I Trust When Dark My Road

Below you will find a link to an article that indicates anti-depressant use has doubled in the US:

Reuters AlertNet – Antidepressant use doubles in US, study finds

Here’s the quotation I found most interesting:

“The survey did not look at why, but the researchers made some educated guesses. It may be more socially acceptable to be diagnosed with and treated for depression, they said. The availability of new drugs may also have been a factor.”

What do you think? How taboo is it to be diagnosed with depression? Is it more or less so if you are a pastor or some other type of church worker?

Know Thyself is one of my favorite reads. The pastor is insightful, honest, and grapples with many of the tough subjects of ministry that we have tried to wrestle with here. Here’s one of his quotes about the book:

New Resource and Other Thoughts About Pastors As Human Beings « Know Thyself: “Pastors are people too. I can’t say it enough. We hurt when church members die. We ache when people reject the faith to our face. We feel helpless when we teach and teach and teach but no one seems to heed the teaching. We rejoice when great things happen to our people. We rejoice when people yearn for the Gifts of the Gospel. We bask in the joy of baptisms, confirmations, and weddings. It’s not just a job. It’s being a grafted in member of a family.”

I urge you to go and check out his whole post.

-DMR

Know Thyself is one of my favorite reads. The pastor is insightful, honest, and grapples with many of the tough subjects of ministry that we have tried to wrestle with here. Here’s one of his quotes about the book:

New Resource and Other Thoughts About Pastors As Human Beings « Know Thyself: “Pastors are people too. I can’t say it enough. We hurt when church members die. We ache when people reject the faith to our face. We feel helpless when we teach and teach and teach but no one seems to heed the teaching. We rejoice when great things happen to our people. We rejoice when people yearn for the Gifts of the Gospel. We bask in the joy of baptisms, confirmations, and weddings. It’s not just a job. It’s being a grafted in member of a family.”

I urge you to go and check out his whole post.

-DMR

Susan Gehlbach has a great observation in the post below about happiness:

Susan’s Pendulum: 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

So this past Sunday was quite an adventure in my illness. I had really been struggling with the sermon. It wasn’t working. I tried writing it three times. Nada. I tried working through one of my old sermons (been doing too much of that lately). Nada. Finally I settled on a sermon that a friend wrote whom I can usually “lift” without too much trouble. But it just didn’t feel right. I knew this, but I had just ran outta time in preparation. So it goes.

The service is going fine, but the sermon is just dogging at me. I can’t get it out of my mind, and not in a good way. It didn’t feel right. As I thought through it, I didn’t know what I was going to say. There was nothing there. Just nada.

We come to the sermon hymn. Thankfully, it has seven verses so I have a little time to think. My mind is racing, but it isn’t going anywhere. I just have no idea what I’m going to say. The manuscript is up there, but it’s like it’s not even though. I finally get up to start reviewing it before I’m on.

I start the sermon. But I can’t read. I get through a sentence, and it’s like the words have no relationship to each other. It makes no sense. I try off the cuff a bit, but my brain has become a black hole, sucking all thought away into a mindless void. I am as we would say in Hebrew class, tohou wa vohou, a formless void.

This goes on for 5-7 minutes. I really have no idea how long. I have no idea what I said. I’d read a sentence, and then try to say something offhand about it, but it wouldn’t make any sense. I’m sweating, fearful that I have now been FOUND OUT for the fraud that I feel I am all the time.

Thankfully, it ended. The rest of the liturgy went fine, and bible class went surprisingly fine. But the whole experience left me shaken.

I think it was a panic attack, just unlike any I’ve experienced before.

Blech.

God willing, tonight will go better.

So how’s your week?

I don’t generally think of Robert Preus as the source of all knowledge when it comes to mental illness, but I ran across this article recently. It is well done. Very Preusesque, but he really understands the relationship between faith and mental illness. Here’s one citation to pique your interest:

Pastors who suffer stress and affliction, like any Christian in similar circumstances, may be tempted to look to their faith as a reason for self-esteem and assurance, rather than to the only object of faith, Christ and His pardoning Word. They conclude that failure and inability to cope are due to weak faith or the lack of faith altogether. They are viewing faith as their act rather than as their reception of God’s mercy.

Robert D. Preus, “Clergy Mental Health and the Doctrine of Justification,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 48, no. 2 & 3 (1984): 120.

I recommend this little essay very highly. Check it out. I actually think that LCMS World Relief has this online somewhere, but I can’t find it right now. Can anyone help me out?

-DMR

Today we reached 20,000 hits over the past 11 months.  In the global scale of the massive blogs that are out there with thousands of hits a day, that’s not very much.  But for this pastor, it is a testament that maybe our church body will start to wake up to the real suffering of her pastors (and others), and begin to examine how we view the ministry in the light of mental illness.

There have been a few blogs that have started up since this one’s inception that I am also very thankful for.  I’m not going to try and list them.  You can find them on the blogroll on the side of the site.  But it is a great hting to realize that none of us are ever alone in our trials.

Thanks for your thoughts, prayers, conversations, and support.  I hope that this site continues to serve as a beacon of hope to the suffering and hurting.

-DMR

Today we reached 20,000 hits over the past 11 months.  In the global scale of the massive blogs that are out there with thousands of hits a day, that’s not very much.  But for this pastor, it is a testament that maybe our church body will start to wake up to the real suffering of her pastors (and others), and begin to examine how we view the ministry in the light of mental illness.

There have been a few blogs that have started up since this one’s inception that I am also very thankful for.  I’m not going to try and list them.  You can find them on the blogroll on the side of the site.  But it is a great hting to realize that none of us are ever alone in our trials.

Thanks for your thoughts, prayers, conversations, and support.  I hope that this site continues to serve as a beacon of hope to the suffering and hurting.

-DMR

Below you will find a link to the funeral sermon for Rev. John Gerlach, our brother in Christ who died this past week. Pastor Flo does a wonderful job proclaiming the Gospel, putting our hope where it belongs (on Jesus), and on recognizing the grief that is ours at John’s death. Thank you, Pastor Flo, for speaking His Word to us.

-DMR

The Commemoration of +John Gerlach

(Via Cyberstones)

Rev. David Petersen on his blog, Cyberstones, has a nice post about clergy and mental illness. Check it out here:

The Clergy and Mental Illness

He makes some good points that are well worth considering. However, I do disagree with him on a couple things. Please read the following:

2. The Office of the Holy Ministry is so stressful it causes clinical depression, etc.

The other fallacy [the one I've listed above] is usually picked up by those who are suffering, whether the actual sick person or by his family and parishoners. They are looking for someone or something to blame. It is mostly false. The Office of the Holy Ministry is no more stressful than any other vocation or job in this fallen world. It does not cause mental illness. But being mentally ill and trying to deal with suffering people is difficult and the feelings of being a hypocrite are immense. So it certainly feels at times to those who are ill as if the Office is the root of their problem.

Obviously Rev. Petersen has a good point. It is easy for those who are sick or for the family of those who are sick to blame the Holy Ministry for depression or some other mental illness. We like to have something or someone to blame. In this sense Rev. Petersen is right.

In this sense he is wrong. The Office of the Holy Ministry is more stressful than other vocations. Not always, and not universally, but there is no question that the pressures put on a man who serves as a pastor is far greater than what one will find in many, even most other vocations (other than father and mother). We deal with the eternal. Heaven and hell. Life and death. We are forced to try and answer some of the toughest questions human beings ever face: why did my mother die? Why did my wife abandon me? How do I know my son will go to heaven? The questions which we seek to answer are deep and abiding, and cannot simply be shed with your winter coat in the closet when you come home.

There is a great deal of evidence that generally speaking, individual serving in service fields (doctors, nurses, social workers, etc) have a much higher incident of clinical depression. The same is true for clergy. I don’t have the exact statistics in front of my right now, but I know that roughly 10% of the general population in America struggle with clinical depression, and that the number is closer to 30% for clergy. That’s a pretty big difference.

Now I don’t say this to provide a scape goat. I say it because one of the key elements in healing is understanding why you are sick. What are the causes. Heredity, situation, family life, lifestyle in general, and good old chemical makeup all play a factor.

I’m not saying this to hold up pastors as the great saints who sacrifice more than anyone else. That is nonsense and I don’t believe it. There has to be an honest understanding on the part of the pastor of how the Office affects him physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. That mindfulness of who we are and how things shape us is a part of what can make a great pastor. It’s also what can contribute to the utter downfall of a pastor who things he has everything under control.

Thanks for your thoughts, Rev. Petersen. I appreciate what you have to say.

-DMR