I Trust When Dark My Road

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.

Like many congregations, my parish suffers with money problems this year. Fortunately, Christ is Lord of the Church, and such things will pass.

One of the cost savings moves that we made this past year was to go from Concordia Plan B to the new Health Savings Account (HSA). This has been a good move for the church financially, and I think that it will work out fine for us financially in the end as well.

However, one of the things I figured out today is that the way mental health services is managed is different. In The Church’s Plan, as well as plans A,B, C & D, Concordia Plans uses CIGNA to manage their mental health care insurance requests, etc etc etc.

BUT, if you use either the HSA or the HRA plans that Concordia offers, they are now administered under Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

This has caused no end of confusion on the part of my doctor & counselor, and I hope to get it resolved soon. But I thought I would give y’all a heads up on this, as it may have some impact on you.

Anyone else having problems with mental health claims and concordia plans?

-DMR

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