Jeannelle over at Midlife by Farmlight just posted a link in a comment to the following blog:
It’s the blog of a pastor with bipolar disorder who has served a small parish for about 14 years since his diagnosis. If I read the information correct, he is now on some type of disability. I don’t think he’s Lutheran, but I haven’t gone through and read all the back posts yet. But it looks very promising. Please check it out!
-DMR
This is not any kind of great insight, but simply a realization I had this morning. I just had two nights in a row where both my wife and I were present to take care of the kids and get them to bed. Reading, catechism, prayers, etc. It is the first time we’ve had that for two nights in a row in WEEKS. AND we get to do it again tonight.
Wow.
I can just feel myself relax and settle into the normalcy of life when such things happen. I feel like I have been wound up since before Lent, and that things are just now starting to rebound and come down to the usual chaos.
It is so important to simply have time to be a family, to gather together, to sing and pray, play outside, chase around, and do whatever you do in your family. I am grounded when these things happen. My mood improves, my patience improves, everything is better.
But I can’t see that when I don’t have it. I get so obsessed with GETTING STUFF DONE that I forget who I am as a child of God, as a husband and father and pastor and neighbor, etc.
Be at peace, friends. Get some rest. Don’t try to get everything done, for you may lose yourself in a series of tasks that seem important at the time, but ultimately don’t really matter.
-DMR
Susan Gehlbach has a great observation in the post below about happiness:
Depression in my view is the extreme inward turning of the personality and the soul. It has physical, medical and spiritual causes. But one thing that I certainly know from my experience is that when I am depressed, it is very hard to see outside myself. When I am least depressed, it is because I am finding (being given?) contentment in the vocations God has given me. So Susan and her pastor are right. We sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are at our best when we are in service to our neighbor.
So how does one get outside of oneself to serving the neighbor, thus finding the contentment and happiness which only God can give. First, the Gospel. Only the Gospel can pull out outside of ourselves and into the lives our our neighbors from a spiritual perspective. Second, addressing whatever the medical or physiological aspects that are going on. This may happen via medication (traditional or non-traditional), therapy, exercise, diet, and a host of other elements that all come into play with our bodies.
That’s the way I see it. What do you see?
-DMR
We are now in the afterglow of the resurrection of our Lord. It is a good place to be.
For many pastors, Lent represents a trial of time, emotions, energy and just plain work. It is the six weeks which are both wonderful and incredibly taxing. Not to mention taxes coming right after Easter this year! So In the midst of all of this hoopla, I always find myself reveling in and enjoying the joy and festiveness of the season, but also breathing a little easier that the toughest six weeks of the year are behind me.
Of course, we put so many expectations on ourselves during this season. Easter sermons are the toughest to write and preach for me. A part of it is that I feel like I have to put on an unnaturally over-happy face on in order to get it “right”. This year I tried to embrace the challenge of Easter a little better, preaching the text (Mark 16:1-8) without using unnatural preaching styles for me. I think it worked pretty well.
So what do you do after Eastertide, oh pastors and people? Is it a time of relaxation, a time to return to “normal”, or something else?
-DMR
Three years ago Good Friday I seriously contemplated taking my own life. I’ve written about it before. Here is my post from last year.
My observation from this year is that I am struggling with negative thoughts. Good Friday truly is good. This is the gift of life that God gives to each one of us in the death of His Son. But for me, Good Friday is a reminder of arguably the worst days of my life. I don’t like the association that I have between Good Friday and those dark days and nights. How do I replace these negative memories with positive ones? I feel sometimes like negative memories are a mental cancer that eats away at me, that draws me back into the darkness. I don’t want them. No, I hate them. But I don’t know how to get them out of my head.
I feel like I need a mental reboot somehow. I want to erase these memories, overlay them with something brighter, think of God’s mercy and not my own weakness and failings. It will come. I believe it.
Despite all of my own struggles, I have a wonderful wife and family, a great congregation, and very very good friends. They keep me alive, and keep me going.
God’s peace be with you all this day.
-DMR
It is hard to overestimate how important preaching the resurrection is to the mentally ill, including the clinically depressed. That’s the illness I know best, but I firmly believe that this holds true for anxiety, manic depression, schizophrenia and a host of other mental illnesses.
The reason is simple. For the mentally ill, you are trapped in your own mind and body. Your brain is not processing as it should, and so the chemical changes in your body interact in a very bad way with the sinful nature which infects us all. If your sickness is telling you that things are far, far worse than they really are, and your sinful nature is telling you that God hates you, put these two together and you have a recipe for personal and spiritual disaster.
Mental illness works as a magnifying glass and amplifier for so many of the doubts and fears which infect us all. Everyone has doubts about the future. Everyone has moments of despair. Everyone has fears about what they cannot control. Everyone questions their own worthiness before God and before their fellow human beings. We all go through these. But for the mentally ill, especially the clinically depressed, these feelings are all consuming. The physical illness can easily lead to anfectung, the struggle of the soul.
So why does preaching the resurrection matter to the clinically depressed? It matters because in the resurrection of the body, there is a future and a hope that is real, that is concrete, that will happen to matter what may be going on today or yesterday or tomorrow. St. Paul puts it best:
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.†(1Corinthians 15:19 KJV)
For the depressed, there is no tomorrow.
For the depressed, there is only thick darkness.
For the depressed, there is only more misery.
For the depressed, there is no escape except the grave.
But not so the Christian!
There is a tomorrow in Christ.
There is light that shines in the darkness.
There is joy in the body of Christ.
There is escape not in the grave but through the resurrection of the body.
So, my fellow preachers, give us the resurrection. It is my only hope out of the darkness. Give me Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Nothing, nothing else will ever satisfy.
Easter is coming. I can’t wait.
I’ve been back on zoloft for a month, and finally I can breathe again. It took about three weeks for things to sort of stabilize. But my mood is better, I am not feeling overwhelmed, I can read, I’m generally being more productive and (dare I say it?) happy. This is all good.
It couldn’t come at a better time. There’s a lot of stress at the congregation right now, mostly about money. Plus with Holy Week and everything else coming up quickly, it is really good to feel like I am on top of things a little better.
The hardest part about anti-depressants in my view are 1) Starting. I have such a fear of medication of any sort, that getting the gumption to actually start really terrifies me. And 2) Waiting to see if it actually will work. I want things to change quickly, but anti-depressants take time to get into your system and do their work. It requires some patience, which really stinks.
But God is good, and things are working again. Now, it’s time to get back to sermon writing, bulletins, calls, and all the other things that make up the season.
-DMR
Hmmmmm…..if only this meant my body was skinny, and not just one part of my brain.
Brain differences mark those with depression risk | Health | Reuters
I’m still figthing the zoloft headaches. The mornings are generally good, but afternoons my head just hurts and I really can’t do much of anything. Can’t read, can’t write, can’t study. I can listen a little. Hopefully this will regularize soon. It’s been two weeks now.
Some days are good, and some days are not so good.
Today is a not so good day. It’s not so much that I’m mopey or excessively said. I just can’t get my mind to focus on anything. Frustrating, but this too shall pass. Yesterday was a great day. Maybe tomorrow will be too.
-DMR