In the palm of His work-worn hand

Testimony Blog

A month ago, I challenged my friends in the blogosphere to put up a testimony in honor of Easter.  Here is one of mine.   Granted, this was a few years ago now, but the moment represented a turning point in a long struggle with anxiety and doubt.  Or perhaps turning point isn't the right word.  Maybe a moment of foundation in what felt like slow free fall.   It might seem a little presumptuous to write about mental illness just after Pastor Rick Warren's son ended a long struggle in suicide, but it should be a comfort to know that God never really abandons us, which is what he showed me.

"I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand." 

                                                                                                                                                ~John 10:28

Our society once had a notion that the brain was independent.  All we needed to do to acheive health an happiness was insert the proper information.   Modern science, both social and medical, is proving this wrong on a daily basis, but the idea still persists in a lot thought cultures.  Just think about the right  things, and you can't help but be happy and healthy and strong.

In the face of this assumption, I define depression as the incapacity to process all of the information.  It's a screen that keeps the evidence of the positive out of the part of the mind where information becomes part of daily living and believing.  A person suffering from depression can grasp at positive certainties like the love of God, but they never seem as concrete as the ache that sits on the shoulders of the soul and bends the whole body over.  The soul hesitates to touch life because life hurts, with the result that the sufferer is driven farther and farther under the screen of negativity.   A negative mindset will perpetuate itself.  The brain gets used to the negative chemical balance and doesn't want positive thoughts.  They cause cognitive dissonance, and that takes energy. 

Some sufferers cope with addictive substances or  reckless behavior.  Some  commit suicide.  Some people develop a fantasy world, and that was what I did.  My husband was deployed for half of the year I'm an introvert by nature.  The people I relate to naturally/ easily are very few.  I didn't the strength to go out and make myself interact with people and make friends, so I wove a set of protective fantasies and lived in them five or six days a week.  The fantasies I wove were not healthy ones.  I dreamed of slavery, endless toil, exploitation, and defeat.  I knew that I was a mess, and still I clung to those stories, those worlds because they were titillating.  They gave me (the author)  control.  I would sit in them for hours.  I fought it when I was conscious enough, but I never fought it whole heartedly, and I never got close to winning.  I began to want them more than my relationship with my husband, more than my relationships with my church, and more than my relationship with God. 

I remember quite distinctly crying out to  God one afternoon, and he told me, "You have to cut off that hand.  If you want that, it's going to take you away from me."  I looked at my mind and saw it for the squalid mess that it was, and I said to the Lord, "Right now, I would rather have this than You." I recoiled from the idea immediately, but it  was the truth.  I wouldn't let him take it, and I knew where it would go.

                A few months later, I was listening to Martin Luther: In His Own Words.  It's an audiobook (available at www.christianaudio.com) of some of Luther's sermons and writings.  I don't remember what set me off, but suddenly I was in that same place that Luther was before he stumbled on Romans 1:17:   convicted, hopeless, and hysterical.  I literally stumbled around my living room, pulling on my hair and wringing my hands.  It was dark (literally, the only light in the room was from the computer screen.  Did you know that depressed people will avoid sunlight and color?  More of the mindset trying to protect itself.), the house was empty, and I had rejected God to his face.  I paced the room for I don't know how long, and eventually I ended up crawling into a corner and curling up in a ball. 

As I huddled under my arms, facing the thought of the rest of my life and eternity without God, another reality descended on me.  That's the only way to put it.  I was still in my living room, but at the same time, I was sitting in the hand of God. I could see the whorls in his palm.  I could feel the flesh.  The air above me was dark, and everything was lit from below.  I crawled to the edge of the hand and looked over, and I saw the flickering fires of hell.  And God said to me, "If you want over, you're going to have to jump because I am not going to let you fall."  I pushed against the flesh of his hand, and it was solid.  It was the most solid thing in the universe.  I crawled back from the edge of his hand and curled up in the center of the palm and cried. 

That wasn't the end of my struggle with depression.  Even now, five years later, I still have hopeless hours and afternoons.   But I was never allowed to fall that low again. Whenever I came to a point of wondering if God really loves me, I could go back to that moment and say, yes, He really does.   After the Boo was born, I began to get treatment, and the resilience of my mind improved.  I remember poignantly the moment I looked up and realized all over again that the sky was blue.   And in the intervening time, there have been numerous moments when I felt the hand of God.  Sometimes he was pushing me away from a negative behavior.  Sometimes he was reminding me where my thoughts would lead.  I have had further visions of creatures from hell and guardian angels.  I have had checks put on my thoughts through no impulse of my own.  I have had sudden moments of perspective when my focus suddenly expanded, and I could see all the good that I had been ignoring in order to focus on one or two troublesome details.  Yes, God has been very good to me.

                "Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things."                                                                                                                               ~Philippians 4:7-9

I suppose at this point, it's natural to ask why God let that happen to me. Like the  psalmist, I could have cried, "Lord, where are you?  What did I do to deserve this?"  Because it did seem like this was something visited on me.  I've always had an anxious, introverted personality.  I couldn't help being alone (or so I thought).    But three pertinent facts convince me that I have no reason to blame God.

Fact #1.  We are responsible for the content of our thoughts.  This pertains not only to things like hatred or lust but also to more "harmless" occupations like anxiety or negativity.  That's not to say that I brought depression on myself, but I did develop a mental atmosphere where depression could grow.  The Apostle Paul specifically rebukes anxiety, even under the most threatening circumstances.  I perpetuated my fears and my isolation.  I believed and repeated lies inside my head, whether the lie was that no one would want my company, that I had to be strong on my own, or that there is a certain romance in dark and destructive things.  And as modern psychology catches up with the Bible, we have discovered that thoughts have physical and emotional consequences.  What I did to my brain was the psychological equivalent of playing with a basket of used tissues.  Of course my brain was continuously sick. 

Fact #2.  We aren't as strong as we think we are, and that again is our fault, not His.  The fact is that no human being can achieve complete  health, and strength in the face of every circumstance.  This may seem like a "duh" revelation, but it was a revelation to me.  We all have an ideal of perfection, but we seem to forget on a regular basis that because of the fall, humanity is constitutionally incapable of and disinclined to maintain perfection.  Total reliance on God is more than an attitude of awe or the practice of living in a godly manner.  It's the constant awareness  that he keeps us together in the best and worst of times.   It's seeing yourself as a leaf of inspirited grass on the cosmic level and rejoicing in the fact that by God's grace you are still growing.  A constant acknowledgement of that fact keeps the mind in constant perspective. 

 Fact #3. Pride is not always indicated by an attitude of superiority.  Sometimes its clearest symptom is a helpless desperation.  Lots of people have died rather than surrender that last shred of  pathetic human dignity and submitting.  Simply put, I could have asked for help a lot sooner, but I thought it wasn't allowed.  That's pride, in an inverted sort of way.  I didn't want to admit how ridiculous I was or how wrong I was.  And when I asked for help, I didn't want to take the advice I had been given, at least not on an extended basis.  I wanted to believe that it wouldn't work.   I had the arrogance (because that's what it is)  to believe at times that my case was beyond even the hand of God. 

On the other hand, just like the man born blind, this didn't come on me because anyone sinned in particular.  I didn't deserve it anymore than I deserve a case of the flu.  My circumstances were difficult.  Military life wreaks havoc on the hearts and minds of service member and spouse alike.  Half of the Navy wives I knew were on some sort of psychotropic drugs.  I am not socially programmed to jump into unfamiliar situations, and I am inclined to hysteria and obsession.  I didn't make myself that way.  It's the way I've always been.  The factors for depression were all there, and I firmly believe that some of it was and is spiritual warfare.  Why did all that come on me?  So that the glory of God could be revealed.  So that I could say from experience that I am weak and he is strong; that I really am a wretch and he really did save me.  So that when I am lifted up on eagles' wings, I know whose power makes me soar.  So that I will be constantly aware of the hand of God in me, around me, above me, and particularly beneath me, and I will stop underestimating his capacity to hold and protect my life.   

 

Note on stress and doubt: It's easy to hold the father of the demon possessed boy  in Matthew 9 up as an extreme of low level faith --"If you can do anything. . . I believe.  Help my unbelief."  But consider what he had been through.  Years and years of watching his son constantly for fear of danger, maybe avoiding fire or water or anything remotely dangerous in order to protect his son.  Long years of dread, worry, and expecting the worst would beat down anybody's faith.  Add to that the isolation that the stigma of his son's affliction would cause, and it's no wonder he was subject to unbelief.  Word of what Jesus could do had probably awakened his last hope again, and he was probably crawling to Jesus with the last scrap of faith that he had. 

Consolation on the loss of a balloon

Have you ever had one of those moments when the full surreality of your actions comes home to you?  Not in a bad way.  There's just something in the moment that says, "This is really ridiculous, even if it is absolutely necessary at this moment." 

For example, today, my daughter's balloon died.  It was one of those balloons made from a blown up rubber surgical glove.  Her grandpa made it for her.  When I was little, we made them into turkeys, but Boogaloo is fascinated by sea creatures, so hers was an octopus.  She kept this thing alive for a month and a half.  She tied yarn on it and led it around the house.  She accidentally cut the knot off the top, and we had to tie another one because the balloon could not be allowed to die. 

Well, today, it died.  Popped.  Burst in two.  There was no saving this balloon. 

She came into my room.  "Mommy, go to Grandpa and Grandma's house." 

I looked at her in confusion.  "Why?"  We weren't planning a trip any time soon.

She held up the pieces of her broken balloon. 

I understood.  "Oh, sweetheart.  I'm sorry your balloon broke, but we're going to have to wait awhile before we get a new one." 

Consequently tears.  She fled back to her room, and I followed.  We sat down on the bed and looked at the misshapen pieces of blue latex.

"It was a good balloon, wasn't it?" I asked.  "You had fun with it.  You tied it to strings and led it around the house."  Immediately, I felt a little silly, eulogizing a balloon. I mean, it's a balloon.  But my daughter's grief was real.  That balloon had comforted her through getting stitches.  It had entertained her.  I won't say it loved her because that's just silly, but in her mind, who knows?   Here was a part of her world that wasn't going to come back. 

In a few years, we might be doing this for the dog, or, God in his mercy forbid, another relative or a friend.  Isn't it good that she gets used to the notion of passing with the tiny things first, so she'll have a concept to build on when the big griefs come? 

She got off the bed and went downstairs.  I think she's consoling herself with some Calvin and Hobbes.   The occasion might even warrant some ice cream, but I don't think I'll carry it that far.  There's a fine line between recognizing grief and perpetuating an overimportance in these little things.  In moments like these, we have to teach each other perspective. 

Delayed Reflections on our State as a Nation

I found this in my blog file and thought it was time it saw the light of day.  It's only a few months old. 

Two thoughts occurred to me while I was reading my devotions this morning.  The first was upon reading Psalm 144, which decries the invasion of foreigners "whose right hands are deceitful."  If God defends us against such people, the psalmist says, then the nation will prosper.  "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord," he finishes. 

I sat in bed thinking about that, and I thought, "How true.  If we could keep out the claims of foreign ideas, not physical foreigners but foreign faiths and unfaiths, then how much stronger would we be.  How much healthier would we be if we exercised Biblical living, and if we weren't plagued by the dogmatization of the sinful nature."   Once we were a Christian nation, I thought.  But then I thought about a blog I had just read (Faith and History) which said that actually, the rights that Jefferson cited came not from Christian theology, but from John Locke, whose religious beliefs were unstated and whose political philosophy often flew in the face of orthodoxy and orthopraxy.  He believed that government was best based on the notion of self-interest, not righteousness.  If that is the root of our political practice (not that it hasn't governed us all along), then we've never really been a Christian nation.  We have been a great nation, a nation with a strong Christian presence and a Christian foundation, but the principles on which our government is based have been humanist from the beginning.  We are another Rome. 

Rome, if you believe the Aeneid, was a nation of immigrants that made itself great.  It rose up at such a time as was proper.  It defeated another empire, one, if you believe Chesterton, with beliefs that could have destroyed all the good in the world.  It was the gateway for the gospel into Asia, Africa, and Europe.  It was a center of learning, and at some points in its history, a representation of what good government should be.  At other points in its history, we see nasty, glaring injustices like the arenas and massacres of whole peoples.  We see that in our own history as well.  They as a nation were not Christian.  They were not founded on Christian principles;  they did not behave in Christian manners, even when Christianity was the official religion of the state.  Rome was a humanistic state.  God raised it up to accomplish his purposes, and when those purposes were accomplished, he let it fall.  I'm still in the middle of "City of God," but that's what Augustine reportedly said the Romans of his day who were watching Rome fall around them, and I imagine it's what he would say to us today.

So have we ever been a nation whose God is the Lord?  Has anyone?  We have had our moments.  Emancipation comes to mind, but even that came at the expense of how much blood and as a result of how much sin and with how much political motivation?  The history of any nation is proof of total depravity, really.  Even the good things that we do are not perfect things;  they are tainted by everything that preys on humanity's soul.   

I think it's time, and I know I'm not alone in this, for American Christians to realize that we are no longer the majority, and we can no longer act like the majority.   There has been an "How dare they?" element in our rhetoric that needs to go away.  We need to speak the truth and defend it as if it weren't common sense, because it isn't.  We need to have reasons, but we also can't be ashamed to say "Because God says so, and I trust Him to make it work."  Paul tells us pretty plainly that the wisdom of God seems like foolishness to the world, even if  the power to recognize it is wired into  our souls.  If godly thought and behavior came naturally to sinful humanity, God wouldn't have had to issue the Law of Moses, let alone take on human flesh and suffer and overcome death. 

Easter meditation.

On driving to church Easter morning, I was meditating on what Christ has done for us on the cross.  I thought through the crucifixion, saw him hanging on the tree, adjusted his appearance so he looked more Mediterranean and less northern European, watched him lay in the tomb, and then got ready to watch him rise. 

And the thought came to me that nowhere in my meditation was Christ dead.  He was in the tomb, but I just couldn't process the reality of death.   It was more like he went into some sort of stasis, or maybe he was just holding his breath.  That's a dreadfully unorthodox way to look at Easter.  The committing of his spirit, the breathing his last, the blood and the water -- the Bible goes out of its way to make plain that Christ was dead.  Dead as a doornail.  Dead as anyone else in history.  Empty body.  The spirit flown.  Dead. 

His disciples certainly knew he was dead.  They were shaken to the core.  Joseph of Arimathea took down his limp, cold frame and put it in a tomb.  If he had had the least hope, wouldn't he have gone to a physician?  No, he was dead.

The reason I couldn't picture him dead was because I knew that he would get up again.  That seemed to make it all go away.  It made the period of death impossible.  I knew all along that he was going to get up and come out.  And as I thought about that, I said to God, "You knew all along too, didn't you?" 

Well, yes, thank you, Captain Obvious.  But it was comforting and awe-inspiring to think that God was always prepared to bring the obedient Jesus back from the dead.  Just biding his time, so to speak.  We hear so much about how God turned his face away that Friday night that it's easy to forget that this was all part of his plan from the moment sin birthed its ugly face into the world. 

At that point in the morning, I was content to just rest in the awesomeness of God's knowing, but this afternoon, as I ponder some more, I'm hit with the reflection that God's knowing didn't make the evil or the pain go away.  Jesus was still dead for those three days.   The disciples were still in danger.  Was God going to let the plan derail?  No.  But it still hurt. 

The same is true for us.  A lot of us are feeling uncertain about where our country is headed.  Christians in other parts of the world expect to die at any minute.  We may have personal griefs and uncertainties that feel like an infinite day of mourning.  We don't know how or when it all will end.  But God knows, and he has known all along.  This has been part of his plan from the beginning for our refinement, for our glorification as his sons.  And someday, we'll look at him and say, "You really had it in your hands all along, didn't you."