Shattered

In M. Night Shyamalan’s movie “Unbreakable,” (2000) two characters are juxtaposed: Elijah Price (played by Samuel L. Jackson) and David Dunn (played by Bruce Willis). Elijah Price was born with Type I osteogenesis imperfecta (also known as “Brittle Bone Disease”) where his body does not make the kind of collagen that strengthens his bones. Thus, his bones break easily. In fact, he was born with broken limbs. On the other hand, David Dunn has extraordinary strength, and lives through accidents and catastrophes that kill most people. He comes out of them without even a scratch. He seems to be unbreakable.

Elijah tracks down David, and presents him with a theory that suggests that they are the remnants of an ancient system of storytelling where superheroes and their archenemies are based on real people like themselves: each other’s exact opposite.

While this movie has all the drama of a psychological thriller and the power of comic book and legendary storytelling, it’s an oddly familiar dialectic. Many aspects of our culture assume that are “unbreakable” people in our midst.

I often hear it in variations of the quote by the 19^th century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche:

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.

Paul says the same thing very lyrically in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9:

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.

While I can’t deny the personal experiences of Nietzsche or Paul, as general platitudes, I think that there are fewer more damaging lies.

In the face of quotes like this, many people believe that they should be like comic book superheroes. They believe that when they endure terrible emotional and physical events, they should emerge triumphantly. They should be wiser and stronger and a shinier version of who they were before. Some theologies (like the theory of redemptive suffering in its purest form) state that it is only through suffering that individuals and communities can achieve salvation or positive transformation.

And so many people suppress how painful elements of their lives really are because they are busy trying to show that they have it altogether. They are trying to show that they are unbreakable.

I acknowledge that many of us have to keep moving forward in the face of illness and trauma and danger because our families and households are physically and financially dependent upon our ability to go to work and make an income. Rather, I fault societal structures for their inability to recognize and support people who are crumbling inside.

So I’ll say it again: this idea that what doesn’t kill us serves to make us stronger is one of life’s more damaging lies. If only because life experience will teach us that there are things that kill us. And for those who do not die, some do not come out stronger or more encouraged. Some people come out of life’s traumas and sufferings as weaker, demoralized and emptier shells of who they were.

The fact that some people can survive difficulty, pain, death, sickness and war is somehow attached to the grace and power of God. But the difference between those of us who do and those of us who do not should not be measured by amounts of faith, prayer, devotion or inner fortitude. It’s better measured by access to informed and attentive friends, loving communities, healing resources and societal acceptance.

As someone who lives with a depressive condition, I’m aware of how quickly I can become like the character of Elijah Price. Every small thing will cause me to question my self, my friends, and my abilities. When I’m struggling to do the most basic tasks of daily living, I feel weak. I feel like a shell of a human being. It doesn’t take much for me to feel broken inside.

Perhaps like Elijah, we will seek out or even yearn for that which is unbreakable. I know I do. I want to return to the part of myself that can survive great odds and come out stronger and wiser. I want to live up to the ideal that I ought to be able manage difficulty with more grace, finesse and gratitude. Why, I’ll ask myself, don’t I feel perplexed without feeling despair? Why don’t I feel persecution without feeling forsaken? Why aren’t I more . . . unbreakable?

The movie again serves as inspiration. As David Dunn explores his past, he realizes that he has a weakness, a weakness that can kill him. (I won’t give it away, in case you want to rent the movie.) As a comic book aficionado, Elijah reminds the viewer, that all superheroes do. This is not so much a statement that we all have our personal Achilles heel, kryptonite or, as Paul says, thorns in our flesh (2 Corinthians 12:7). Rather, I hear this as another statement of truth:

No one is unbreakable.

Not even superheroes.

This is an especially important maxim for those of us who live with depressive conditions or disabling conditions. When we imagine that there is an ideal of perfection and strength to which we do not attain, we need to remember again: no one is unbreakable.

As a black woman, this idea and its debunking are ever in my orbit. In the late 1970s, the black feminist Michele Wallace wrote Black Macho and the Myth of Superwoman. More recently, The Crunk Feminist Collective blogged about black women and depression and declared that “life is not a fairytale.” My colleague Chanequa Walker-Barnes at Shaw University Divinity School does excellent work on the religious and psychological damage of the idea of a “strong black woman.”

I don’t think this is at all particular to black women. I think this ideal of being unbreakable is something we all need to resist. We need to do this because there are messages in society and religion that reinforce this idea. We need to do this because life experience shows us it’s not true. We need to do this so we can offer ourselves greater grace.

So if you’re up to it, sing the 1980s anthem along with Karyn White and me (adapt it for yourselves): I’m not your Super . . . Hero.

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mezuzah

My Jewish friends have a mezuzah on the right side of the doorframes of their homes. The small container on the doorpost contains passages from the Sh’ma or V’ahavta, the central affirmation of Jewish faith. Mezuzot contain parchment inside the container with the words from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and Deuteronomy 11:13-21. On the outside of many mezuzah is the word, Shaddai, a name for G-d. The mezuzah indicates that this is a Jewish home, and that the inhabitants are protected, whether they are inside the home, or outside of it.

While posting a mezuzah is a uniquely Jewish tradition, I think other people can learn from the practice. The mezuzah silently signifies identity to the outside world. It reaffirms the core teachings of faith. It calls us to remember. The first passage of the mezuzah reads in this way:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: and thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

While there are many messages contained in this passage, I am attracted most by the edict to remember. The Sh’ma reminds us to approach God with love. The scripture reminds us that our relationship with God is not just words, but something we should keep in our hearts. The verse reminds us to remember our faith. I hear the commandments to teach and talk about and write about and walk about faith as a reminder that our faith should permeate all parts of our lives. Our faith is not something we express only on holy days. Rather our faith should become a part of who we are.

Memory is a central theme in this section of Deuteronomy. For the chapters following this passage, God reminds the ancient Israelites that they must remember their relationship with God. The mezuzah is one of several concrete things that the ancient Israelites (and contemporary Jewish people) are asked to do to remember God. There appears to be a strong connection between rituals and holding God in our hearts.

This speaks strongly to me as someone who lives with a depressive condition. On the one hand, memory is not to be trusted. Depression can bend and twist my mind so that I can only remember what is bad. I remember all the griefs and pains of my life. I remember them with full force. When I am depressed, I cannot remember what it feels like to feel good. My only access to happiness is as dim as watching a slide show of someone else’s childhood activities.

In those moments, I cannot trust my memory. I cannot remember joy. I cannot remember love. I cannot feel the goodness of God. I have to search for something deeper than memory.

And yet it is when my own sense of history is least reliable, that I need to remember who I am. Even when . . . especially when, I can’t feel it.

So I write it down. I write down the things that I can’t remember. For years, I kept a folded note card in my wallet with a couple sentences about who I am. It had things on it like this:

• I am a teacher.
• I am a minister.
• I am a friend.
• I am loved by many.
• I am living my grandparents’ dreams.
• I am called by God.

my doorpost

When I found myself having bouts of anxiety, I’d slip into a restroom or corner, and pull out my card and read it to myself. Some nights, I read it before going to bed, stuffing the card under the pillow as I fell asleep. The card was my personal doorpost. It was the place where I wrote down the things I believed. Until I could hold them in my heart, I read them off this card.

There are many psychological and spiritual traditions that recommend affirmations. Some individuals and communities use affirmations to maintain a positive outlook on self and the world. Others believe that the connection between our beliefs and our experiences is so close, that affirmations can change what occurs in the world around us. At their best, affirmations help us to live into being our highest selves.

Although they sound like affirmations, I’ve rarely thought of the words on my card in that way. These sentences were my lifelines. They were the things I held onto when I couldn’t trust my mind, my heart or my powers of recall. These words helped me connect to my deepest self. They got me to the one thing that was deeper than the power of memory.

Some people call this faith. Other people call it truth. Some people call it ritual.

For me, the note card became the indication of my humanity. It reminded me of my connection to people and beings greater than myself. It kept me on the safe side of a dangerous abyss. It helped me to love myself. These are the things I think God wants me to know. Not just in depressions, but in every part of who I am.

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Time

I first read the book Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse in high school. This short novel describes the spiritual journey of a boy in India. The protagonist, Siddhartha, leaves home in search of enlightenment. His life involves asceticism, wealthy business trade, love and finally a humble occupation as a ferryman. It was years before I understood that this is a story of the Buddha. I was not attracted by the book’s spirituality. I was attracted to Hesse’s description of Siddhartha’s journey.

Although Siddhartha is passionate in his seeking, Hesse’s story is also patient. Siddhartha’s journey begins in boyhood and ends when he is an old man. Each stage of his life takes years and years. In every phase, Siddhartha is fully committed to the life that he is leading. He is unable to anticipate where life will take him next, and yet he embraces the next place he finds himself.

That impresses me. It impresses me because that kind of patience, commitment and embrace are rare. It’s easier to live in extremes. It’s easier to live for the momentous occasions. In Hesse’s Siddhartha, there are few exciting moments or action scenes. Siddhartha’s philosophical and spiritual insights are the jewels of the book. The dramatic tension does not come from a sensational incident where, if turned into a movie with an A-list actor, a blockbuster film could be made.

Rather this book always reminds me of the importance of ordinary time. I find this particularly relevant as one who lives with a bipolar depressive condition. The terminology of “polar” connotes opposite tendencies. This is supposed to be an improvement over previous language of “manic depression” – the term that described what the poles were. The language seems to imply that one is either one thing or the other; that one lives at the extreme ends of mood and behavior.

When I hear that, I imagine a pendulum swinging back and forth. From one mood to the other.

In my experience, there’s a long arc from one pole to another. Most of my life is lived there. In the arc. It’s not particularly exciting or noteworthy. I’m not superwoman, nor am I in the depths of sadness. I’m a person who gets up, gets dressed and goes to work. It’s fairly ordinary.

In a Christian liturgical calendar, the season called “ordinary time” is the longest. The high holy days of Christian calendars focus on the birth and death of Jesus, and then the birth of the church. Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. Then there are nearly seven months of “ordinary time.” During this time, Christians are encouraged to focus on the life and ministry of Jesus.

It’s a good idea, but it’s difficult to remember when so much energy and excitement is given to birth and death. It leads one to think that what is important about Jesus is who he is – that he was born a certain way for a certain purpose and that he could live after dying. It takes away an emphasis on what Jesus did and taught and how he lived. This is far more fascinating to me. But it’s also longer and more ordinary. So ordinary, in fact, that the canonical gospels leave out descriptions of most of Jesus’ life.

Life spent in ordinary time is important. This is where I learn to put one foot in front of the other. I establish healthy habits that I can draw on when I find myself at an extreme. I make friends. I love. I practice hope and trust. Sometimes I sit still. This is what I saw in Siddhartha, and what I experience in my ordinary moments.

It’s taken me time to appreciate these places. I was taught to be ambitious and driven, to have goals, and to celebrate their attainment – and then to be about the business to setting new goals. But one cannot live there all the time. Ordinary time says that it’s okay to be ordinary. It’s okay to live, learn, eat, love and pray. Those are ends in themselves.

After the long and ordinary life of searching for enlightenment, Hesse describes one of Siddhartha’s dramatic insights in this way:

“When someone is seeking … it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything…because he is obsessed with his goal. Seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal.”

What’s nice about ordinary time is that one can stop living at the limits, and can even stop focusing on the goal. One can savor the process. There is joy just in the journey.

The Christian singer, Michael Card expresses this well in his short song “Joy in the Journey”:

There is a joy in the journey

There’s a light we can love on the way

There is a wonder and wildness to life

And freedom for those who obey

Both Card and Hesse suggest that when we live fully where we are, embrace the ordinary and find joy in the journey, we will find what we’ve been looking for. And we will be free. And it is holy.

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Laughing

“Jesus wept.”

The biblical verse that the first kid spouts off in the Vacation Bible School line-up of children demonstrating that they have memorized at least one Bible verse. It’s short. It commits well to memory. And it leaves every other kid reaching into his or her mental arsenal for another verse to recite.

“Jesus wept.”

It’s the shortest verse in the King James version of the Bible, and it’s true value is that it reveals Jesus’ humanity – something not often emphasized in the gospel of John. After Lazarus’ death and in the face of Mary and Martha’s deep grief, Jesus wept. (John 11:35)

“Jesus wept.”

It reminds us that Jesus was made of the same stuff as the rest of us. We can debate his divinity all day and night, but Jesus was at least human. He cried. He ate. He worked. Presumably he put on his pants one leg at a time.

It has only now occurred to me that in all the biblical expressions of Jesus’ humanity, we never see reports of Jesus laughing. We know he went to dinner parties. We know he celebrated feast days. He went to a wedding. He had friends. We can assume he laughed, but we never get a recording of it.

Jesus is usually pictured as a pretty somber guy. Think of the picture of the Last Supper that you’ve seen. Jesus with all his friends. He’s looking profound. Sad. Really wise and holy. Or stoic. But he doesn’t look the way I do when I’m having dinner with my friends: laughing and having a good time.

The importance of laughter has really hit home lately. I found myself laughing as I read a couple pages of Therese Borchard’s book Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes. I didn’t just chuckle. I laughed. I laughed hard. I interrupted the people sitting around me in the coffee shop. I almost blew water out of my nose. It was funny.

What, one might reasonably, can be that funny in a memoir about depression?

I laughed because I really identified with the passage I read. And Borchard has a great wry sense of humor. She’s able to describe really challenging life events with a slightly self-deprecating distance and wit that keeps one from feeling depressed just because one is reading about depression.

My laughter also reminded me of the importance of laughter in the context of depression. For me, the absence of laughter is a true-tell sign that I’m depressed. Here’s how it happens: One day, something will be funny. Not the kind of funny where you get the joke and smile and nod your head. Not the kind of funny where you giggle a little bit. The kind of funny where you lean your head back and ignore whatever sound is coming out of your mouth. And then I’ll hear myself think (sometimes I say it out loud): “I can’t remember the last time I laughed.”

I can’t. I will be unable to remember the last time I laughed. That means it has been weeks or months since I’ve really laughed. That means, I haven’t been happy in a long time. Of course, the laughter also means I’m feeling a little better now.

The laughter surprises me because it’s fairly easy to go around not laughing. I can smile, and do my job quite well. There’s no expectation that a professor and minister should be laughing. To the contrary – religion is generally supposed to be a really serious topic. I talk about matters of spiritual life and death. I preach about salvation and ethics. I teach about theory and philosophy. Sober material.

Christian traditions don’t well emphasize laughter. Some religious traditions are better at this. For example, Buddhism has an enviable image of a laughing Buddha. Some traditions have strong trickster figures that often laugh and delight (sometimes at someone else’s lack of wisdom). Western Christianity . . . not so much. We may have joy, but we don’t have many images or pictures of laughter. Jesus didn’t laugh.

I’ve missed it myself. In my book, Making a Way Out of No Way: a Womanist Theology, I talk about the various experiences and charges of a Savior. I am careful to note that a Savior’s work can be challenging and difficult. Why do you think Jesus needed to get away by himself every once in awhile? This salvation-business is hard.

I forgot to say that the work of salvation can also be fun. I forgot to say how important it is to have not just disciples, but also friends. This is something the gospel of John emphasizes a lot (ch 13-16). I forgot to say that sometimes us professional-religion-folk get together and laugh our heads off over the funny things we encounter. I think I forgot this because it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to get caught up in how important and serious and life-changing something is, and forget to take a break and laugh.

So I think, we have to be intentional about getting the laughter in. I’ll rent and re-rent the same DVD (you’d think I’d learn to buy it) by my favorite comedian. It’s guaranteed to put me in stitches.

I do this because I know that laughter is good for me. Literally. Laughter kicks in all types of chemicals that are known to ease depression– like beta-endorphins. Scientists actually document this. Therese Borchard well summarizes 9 ways that humor heals. Here are a couple of things laughter and humor do:

1. Combat fear
2. Comfort
3. Reduce pain
4. Boost the immune system
5. Reduce stress

This reminds me of how amazing and complex the human body is. It makes me think about how God creates us with some ability to heal ourselves. It reminds me that laughter is a gift from God.

I might have arrived here sooner if one of the gospels had a verse saying, “Jesus laughed.” Without that, I’ve become content with this quote from the writer Anne Lamott:

“Laughter is carbonated holiness.”

Yeah, it is.

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Scripture

When I was in college, I was active in Christian Impact, my school’s local chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ.  It was a wonderful experience where I bonded with others, learned new songs, and experienced discipleship and spiritual accountability for the first time.  One of the core activities of this student organization was leading first-year students in Bible study.  We always used the book of Philippians.

Philippians is a great choice.  In this New Testament book, Paul compassionately reaches out to the churches at Philippi sharing both succinct morsels of his understanding of the gospel, and the kinds of words of encouragement that are meaningful for a young college student or mature Christian.  Teaching Philippians played a crucial role in my love affair with the Bible.

There are tons of great verses.
Some of my favorites include:

“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you” (1:3)
This one was great for the beginnings of letters I wrote friends back home

Or for humility and commitment to Jesus,
“For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (1:21)

What things were gain for me, those I counted loss for Christ (3:7)

To dissipate the petty arguments that always arise between college roommates:
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.  Look not every [one] on [one’s] things, but every one also on the things of others.” (2:3-4)

Then there are the verses that invoked my favorite songs:
“That at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God (2:9-10)
This inspired “How Excellent” performed by Walt Whitman and the Soul Children and many a gospel choir

“The peace of God which passes all understanding shall guard your hearts and mind through Christ Jesus” (4:7)
which gives us Fred Hammond’s wonderful gospel track:

For a purpose-driven life:
Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (3:13b-14)

And then one that’s just nice to memorize:
Finally, brothers [and sisters] whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things (4:8)

The promises that clergy love to cite when preaching:
My God shall supply all your needs according to God’s riches in glory (4:19)

I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me (4:13)

In the midst of all these inspiring verses, my favorite was Philippians 4:6:
Be anxious for nothing, but in every thing by prayers and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

This verse reminded me to stop stressing about little things.  It encouraged me to take my hopes and desires to God.  It made me feel like God cares about my daily life.  It urged me to develop my prayer life.

Be anxious for nothing, but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

It’s a beautiful verse.  It brought me a lot of peace.
Until I experienced the kind of anxiety that can accompany depression.

• It’s a nightmare during the day, but worse.
• It’s a phobia of snakes or spiders even though there are no creepy crawly things in the room.
• It’s trying to crawl out of your skin.
• It’s hearing the refrigerator hum like someone breaking in.
• It’s insomnia and hyperventilating.

At least that’s what anxiety is like for me.
I couldn’t pray it away.  I couldn’t wish it away.
A paper bag and affirmations about God and love did nothing for me.

I knew it then: Paul didn’t know diddly about the reality of anxiety in the context of a mental health challenge.  I took my irreligious restless self to my local psychiatrist.

Years later, I wonder why a verse that served me so well in one phase of my life proved so futile during another.  Although I have committed most Bible verses to memory in the King James version (blame it on my upbringing), other translations are not much better.  These versions either maintain the language of “don’t be anxious” or they read, “don’t worry.”  I was filled with questions:

• Is the Bible this contextual?
• Could the verses that once brought me closer to God now make me feel faithless?
• Were the writers of the Bible that clueless about mental health challenges?
• Is it possible that Paul wasn’t even talking to me and my anxieties?
• Was I going to have to find new sources of inspiration?

I honestly think that the answer to all these questions is “Yes,” but that doesn’t mean I have to abandon my love of this biblical book, which is so well read and marked up that the pages are falling out of my Bible. It doesn’t mean that God abandoned me in my time of need. There is still value in the lessons I learned in college Bible study: stop sweating the small stuff and talk to God.

It just means that I should take my anxiety-ridden moments to a different section of the Bible.  Like one of the three places where God promises never to leave us or forsake us.  The fact that this message is given to Moses (Deut 31:6), Joshua (1:5) and in the book of Hebrews (13:5) suggests to me that it might be fairly common to feel terrified and alone (i.e., anxious).

And God wants us to remember that terrors may come, but we’re not out here on our own.

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To Do List

Like most people I know, I have a very long to-do list.  It seems that I add things faster than I cross them off.  I use the list for my much-needed sense of accomplishment.  I exact this need in all types of ways.  For example, I refuse to let the servers in restaurants refill my water glass until I’ve nearly finished it.  That constant re-filling makes me feel like I’ve never finished drinking my water – takes my sense of accomplishment away.  When it comes to my to-do list, I’ll often add basic things to it just so I can cross them off.  Things like: wake-up, get dressed, eat breakfast, wash dishes, drive to work.  On most days, that means five things have been crossed off my list before I get to the real work.

Of course there are days when I hate the to-do list.  It seems to go on forever and have a personal spiteful disposition that says: “You will never get it all done.”  The to-do list is not evil.  It’s there to help jog my memory, organize my activities and establish priorities.

Truth be told, the to-do list gets long and weighty when I make decisions in my I-can-conquer-the-world-in-one-day mindset.  I don’t feel superhuman, but I do feel smart and very capable.  Yes, I can write that article, review that essay, speak at that conference, sit on those committees, host those functions, start a study group, read four new books, finish writing my own books, fly cross-country three weekends a month . . . you get the idea.

When I feel well, I really can do all this.  And I can do it fairly at a pretty high quality.

When I don’t feel well, I use up all my energy on those first five items:

1. Wake-up
2. Get dressed
3. Eat breakfast
4. Wash dishes
5. Drive to work

In fact, this is how I measure my depressive condition:

How hard or easy is it to do the basic things?

This has been the best gauge of my depressions.  Depression doesn’t hit me like the drop from walking off of a cliff.  It’s slow, subtle and downright sneaky.  The things on the list that once seemed doable become monkeys on my back.  I want to shake them off so I can focus on the top five.

I organize my life into lists.  Sometimes this is very helpful.  Like the time a certain airline lost my luggage.  At home, I had a list of every item that was in the suitcase because I made the list when I packed.  I also had a corresponding receipt.  I was fully reimbursed.  (Of course, I really wanted the clothes and shoes.)

I’ve also made lists in my faith life.  In the season when I focused intensely on my spiritual growth, I made a list of the things I should be doing every day:

• Pray for friends
• Pray for family members
• Pray for people I don’t like
• Pray for myself
• Pray for the world
• Read and reflect on biblical passage
• Prepare for teaching weekly Bible study
• Talk with at least one of my Bible study students
• Communicate with my spiritual leader
• Make arrangements for getting to church
• Brainstorm ideas for young adult group activities at church

The list continued.  I scheduled the list’s activities in a chart with appropriate time allotments so that I could fit them in with my other commitments.  While these are all good things, I continually set myself up for failure.  It’s a fairly unsustainable list for someone who isn’t a nun, monk or full-time minister – and then it’s still asking a lot.

While I can acknowledge that this was my over-achiever type A personality dipped in religion, it was also a product of my faith life.  I loved God, and wanted to develop a relationship with God. I believed that all these things would facilitate intimacy with God. I was taught that intimacy with God was similar to intimacy with people: it required time and investment.  I wanted God to be happy with me.  I believed that doing certain things would please God, just as doing certain things would displease God.  I didn’t want to displease God.  I didn’t want to commit the sins against which I heard preachers and Sunday school teachers and Christian leaders admonish.  I wanted to do God’s will.  I wanted to be blessed and favored.  The list helped me get there.

It would take years for me to realize that God does not want me to have a legalistic faith.  God will not disown me, walk out on me or lose my number if I don’t pray everyday.  God is not waiting to shake a finger of shame at me if I do something that indicates I am human.  God just wants me.  That’s enough.

Jesus kept trying to tell his disciples the same thing.  He used a metaphor that his agrarian audience would understand: it’s like a mustard seed.

• “The kin-dom of God is like a mustard seed. . .” it’s small, but it will grow into a large bush. (Matthew 13:31-32; Mark 4:30-32; Luke 13:18-20)
• “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, the mountain would move . . .” (Matthew 17:19-21)
• “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this tree, move . . .” (Luke 17:5-7)

I’ve seen a mustard seed (I use it when I make curry spices).  It’s small.  This isn’t to say that we only need a little faith to perform miracles, and look – you don’t even have that much!  (That’s the message I’ve heard in sermons.) Rather, I understand Jesus to be saying:

You already have enough.

I need this kind of message as I make it through my to-do lists.  Whether the list is completed or not, I try to tell myself:

“You’ve already done enough.”

Most of my life is not lived on the depressed end of the top-five items or on the far end where I can actually do everything on the list in one day and exercise, get eight hours of sleep and be a good parent, lover, friend, daughter, minister and professor.  I don’t bounce from one end to the other.  Most of my life is spent somewhere in the middle.

Jesus is right.  It doesn’t take a whole lot to be enough.  Even if all I can do is the top-five, I am well enough.

My friend and composer Andre Myers wrote a song for children living with cancer.  The refrain perfectly captures the attitude I try to have most days – whether I’m moving mountains or tapped out by list item number six:

Because I’m well enough to hear the goodness

in a loving song

and I am well enough to feel night’s beauty

dance into the dawn

and I am well enough to love the person

that I strive to be

and I’m just well enough to know that I am strong

just being me

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Support

I own a pair of crutches.  I keep them in the hallway closet where I can grab them if I need them . . . because every so often I will.  I have a knee condition where my kneecaps naturally dislocate. I can move my kneecaps with my hand, or they will naturally dislocate in a regular rhythmic way.  It doesn’t hurt.  But when one dislocates outside of that rhythm, I collapse.  I fall to the ground, grasping my knee, shouting expletives as tears come to my eyes.

My kneecap will move back into place automatically, but the unexpected offbeat shift is painful.  It is then that I use crutches.  The crutches don’t prevent my kneecap from dislocating.  The crutches let my knee rest so it can heal.

It took me years to understand this.

I was 8 years old when I first learned of this condition.  The orthopedic surgeon told me that nothing could be done to cure me.  Surgery would not significantly change anything.  Instead, he tried to teach me about my knees.  He told me that there were certain activities that aggravated the condition: roller-skating, running, tennis.  Things I loved to do.  And there were other activities that would strengthen the ligaments around my knees: bicycling, swimming.  Things I did not know how to do.  He prescribed physical therapy where I would learn exercises that would strengthen the muscles that my legs don’t naturally develop.

I went to physical therapy, but I refused to stop skating and running.  In fact, I wrapped my knees in braces and ACE bandages just so I could run track in high school.  I preferred the pain of the dislocation to learning new sports.

I can barely believe how stubborn I was.  I think part of that was determination.  I didn’t think my knee condition should stop me from doing the things that brought me joy.  I think the other part was attitude.  I didn’t think of myself as having “bad knees.”  I just thought that they were different.  “Different” meant that I would have to make a couple adjustments.  After all, they were the only knees I’d every known.

At a family reunion years later, I saw a great uncle moving his kneecaps around his knee like I could.  The younger children sat around amazed.  I tugged my mother’s shirt and said, “See, like ME!”

The older I got, the more sensitive my knees became.  Running became too painful.  The roller-rink, a memory for the 80s.  A particular dislocating episode sent me to a physical therapist who told me that I had to learn how to walk again.  She watched my kneecaps move side to side, above and out of the groove in which they should lay, and said: “You can’t keep walking like that.”

Wish someone had told me that when I was eight.  At twenty-something, it was pretty difficult to learn a new way to do something so ordinary.  She also showed me how to tape my knees into place while I was re-learning my daily activity.

The crutches are for more severe incidents.  When my kneecap dislocates and causes great pain, I use the crutches.  I rest and apply ice and elevate and wrap my knee in bandages.  My kneecap moves back into place, but the pain and weakness can last for weeks.  One time, the pain lasted for three months.

At first, I was grateful for the crutches that took the pressure off my aching leg.  Before long, I was pouty!  I wanted to dance and wear heels and go to the gym.  There I would be – in the gym, with bandages and crutches, trying to lift weights.  My new orthopedic surgeon forbade it.

“After it stops hurting, use the crutches for another month.

You have to rest in order to heal.”

It took me years to understand my depressive condition in the same way I understand my knees.  I saw the association in a series of questions:

• Perhaps, there’s nothing wrong with me?  Maybe I’m just different.

(After all, this is the only me that I’ve got.)

• Perhaps there are other people in my family who can relate to what I’m experiencing?
• What if I avoided the people and activities and practices that aggravate my condition?
• What if I did things that made me strong?
• Even if it doesn’t happen naturally?
• Can I learn something new that will help me?
• Even if it’s so basic that I feel like I’m starting over again as a child?
• Maybe a therapist can give me something that can hold me together while I’m learning?

This curious comparison led me to three conclusions that have been important for me:

1. 1. A depressive condition will not stop me from doing things that I enjoy.

1. 2. It’s not about a cure, but about making adjustments.

1. 3. Medication is not a sign of weakness.  It’s a crutch that will let me rest so I can heal.

These realizations changed both my life and my faith.  With my knees, it was easy to forget how much faith I engaged.  I trusted the crutches to hold me up when I wasn’t strong enough to do it for myself.

This kind of faith feels much harder with a mental health challenge.  I need to trust various practices and medications and people.  I need to trust that they will support me when I feel weak.

This is the opposite of a lot of what I’ve been taught about fortitude and faith:

You have to believe for yourself.

You can’t get by on your Mama’s salvation.

If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.

This solo-mission Energizer-Bunny stuff was not Jesus’ way.  Jesus often retreated from ministry and crowds to rest.  In the last, most difficult days of his life, holy texts remind us that Jesus needed support.  He asked his friends to sit with him and pray through a torturous night (Matthew 26:36-44).  One friend carried the cross for him when he was tired (Mark 15:21-22).  Another person offered vinegar while he hung on the cross  (Matthew 27:48).

Rest.  Help.  Community.  Support.  Crutch.

What would it mean to think of Jesus with crutches?

Does that make him weak?

For some people, a crutch is an excuse not to walk on one’s own.  Because of my knees, I know that crutches are the exact opposite.  They are the instruments that allow me to function in the world.

We all need to rest sometimes.

We all need undergirding.

It’s really the only way to heal.

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As I’ve been proudly sharing the fact that I now know how to swim, my friends have raised several questions.  These questions can be summarized into two larger queries:

1. So you can swim laps now?

No. Are you joking?!  I just learned how to swim.  I still have to practice several times a week.  I have to get in the water again. Over and over again.  And I have to keep remembering how to kick my legs, move my arms, turn my head, and breathe.  It’s not that easy.  I assume it will get easier the more I do it.  I predict that, after awhile, I may not even have to think that hard about technique.  I can just enjoy the exercise.

The second question is actually more profound:

2. How did you get so old without learning how to swim?

Here’s the not-so-subtle subtext: What were you doing as a kid?  Isn’t it some kind of parental responsibility to make sure kids know how to swim?  It’s a fair question.  My parents enrolled me in kiddie swim classes.  They sent me to the Y and other summer programs with my cousins.  My cousins learned.  I did not.  Honestly, I wasn’t motivated.  I wasn’t excited about water. And I was content to splash around in the shallow end. My everyday life was not diminished by my inability to swim.

I learned to swim when I decided I wanted to learn.  And once I decided, it wasn’t difficult, but I wasn’t going to become proficient in a week, either.  That’s what it’s like when one explores something new.

I’m coming to realize that living with a mental health challenge is a constant encounter with “the new.”  Every so often, I have to try new things.  Doctors will often reiterate this when prescribing psychotropic medication.  It’s new.  Your body has to get used to it.  It might not kick in immediately.  It affects every person differently.  You have may to try more than one. Several years ago, the medication I was taking stopped working.  Apparently that happens.  And there I was, back on the “new train.”

In some ways, finding medication is easier than the other new things one must encounter with a mental health challenge.  Finding the right medication is truly an experience of trial and error.  It’s not fun, but one also has little agency.  Most of “the new” is about new skills, new patterns, and new ways of operating in the world.  And we have to do something.

Since my acceptance of my own condition, “the new” has included: regular exercise, foods with particular nutrients, need for sleep, research, healthy ways of dealing with stress, reducing life stressors in the first place, finding doctors I trust, talking to friends I trust, meeting other people who live with the same condition as me; the list goes on.

Yes, all this was “new” for me.  Before, I was fairly intermittent about my exercise, ate the foods I liked, chose work over sleep, and used default methods of coping to reduce the existential pain I was feeling.  And, for the record, I was happy to keep most of this to myself.

But I wanted to live.  For me, that was the motivation I needed to trust my instructor/ therapist and jump in the waters of life.  And then I had to keep at it.  I have to keep doing the things I know are healthy – even when I’m tired, frustrated, have a bad experience with a doctor or medication, or meet people who don’t understand me or who judge me.

It’s another catch-22: I’m afraid of doing new things; it’s hard.  But things won’t get easier or better, if I don’t do something new.

I’m encouraged by how Jesus talks about the importance of doing something new.  One day the disciples ask Jesus why they practice their spirituality differently than the Pharisees.  (Matthew 9:14-17) Jesus answers with three metaphors.  One of them mentions that we must put new wine in new bottles, or else the bottles will break.  This is how I hear Jesus:

If we want to experience something new, we have to do something new.

I believe that each day can bring something new.  Sometimes it’s an occasion to celebrate that I’m learning and doing well.  Other times, it’s another opportunity to practice something I’m still learning.  If swimming is an apt analogy, I predict that after awhile, the “new” will become second nature, and I can just enjoy the process.

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Happy Dance

I make grits on weekend mornings.  As a vegan, I try to make organic grits and I have them with soy-sausage or scrambled tofu rather than the corned beef hash, scrambled tofu or fried liver on which I was raised.  Eating grits on the weekends reminds me of leisurely family breakfasts with my parents, talking about nothing important, not having to rush to school or work or any place of consequence.  Since we were the only people in Michigan I knew who ate grits, and we were the only black people in my neighborhood, I assumed that grits were a black cultural thing.

Imagine my surprise, when I was exposed to white southerners who also ate grits.  As it turns out, grits are a southern thing.  When I mentioned this to my mother, she laughed.  “Well,” she said. “All black people are southern.”

Of course this isn’t completely true.  There are generations of African Americans in New England and Canada.  And there are generations of black folk in America who trace their roots to specific African and Caribbean societies.

My mother was referring to the profound legacy of the U.S. slavery system, how entrenched it was in the southeastern United States, how black and white peoples were so intermingled – even in their inequality – that they share some cultural markers.  So when these black people, like my grandparents, migrated north, they were still southern inside.

I later learned about what students of African American history refer to as “the great migration.”  Between 1910 and 1930, when factory and government jobs opened up in the north, and there seemed to be an escape from the Jim and Jane Crowism of the south, almost two million African Americans left their southern homes: along the railroad lines between Jackson, MS to Memphis, Chicago and Detroit; westward from Texas and Arkansas and Oklahoma to Kansas and California; and up the eastern seaboard to Philadelphia, DC and Baltimore.  My grandparents were in the latter group.  They were all looking for a better life, a “promised land.”

So I spent my summers in DC with my grandparents, in the same way many northern-living African Americans sent their children “down south.”  These extended trips allowed me to spend time with my grandparents and cousins.  They also allowed me to experience a cultural environment that was not found in the Midwestern semi-rural town where I grew up.

It was in this environment where I first saw someone filled with the Holy Spirit.

I could not have been ten years old.  I was at a Sunday worship service at Shiloh Baptist Church in Washington D.C.  Not too far from us, a woman started shouting.  She threw up her arms, her fancy hat careening to the side.  She thrashed her arms and her legs and shouted and screamed.  She even danced a little bit.  It wasn’t like the dancers on “Dance Fever,” but it was a dance.

I asked my grandmother what was happening, and she said, “She’s getting happy.”

I accepted Grandma’s answer, while I continued to stare.  A moment ago, she was sitting quietly in the pew, and now, she was ecstatically – and disruptively, it seemed to me then – happy?

I couldn’t help but to wonder: What could make her so happy?

Perhaps the woman was meditating on how amazing God had been in her life.  Perhaps she was thinking about all the difficulties she had experienced, and how God had played a part in the fact that she was surviving them, or even on the other side of them.  That’s what Grandma later said.

The womanist sociologist of religion Cheryl Townsend Gilkes goes further.  She says that in African American churches where people have charismatic experiences of Spirit, the church functions as a therapeutic community.  Here “blacks are able to act-out and work-through whatever happens to be troubling them.”  Gilkes notes that other members “become therapists for their fellow church members in that they attend to their shouting, encourage them in their feelings and guard and protect them from possible harm.”  Perhaps this woman wasn’t happy, but she knew that she had a safe space to express her emotions – and that would ultimately make her happy.

As a minister, I try to remember that I rarely know the experience each person brings to church.  I don’t know what someone’s week or month or year has been like.  I don’t know the level of loss or grief someone’s known.  I don’t know the triumphs and blessings a person has had either. But I like the fact that I may get to be part of a space where someone connects her experiences to community, safety and Spirit.  I like that Grandma looked at all this and said, “She’s getting happy.”

As someone who lives with depression, I know how to appreciate happiness. I can go months without feeling “happy.”  There are seasons where I can be happy without feeling happy, but there are seasons where there is no happiness at all.  I can live through these places.  I can cook and clean and work and love and take children to school without being happy.  In those seasons, I can’t even remember what it feels like to be happy.  I’ll know that I once was happy, but it’s like looking at someone else’s life on a video.

Since I live with a bipolar form of depression, I can also know great happiness.  I can feel so good that I can’t remember what it feels like to be sad.  I know that I have been sad, but that is like looking at someone else’s life.  I can dance and work and read and write and be social and learn new things and be proficient at old things, and do this all before sunset.  It’s like this for months on end.

Unlike what Cheryl Townsend Gilkes describes, I’m not working anything out.  For me, the happiness is a flip side of working through more difficult times.  Because there are patterns in my moods, I know that if I hold on through a depression, I will feel happy.

Joy is a reward for surviving.

Perhaps this is what I share with those filled with Holy Spirit.  In ecstatic expression, they convey that it can be miraculous to live through things that kill people.  The shouts say that only God could know where we’ve been and provide hope that there is somewhere better.  The dance says that no matter what the previous week or months were like, today, I am happy.

This is spiritual and therapeutic hope for me, and I thank my family for teaching me this at an early age.

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the truth, the whole truth

I have a confession: I like soap operas.  Not all, but a couple.  I’ve been following their story lines for years.  At the end of almost every weekday, I indulge myself by watching the day’s episode online.  It seems like a perfect mindless wasy to unwind.  I jokingly tell friends, “Whatever’s going on in my life, it will pale in comparison to the drama these characters invoke in their lives.”  I know it’s TV.  I know it’s not real.  Yet the philosopher in me is fascinated by how years of television can operate off of two basic axioms: (1) I can make so-and-so love me; and (2) it’s better if I don’t tell so-and-so the truth.  I’m convinced that these two principles serve as the core for decades of dramatic storytelling.

The second axiom fascinates me because it so clearly contradicts the oft-cited biblical passage:

The truth shall set you free.

The context of this passage complicates this statement.  Jesus is teaching the crowds in the temple.  He’s talking about sin and death and his relationship to the world.  People are perplexed as he continues explaining his relationship to “the Father.”  Finally Jesus says, “And the one who sent me is with me; this one has not left me alone.”  It is as if a cartoon light bulb is lit above the disciples’ heads, as the text notes that many believe now.  Speaking to those believers, Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” (John 8:31-32)

As an educator committed to social transformation, I’m delighted in the way that Jesus connects teaching (his word) to community, knowledge and liberation.  I read this passage and see that communities can come together around spiritual teachings and feel secure in their knowledge of God.  I understand how intimacy with God can grant a sense of liberty.

But most of us simply pull this verse out of context: the truth shall set you free

Translation: “Don’t lie.  It’s better that way.”

I want to think I’m aligned with this biblical principle.  Nevertheless, I am one of many people who find themselves drawn to a particular scene from the movie, “A Few Good Men.”  It’s a military court of law and Tom Cruise plays Lt. Daniel Kaffee, the lead counsel for the defense.  Questioning Col. Nathan Jessup, played by the inimitable Jack Nicholson, Cruise’s character yells, “I want the truth!”  Nicholson delivers the well-known line in response, “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”

I’m often much more like Jack Nicholson than the gospel of John.  That’s confession number two.  And I don’t think I’m alone.

As someone who lives with depression, I have a tenuous relationship with the truth.  I know that depression can make me believe things that aren’t factually true.  Things like this: no one loves me; no one really knows me; no one sees who I really am.  Depression can turn my deepest insecurities into facts that can overwhelm me to the point of emotional paralysis.

As a fairly functional depressive (and one who was closeted more often than not), I also know how to lie.  I know how to work and teach and preach as if I’m okay.  I know how to contain the tears and shivering to my private moments alone at night.  I know how to fake it until I make it.  I can do this for months, years even, before most people know how miserable I am.  I don’t recommend it.  I also know how exhausting and lonely that is.

But down deep, I’ve embraced Jack Nicholson’s approach more than Jesus’ words.  I didn’t think people around me could handle my truth.  I’ve believed that my colleagues and superiors wouldn’t respect me if they knew about my struggles and vulnerabilities.  They would not hire me.  They would not promote me.  I’ve believed that people closest to me needed me to be strong and “together.”  I’ve believed that my friends would not love me if they knew how sad I really was.

I told myself that this was the lesser of many evils because I never lied to myself.  I knew how poorly I felt.  I knew when I slid from something-I-can-manage to I-better-find-a-doctor-quickly.  I thought my self-awareness was honesty.  I’ve always told doctors what was going on.

I understand that this is a rarity.  On the television show, the expert medical diagnostician Dr. Gregory House always says, “People always lie.”  By this, he refers to the fact that patients do not tell the full truth about their lives and symptoms, thereby rendering it even more difficult for doctors to make an accurate diagnosis.  Dr. House feels this so strongly that he insists that the doctors he supervises break into the homes of the patients in search of more information.

It’s an extreme position, but I suspect many doctors are trained like House.  They are trained to believe that patients are not telling the whole story.  They don’t say: “Everybody lies.”  Rather sometimes doctors are trained to pay more attention to symptoms, than to what the patient says.

This won’t work with people who live with depressive conditions.  We have to tell someone.  We have to tell someone how we really feel and what’s happening, so that they can help us.  Most of us cannot wait until someone else notices, or we’ll be far down a road from which some people don’t return.

Those of us who are reticent about telling the truth of our depressions may be as insecure as I can be.  They may be wisely attuned to the stigma of mental health challenges and how prejudice can adversely affect one’s ability to make a living. Other people believe that acknowledgement of depression is tantamount to admitting defeat.  I can understand that as well.

Some spiritual, philosophical and psychological systems believe in affirmations.  They believe that we can tell ourselves things that are not true, things that we want to be true, things that we hold to be true – even when we don’t feel them.  We do this in order to encourage ourselves to live into them.  We do this to retrain our brains, minds and consciousnesses to conform to these ideas.  I believe there is power in such a system.  I believe there is power in learning to live into our highest, most godly selves.

But the power is lost when we do so at the risk of lying to ourselves, the people closest to us, or the people who could help us.

My truth is not usually pretty.  On any given day, it could be: I’m unhappy; I didn’t sleep well; I lost my appetite three weeks ago; I’m not really sure if you love me; I miss my friends; and no, I don’t think if I try again tomorrow, it will be better.

These are the kinds of things I tend to keep to myself.

Each day I fight the Jack Nicholson in me in favor of Jesus’ words about truth and freedom.  My closest friends are like Jesus’ disciples: they are my community; they can handle my truth; they hold my hands as we journey towards a land of liberty.  They remind me that telling the truth is not just a biblical commandment I have to follow to get to a good place.  Rather it’s one of the most powerful gifts I can give to myself, and those I love.

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