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
The link below is from the blog Untreatable Online, which I read pretty regularly. As a Christian, my question is this: how should we as the Church serve these people? How do we demonstrate or mercy for the needy in care here? Talk about a tough question! I wish I had a good answer…
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
Here’s a helpful article commenting on this large Christianity Today issue on depression from March:
courier-journal.com | Faith & Works blog | The Courier-Journal
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 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
Rev. David Petersen over at Cyberstones has a very nice post about sorrow and mental illness. He is particularly talking about how difficult it is to get into the shoes of another person, to understand their suffering. We all suffer, but each person’s pain and sorrow is their own, and none of us can judge or lay claim to fully understand another person’s trials.
-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
My recent post about reading has prompted a further question for me. The comments, as well as the experience that I have had, tells me that people who are going through depression rarely have the mental energy (or whatever you want to call it) to sit down and read. Even if it’s short. Even if it’s great. If you don’t have the energy to look at the comics, a book on the theology of the cross and depression just isn’t going to help you.
So what will?
I’m not talking about medical or psychological help. I mean spiritual help. What will help heal your soul? Audio, video, something else?
I’m just thinking out loud here. I’d like to hear your thoughts.
-DMR