HEALING
I’m experiencing a personal life-renaissance. A renewal of my spirit, the spirit of life. I’m happy—mostly happy—for the first time in years. I’m healthier than I’ve been in quite a while. I’m thinking more clearly, I’m thinking more creatively, and I’m expressing myself more communicatively. Put simply, I feel incredible. I’ve had a few small bumps in the road but they served as speed-bumps, only there to tell me to slow down a bit. I’m cruisin’, like, I’m moving forward.
Why is this remarkable? Well, I’m a lifelong sufferer of Major Depressive Disorder, recurrent. I’ve had a hundred thousand doctors and psychiatrists and psychologists and therapists and Christian counselors and spiritual directors and mentors and coaches throughout my childhood and into my young adulthood all telling me how I should be feeling, or how a ‘normal’ person would feel, or how they would feel if they were in my shoes, or how to feel anything at all or how to not feel (suppressing feeling altogether), or how feelings can’t be trusted but simultaneously I should follow my heart and also go with my gut (when all along I feel one thing, know another in core of my being, and have a sense of something else altogether way deep down), or, perhaps worst of all, some of them instructed me to feel it all and to connect with those feelings, and come to be identified with them.
They made me a double-minded man, unstable in all my ways. I’ve released all that.
Feelings are just feelings. No one ever said that. 34 years of psych sessions and no one said just that. Feelings are nothing more than feelings. They come upon us like weather. That’s all part of it; feelings are nature. And so it is remarkable that after 34 years of inner turmoil, I am feeling at peace. After 34 years of storms, I’m feeling settled. My mom thinks this is just me growing up, getting wise. I don’t see that, ‘cause I’m not really doing much of anything differently than I always did it. I’m still me. I’m still me, doing me.
If I didn’t change, what changed? What has caused the storms of this life and the chaos of my unsettled, disordered mind to cease?
I’ve adopted a new way of thinking about what I do. I’m not doing anything differently. But I’m evaluating what I do differently. A simple change in my thought-life has produced peace in me. In order to make this simple change, I needed help, and I got that help in the form of the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, and his biography/ his life, or, the gospel concerning him. That’s a topic for a different time. I won’t preach right now. Just, for now, know that adopting a new perspective on Jesus (and because of Jesus) was crucial in all this. Here’s how I’ve changed my mind:
I have come to view all of my actions as affecting more than any one individual, myself included. I’ve come to see myself in community. No action I take exists within a vacuum, having zero effect on my neighbors. I have come to understand I must subordinate every single decision and desire to the good of my neighbors. I’ve become slave to all.
If becoming ‘slave to all’ as one biblical writer put it is an idea off-putting to you, be soothed by this: You can let go. I have released all judgment and simply do not hear it. I’m slave to all, to serve all, to be responsible for all, but none of them can grade my work. I serve in the best way I know how and I don’t read the comments or answer the critics, just let the work speak for itself. And I try not to pronounce judgment, myself. I try not be one of the critics. Let the Lord sort everything out and put the right labels on them. Let the Lord arbitrate, let him be the go-between, ‘cause I can’t know your heart and your intentions and you can’t know mine.
Like, ok, so, I cut someone off in traffic today and almost caused a really bad accident. But the reason I cut them off was because my truck has been idling rough, I mean, it rained and the weather turned cold and my engine was idling even rougher than normal because of that and I pulled out with plenty of time, but as I did so, the truck lurched and the engine cut off, and I lost power steering, and I had to turn the truck back on while pulling hard to steer off to the side, and I did all this in the span of 2 seconds in the middle of the intersection. Where I had pulled out with plenty of time, now a car is bearing down on me and, heck, she would have had to slam her brakes if I were even one second slower and she almost side-swiped me flying by. I mention that just to say, from any outside observer including myself, I was in the wrong for pulling out in front of this person, but who am I to judge what is wrong? I happen to know my intention was pure and I legitimately had time, meaning I acted under the best possible pretenses and intentions. I just didn’t expect my truck to have an issue as I accelerated. I’ve started assuming positive intent from others. They didn’t mean to cut me off; they might be having trouble with their vehicle.
I let go of the delusion of tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow I’ll do this or that…’ I’ve stopped fantasizing about going to heaven when I die and I’ve committed to making little havens all about the earth wherever I go. How can I make this moment sweeter?
That’s it. Three things I’ve come to understand and put into practice, taken straight from the life of Jesus and his practices. I have come to understand that I’m responsible for everyone, accountable to no one, and made for this moment. In this moment, I can be a good neighbor, but I can also challenge tired paradigms and worn-out old judgments, I can refrain from casting judgment or putting on labels, and with this understanding I become a master of the present moment, wielding (I should add) a mastery that is not my own. I have the mind of Christ. Slave to all, mastered by none, himself a master of the moment in every moment.
I have that mind about me, now. I’m not saying I am Jesus—I’m saying I’m trying hard to be like him.
This is healing and growth and life and maturity, and this is so, so, so huge for me, for someone who just could not ever get it together in life. Now I don’t have to. I don’t have to ‘get’ anything. I am, and this is thus. I am responsible for you. I’m responsible for my tone with you, for the mercy I extend to you, for my awareness of you to look out for you so that I don’t run roughshod right over you, I’m partly responsible for your health, I’m responsible for my own health to be around you, I’m responsible to maintain my mental health for your sake so that you aren’t dealing with a psycho depressive in me, and I’m responsible to all in one way or another to be the best kind of neighbor I can be to all. Slave to all, servant of all, lowest in the kingdom, taking the least position, all things to all people… this is biblical language.
But such slavishness in every situation, such persistence in deference, is self-abasement and abusive, toxic without some sense of divine judgment as taught in Scripture. The Lord settles things. I don’t get involved. I don’t get involved. I’m following the pattern of my Lord who didn’t come to condemn (John 3:17; 8:11), who has all judgment but judges no one (John 5:22; 12:47). “Oh, he’s wicked,” no, I don’t know what he is. “She is a whore,” no, I don’t know who she is.
Today my pastor told this little anecdote about a young man who, at age 19, he got a girl pregnant and he didn’t want to marry her but he couldn’t take care of her so he quietly put her away and abandoned his child, then he started living with another woman, and, well, I’m butchering the story but there was talk of all manner of buck-wild sins, and then my pastor asked, is this a young man you’d condemn? And the answer was, like, it depends on where you meet him in the story, because this young man grew up to be Saint Augustine.
You know, the saint. Who we venerate, not condemn.
Get my point? Like, your judgment is inherently flawed because it takes by nature only one perspective at one time into account. God sees from all angles. So we should just release all that stuff to the Lord, just try to be good neighbors as best we can, and just trust God knows our hearts and will settle all the differences where I wasn’t as good a neighbor to you as I should have been but maybe I didn’t know it or whatever. He sorts it all out in the end. We just trust him and then, like, Bingo-Bango Dodge Durango, we have abundant life and perfect peace.
‘Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus,
just to take him at his word;
Just to rest upon his promise
and to know, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’
…how I’ve proved him o’er and o’er