet Voice
“That’s a lie straight from hell!!” With these words, Barbara shocked me when I was attempting to answer her question by analyzing myself and explaining my shortcomings based upon that analysis. “That’s not your Father in heaven speaking! That’s a lie!” she continued, as I stared at her. It took a moment before I registered that indeed, what I had been saying about myself wasn’t likely to have come from God. But a lie straight from hell? I was saying what I really thought to be an accurate analysis of the situation I was in. I would have been open to her saying I was wrong – but a LIE STRAIGHT FROM HELL?? Yes, surely, it wasn’t what my Father in heaven would have said, but……
That moment marked the beginning of my ascent out of the agony of incessant negative thinking. It does take a bit of work to recognize the Father’s Voice, and to know what thoughts are really coming from Him. However, once I got the hang of doing that, once it was no longer a matter of “negative” or “positive”, once it boiled down to “Truth or Lie?” I rapidly found the lies came less often. Within a matter of months, my mind became a safe place to be. And, it still is.
As a bipolar who had been in much, much, therapy, I knew the process of confronting and turning around my negative thoughts. CBT – cognitive behavioral therapy – is good and often quite powerful. CBT is ALSO a lot of cognitive work. It can be exhausting. It takes time, and it is often impossible to do right when the thought comes. Furthermore, when the negative thoughts come hard and fast, they stir up a frenzy of distressing feelings that are hard to process all at once. And, most significantly, YOU are doing all the cognitive processing. It’s up to you to turn the thought around with self-knowledge and observations that counter the negative conclusion. In group situations, others can help, but YOU are the arbiter of what is negative, and what is “true.”
Not so with “lies straight from hell.” Basically, if the tormenting thought isn’t coming from God, it’s by definition not “God’s truth.” It is therefore, in part or in whole a lie. Once I identified a thought as a lie, I just dismissed it. No elaborate mental work required. Just dismiss it! Don’t engage it. Don’t counter it. Don’t sort it out. Satan is the father of lies. (John ). God is the source of truth.
And no more torment over thoughts with those “kernels of truth” in them. God doesn’t speak in “kernels of truth” mixed in with half-truths and lies. If God wants to get your attention, He does it by speaking whole truth – that is, 100% true truth. He nails it. “Kernels of truth” are clever deceptive strategies to get you to also swallow a lie. If any part of the thought is false, it’s not a TRUTH, and God only speaks truth. A soon as you hit a lie – dump it.
And, while you’re at it, dump the entire notion of “negative” thoughts. Who determines what’s “negative?” What’s the standard? Stop trying to replace them with “positive thoughts.” If something isn’t true, it doesn’t really matter if it’s “positive” or “negative.” If something doesn’t line up with God’s truth – it didn’t come from the Father. If something doesn’t line up with God’s truth, it’s not a thought worth sweating over. Period. If the Voice that whispers it in your ear isn’t the Voice of the Good Shepherd, dump it. Fast. That’s all. Over and done with!
Best of all, once you start just dumping something you identify as a lie, the lies stop coming as often. Especially repetitive lies. Pretty soon something wonderful happens – your mind becomes a safe place to be. Really. That’s what happened for me.
Next time, I’ll write about spotting lies and knowing they are lies. In the meantime, know that the one who lies is a thief, and the one who speaks truth is a Savior.
Truly, truly, I say to you…All who came before me are thieves and robbers….The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly…..My [own] hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
John 10:7,8,10,27,28
Of all the encouraging things I can say to those of you who have been struggling with the pain and loss and regret that bipolar so often brings, most encouraging thing you need to know is that if you live long enough, you’ll see how those shattered pieces of your hopes and dreams have come together in an altogether unplanned yet compellingly beautiful life…..if you abandoned yourself to the Great Craftsman somewhere along the way. I cannot speak for nominal Christians, or those without faith in God through Jesus Christ. However, if the agony of bipolar drives you to throw everything at the feet of Jesus – and let go – it is with an exceptional boldness that I tell you the day will come that you have a beautiful life worth living. You just have to live long enough for enough of the pieces to come together that you can see the big picture they point to.
When this scourge hit just after my 31st birthday, the only way to describe it was “tragic.” Coming at the prime of my life, only halfway through preparations to secure employment as a professor in an educational institution, breaking into a full-blown psychotic manic episode constituted a betrayal by my mind of enormous proportions. Now, at 61, I can see that my life – my whole life, from conception to adoption to accomplishment to bipolar and beyond – has been bone-crushingly difficult, but it has not been tragic. It has left me wounded, but not broken as I had thought I was most of those 61 years. But I had to live this long to see it with my own eyes, and believe it in my own heart. Had I checked out even 4 years ago, I would not have seen the masterpiece as easily as I see it today – and it is becoming more clear all the time.
I realize it’s not easy to live long enough for the pain to make sense and be swallowed up in the larger context God is constantly creating. Your family and loved ones will never know how hard it is to keep going without the things to your name you could easily have earned, were you not out of your mind half the time. For me, it was those framed documents on the wall – the Ph.D and the Mrs. One I never earned, and the other I earned and lost twice. People look at you sadly, shaking their head. “You had such potential.” I got so tired of having potential. I ached for actual – and for the most part, it never came in the typical worldly ways. It’s not easy to walk in the world of “haves,” when you are a “would have had if I wasn’t sick”. No one knows how hard and painful it is, except someone else who has to walk the road. My children and family will never know how hard I fought to stay alive, or what it cost me. But I did it. And it turns out, the beneficiaries really aren’t my children or family – staying alive benefits me most. I can see what my life was all about – and it is good. The sting of bipolar, the tragedy of it, is gone for good.
So, do what you need to do to stay alive long enough for the picture to come together. Your blessings are on this side of the River Jordan. If you’re not alive, you will miss them. Surviving doesn’t have to be pretty. There’s no extra credit for gracefulness or good form. There are no deductions for stumbling and muddling through. In the really bad days, you can learn to say, as I did, “Thank you, God, that I’m alive to feel this shitty.” Just keep going. When you fall down, get up and keep going. I promise, the day will come when you will be very glad you lived long enough to see how things are working out.
Acceptance came hard for me. I don’t mean the diagnosis. After a full-blown manic break, complete with psychotic delusions, I knew something was terribly wrong. It only took four months, until the next hypomania began, for me to accept that the “something” fit the bipolar description. Given the extreme highs and lows and rapid cycling from one to the other, I had plenty of opportunity to affirm the diagnosis, and plenty of reason to use it to explain what I was going through to myself and others.
That’s not the kind of acceptance that came hard for me. I realize some people balk at accepting the diagnosis and even spend years explaining away their moods and behaviors in other ways. I didn’t have that kind of difficulty. My difficulties can be summed up by my reaction to a poster I saw on the first psych ward I was ever admitted to, during the very first manic break I’d ever had. The poster said:
The Brain Can Get Sick Too
With utter clarity, as if it were happening right now, I can hear the thought that went through my head: The brain can get sick too? Oh. Then the brain can get well.
Right?
You get pneumonia. You get over it. The thought was so clear, you might just as well have equated it to something like there’s 24 hours in a day. The brain can get sick. The brain can get better. I fully well expected to get “over” manic-depression.
For ten years, I expected, without a shadow of a doubt, to get over manic-depression. My life fell apart. I lost custody of my young children. A second marriage fell apart. I gave up my academic career. All losses I could barely endure, save for the conviction that I would get over bipolar and then painstakingly rebuild a new life. I accepted “the brain can get sick” but would not, could not accept that sometimes the brain does not get better.
I entered therapy and over the course of several years, did some exceptionally powerful work. Still, I could not give up the conviction that I was going to get “over” this maddening affliction. In the beginning, on that first psych ward, faith in God had nothing to do with my conviction. However, as I made strides in managing the condition and began participating in a faith community, I became even more resistant to doing the “psychologically healthy thing,” (i.e., surrender my objections and find the peace that lies beyond “true” acceptance. ) No! My peace comes in Jesus Christ, and nothing is too difficult for God to do!! “Acceptance” felt like “giving up,” “giving in,” and denying the power of God.
Eventually, God showed me that I was fighting over the turf of “tomorrow.” I was fighting for a tomorrow where my brain got well, where I got over manic-depression, where my life would start anew. In earlier years, I fought for tomorrow because today was otherwise unbearable. I fought with desperation. Sometimes with blind desperation.
Now, however, my life is much better. I’ve gained great stability and satisfaction, and through Christ have come to see possibilities where none existed before. So, finally, as a believing person with faith in God, acceptance has come to look like this for me: I accept that today I have real and definite limits, and I am determined to live responsibly within those limits. However, my limits may be different tomorrow or in the future.”
Acceptance isn’t an option. We must accept where we are and the limits we are dealing with. Yet, we must also accept the existence of a God who cares about individuals on a personal basis, a God who touches our lives in response to heartfelt prayers, a God who owns “tomorrow” and a God who is enough for “today.” Living well with a bipolar condition means accepting all of it. God + bipolar = hope.
Bipolar can be an almost unbearable curse for people who have been judged, rebuffed, and put down by people who call themselves Christian. In fact, I would go so far as to say that Christians can be the main reason people like us give up on Jesus. As one man put it to me: “I’d rather say I was a terrorist than let other Christians know I have bipolar.”
I was shocked when I heard that. My experience has been completely opposite. I actually stood up in church one morning and publicly announced my need for prayer because I was having a hard time with my bipolar. I didn’t know very many people in the church, and I had no idea I was running the risk of rejection. Other people stood up asking for prayers. I didn’t see any reason for me to fear doing the same. In truth, in that church, there really was nothing to fear. I asked for prayers, and people prayed for me. They also embraced me warmly and showed real compassion for the burden I was carrying. I know now that’s incredibly rare, but that was what happened. After 15 years, it’s still the case.
I also know now that finding a healthy, stable, and loving Christian community is really hard for practically everyone. Even in my own church, the rich community that embraced me 15 years ago has become fractured and thin. Most of the women and nearly all their children have moved or found other churches. New people have come, but they have not entered into the community life. Established churches everywhere are on the rocks. New churches either die or grow too big for real community. Small groups are the rage, but few offer the kind of in-depth and consistent acceptance that vulnerable people need, and that I was blessed with for so many years.
What I’m saying is this: Our God is faithful, powerful, and safe, but churches and many believers are not. To be blunt, if you go to church looking for Jesus, the fact that you don’t find Him there has nothing whatsoever to do with your diagnosis or your pain. It has to do with the spiritual poverty of the church. That poverty is also the reason why so many church-going Christians say such stupid and hurtful things to people struggling with mental illness. They say stupid and hurtful things to most people who are struggling with anything. That’s because they’re not growing in Christ, they don’t know how to live in the Spirit, and their church is being run by people who think that kind of Christian life is “normal” instead of pathological.
God + Bipolar really does result in blessings and hope and healing you just can’t get any other way. However, Church + Bipolar is a crapshoot. There are some decent churches left in the world, and there are a lot of really good and wise and strong Christians. Don’t stop looking just because one church or one Christian lets you down. More importantly, do not think the church or Christian let you down because you have bipolar. They let all kinds of people down. Move on. Keep looking. It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Don’t give up on God. God hasn’t given up on you.
I read something today in another blog on bipolar that I want my readers to ponder:
Part of the ugliness of this illness (in my experience) is feeling unworthy of God’s grace because it’s exceptionally hard to be happy or thankful or even hopeful. I know it’s not ME who feels all the negativity, but I still feel like I’m disappointing Him, even though I know that’s never the case.
When your brain is swimming in depression soup, when your feelings are so powerful what you think hardly matters, and especially when you don’t have strong Christians in your life who will regularly affirm that God isn’t disappointed in you, what you “know” just doesn’t cut it. I found it almost impossible to get a clear, undistorted view of God’s mercy and grace when I was constantly cycling. Under these conditions, what you “know” about God is a mere mental construct that doesn’t stand up to the rotten life you’re living. You end up stuck in the middle of the Casting Crowns song, “East to West”:
…I start the day, the war begins, endless reminding of my sin
Time and time again Your truth is drowned out by the storm I’m in
Today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from You leaving me this way…
I’ve been there. Scripture says “as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12) I knew that. It was small comfort. For years, I thought God didn’t care about what was happening to me. I thought He’d take care of me after I died, but as for now? “Well, look at what He let happen to His own Son,” I said to myself. “Why expect any better for me?” Tragically, I did not expect any better in those years. This was no passing thought, no “phase” in my spiritual development. It was an unchallenged premise which invaded my entire sense of who I was, and what God thought of me. Were it not for the fact that God was not about to leave me that way, that thought would still be with me.
God Himself challenged my thought. Relentlessly, tirelessly, and of His own accord, God intervened in my life over and over and over again. What I believed about Him was a terrible lie. God did not let it stand. I did not “outgrow” the lie – God smashed it to bits with His own hand. The only thing I contributed to the smashing was an abiding willingness to be wrong. I “knew” what God thought of me, but I was willing to be shown otherwise. I was teachable. I was not a pushover, but I was able to recognize – and acknowledge – God’s hand at work in my life. Eventually, the evidence built up to the point that I understood it was because God allowed Jesus to suffer and die that I could count on God caring about my life before I died.
I say eventually, because it took a very long time for me to be certain about it. I was an intellectual by training and choice. I also had frequent excursions into unreal “realities.” I couldn’t afford to underestimate my ability to delude myself. No, changing my core convictions isn’t something that happened just because I wanted (or wished) to believe something more positive. I changed because, incredibly, God earned my trust. Eventually. Not all at once, but eventually.
Today, I can sing the last lines in that Casting Crown’s song in good conscience. I am included in God’s grace and mercy. God is not angry or disappointed in me. God cares about my life, my suffering, my pain, my illness.
Jesus, You know just how far the east is from the west
I don’t have to see the man I’ve been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find rest
‘cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other
It is with great humility that I pass this award onto Unshakable Hope. Bill has ALS and writes one of the deepest and most inspiring Christian blogs available on the web. I hope you will visit and delight your soul in this man’s amazing wisdom and grace.
This Inner Peace WordPress award was given to me by SimplyEnjoy,
a blogger I follow who writes beautifully on the art of restoring the human spirit through seeking God, practicing simplicity, and cultivating creativity. Her multi-media blog is a high-quality treasure box of wisdom and practical advice for anyone seeking to gain freedom from the things that ensnare our souls. I am humbled to receive this award from her. There is no way to explain it, other than to say that
God + Bipolar = Hope
The greatest puzzle, or at least it would have puzzled me several years ago, is how a person could truly be content and at peace with herself (and with God), if the bipolar condition was not healed. If anyone had tried to tell me I would be extremely happy with my life at age 56, even though the bipolar had not been cured, I would have dismissed their prediction as wholly foreign to the person I am. Perhaps someone else might be happy, but not I.
The bipolar condition was in the way of everything I wanted, everything I valued, everything I lived for and thought I needed to keep on living. I had to get “over it” so that I could go back to school, finish my doctorate, wrest my children away from my ex-husband (who had assumed primary custody), have an enviable life with a second husband and a stellar academic career at a good university. For many years, I fiercely held onto my plans to “get my life back” once the bipolar was cured – to the point that I would not grieve my losses because I would not accept that all was lost. Had someone told me then that I would be deeply content at 56 – never having finished the doctorate, never having regained custody of my beloved children, divorced a second time, unable to economically support myself, and still dealing with bipolar cycles – I would have thought “What kind of cruel joke is this?”
Bipolar, without God, is very cruel. It is cruel to the afflicted person. It is cruel to those who love and try to live with the afflicted person. It is cruel to the children, to the parents, to the spouses, the lovers, the good friends. It’s taken me years to understand that I am a loving and worthwhile person who is terribly missed when I am underground during a depression. I am also a wise and intelligent person, whose counsel is missed when I am on the manic side and my words can’t be trusted. I once thought the only real damage I did to others was the usual destructiveness of a mania, or the trauma of having to watch me go to the hospital. Now I am well enough to understand that simply losing me for unpredictable periods of time is a heartache as well. Without God, bipolar is a cruel affliction that breaks the hearts of many beyond the one who suffers the cycles.
With God, bipolar has been a means of transforming my heart from the inside out, so that when Jesus led me to my green pastures, I was whole enough inside to delight in what His love had provided.
In dealing with the bipolar through my life in Christ, I lost the life I had been holding onto so fiercely. I buried my PhD, my coveted Mrs., my economic independence, motherly satisfactions, and personal significance in the bloody ground at the foot of Jesus’ cross. I gave up the big chip on my shoulder against a God who was not using His power to take away the bipolar once and for all and for good. I gained the holy dreams of my Savior, and a heart that takes great delight in them.
My life is quiet, peaceful, loving, and full of hope. I did not in any way “achieve” inner peace. It is a gift given to me by one who gave all for all of us.
If you click on the link above, you will be taken to an article written by a man who is presently working with people who are enduring severe mental illness. I’ve put it on my bog because it gives me new words and images to describe my experience as a woman who was once mired in the depths of repeated, severe, unremitting bipolar depressions. Although it is written to pastors, and is focused upon the difficulties of being clergy in today’s American church culture, if you read it sensitively, as I did, you will have a new way to understand and talk about the trials of life with the bipolar affliction
God + Bipolar = Hope 