Category Archives: Pastoral Office

Making Calls

In my experience, one of the most difficult things for people to understand is why making calls (shut-in, prison, hospital, etc) are so difficult for someone suffering from depression and/or anxiety.

Why should it be hard? It’s one on one. They’re happy to see you (generally). It doesn’t usually take more than half an hour. For what most people see, this should be one of the things the depressed pastor should be able to handle.

Here is why it’s one of the hardest:

  • It is one on one focused conversation. This requires energy. Often they are in pain, or lonely, or depressed themselves. That makes it so that these visits are high energy right off the bat.
  • Because of this, they are profoundly draining. For myself, one shut-in call wipes me out for half a day. A visit to a prison takes about two days to recover from, and hospitals are in between. Mileage may vary on this, but that has been my consistent experience on the post-disability side of depression.
  • Pastors often serve as the sole source of information in regular calls. This isn’t part of being a pastor, but it is often the sad reality. Many shutins have very few visitors. So they want news, gossip, talk about the weather, their family, your family, everyone else’s family at church that they know. This, too, can be draining.
  • Because many people are sad, lonely or depressed, it hits the pastor where he lives. For myself, I am much more sympathetic to people’s trials and lives than I used to be. So when I hear of the sorrows of my flock, it hurts me. I’m not saying this because I don’t want to know. I do want to know. But being a pastor, caring for your sheep, is deeply personal and emotionally painful.

That’s why these calls are so hard. But there is good news. The good news is that it does slowly get better as you recover (see your doctor, take your medicine, find a good therapist, go to your confessor). The good news is that it is not about you, but about Christ and the medicine He brings. Some of the secondary things may not go as quickly as you wish. Don’t worry about it. Christ will take care of them, and He will use you as you are able, not as you want. Your suffering is for them as much as it is for you.

Also the good news is that you can ask for help. Tell your parish what is going on. Get your elders to visit. Get a tape program going so that others see them. Anything you can do to increase parish contact will make your own visits easier, because less of the burden will be on you.

Finally, you can only do what you can do. If you can’t see someone, you can’t. It’s that simple. This is good news. Don’t beat yourself up over things which you have no control over.

Anyway, pray for me as I try to make calls. You are all in my prayers along the journey as well.

-DMR

Making Calls

In my experience, one of the most difficult things for people to understand is why making calls (shut-in, prison, hospital, etc) are so difficult for someone suffering from depression and/or anxiety.

Why should it be hard? It’s one on one. They’re happy to see you (generally). It doesn’t usually take more than half an hour. For what most people see, this should be one of the things the depressed pastor should be able to handle.

Here is why it’s one of the hardest:

  • It is one on one focused conversation. This requires energy. Often they are in pain, or lonely, or depressed themselves. That makes it so that these visits are high energy right off the bat.
  • Because of this, they are profoundly draining. For myself, one shut-in call wipes me out for half a day. A visit to a prison takes about two days to recover from, and hospitals are in between. Mileage may vary on this, but that has been my consistent experience on the post-disability side of depression.
  • Pastors often serve as the sole source of information in regular calls. This isn’t part of being a pastor, but it is often the sad reality. Many shutins have very few visitors. So they want news, gossip, talk about the weather, their family, your family, everyone else’s family at church that they know. This, too, can be draining.
  • Because many people are sad, lonely or depressed, it hits the pastor where he lives. For myself, I am much more sympathetic to people’s trials and lives than I used to be. So when I hear of the sorrows of my flock, it hurts me. I’m not saying this because I don’t want to know. I do want to know. But being a pastor, caring for your sheep, is deeply personal and emotionally painful.

That’s why these calls are so hard. But there is good news. The good news is that it does slowly get better as you recover (see your doctor, take your medicine, find a good therapist, go to your confessor). The good news is that it is not about you, but about Christ and the medicine He brings. Some of the secondary things may not go as quickly as you wish. Don’t worry about it. Christ will take care of them, and He will use you as you are able, not as you want. Your suffering is for them as much as it is for you.

Also the good news is that you can ask for help. Tell your parish what is going on. Get your elders to visit. Get a tape program going so that others see them. Anything you can do to increase parish contact will make your own visits easier, because less of the burden will be on you.

Finally, you can only do what you can do. If you can’t see someone, you can’t. It’s that simple. This is good news. Don’t beat yourself up over things which you have no control over.

Anyway, pray for me as I try to make calls. You are all in my prayers along the journey as well.

-DMR

Do Pastors Relax?


Do pastors relax? There is a grand question. Many pastors work 80+ hours a week, even down to cutting the grass for the church, janitorial services, and a host of non-pastoral or quasi-pastoral tasks. Why do we do this to ourselves? Family has little room in such a life. Friends exist only on the internet. Time for personal recharging and reflection will certainly be at the bottom of the heap. We can easily look at life as one long series of obligations (and failures), and that all we do is try to keep our heads above water. I once had a pastor tell me that we (meaning pastors) measure our day not by the mistakes we make, but by the number of things we didn’t get done.

I certainly have lived that life, and continue to struggle with it every day. Guilt is a powerful thing, and none of us will ever fulfill our vocations completely (see the Ten Commandments).

All of this brings me back to my original question: Do pastors relax? And if they do, how?

One thing that really is critical for pastors and relaxation (and this may sound a little silly) is that often it has to be scheduled. I live by my calendar. If it isn’t on the calendar, or on the “task list,” it simply isn’t going to happen. If I do this, it is much more likely that I will take the time to sit back and relax. Golf. Tennis. Cards. Brewing Beer. Drinking tea by the lake. Whatever it is.

Of course, the danger with scheduling relaxation is making it become another obligation, something you MUST do can become a chore in no time. It’s a delicate balance.

Is it worth it? YES!

Is it a hard habit to form. YES!

Can you do it? YES!

Talk with your spouse about it if you’re married. It will help across the board in dealing with people, church, home, and the like.

So how do you relax?

-DMR

Sophie's Choice


I recently finished reading an intriguing book by William Styron entitled Sophie’s Choice. Styron is the same author who wrote Darkness Visible, which I have commented on before. As a disclaimer, I will say that there is LOTS of poor language, sex, and other generally in appropriate things in the book, and that as a Christian reading it, you need to be prepared.

Having said that, it really is an amazing book.

Sophie, a Polish refugee who survived Auschwitz/Birkenau, is haunted by the terrible things she did in Cracow and again at the concentration camp. She went face to face with a great evil, and in her mind, she failed. Depression doesn’t even begin to describe her mental state. She is suicidal clearly, and is in the midst of a bizarre abusive relationship that the reader doesn’t truly understand until near the end of the book. Her boyfriend is schizophrenic, and so goes through periods of extreme violence and periods of “normalcy” along the way. In the end, she and her boyfriend complete a suicide pact which they had aborted some months earlier.

[spoiler: don’t read this paragraph if you want to read the book and be in suspense.]
The choice which she had to make was which one of her children would get to live, and which would get to die. She is forced to make this choice because she was Polish; for the Jews at the time, all the children died. But she got to choose one to live. The ultimate evil, or pretty darn close.

Now a number of things about this book have gotten me to continue thinking about it. First, the obvious traumatic event which triggers as deep and dark a depression as one can imagine. There was no history of depression in her family. Of course, I expect that seeing those kind of horrors will change a person no matter what. But to be asked to choose which child lives, and which dies. That would be the ultimate breaker of a personality, I would say.

The second is her obvious desire for redemption and forgiveness, even though she has abandoned her Catholic upbringing, because God “abandoned” her. Here is a perfect example of where do you go to look. She tried them all. Music, alcohol, sex, living the wild side, the whole gambit. She went everywhere except to the One who could help. The narrator (Stingo) is also an agnostic, and so the thought never really occurs to him.

Finally, we can see in Sophie’s Choice the devastating effect that events and how they are interpreted in our lives can have on us. There is no happy ending or making good with choosing between two of your children, only to have both of them die in the end.

For the Christian, how one address people in pain and suffering is a critical understanding. On the one hand, we can’t simply dismiss despair in whatever form it takes as merely unbelief to be squashed. In sin, every sinner is both the participant and the victim. Our task (esp. as pastors) is to minister to them, to draw the sin out, and to provide healing that is real and lasting. A part of that means when it comes to despair that there are real reasons why people fall into despair.

It also means providing them with hope to give hope where it belongs, in Jesus Christ and him crucified. But this doesn’t mean pat answers. It means tackling tough questions, admitting when we have no idea, and weeping with those who weep.

There is a fascinating paper out in cyberworld that addresses this topic by Dr. Bev Yahnke. It’s called Prescriptions for the Soul: The Taxonomy of Despair. Read it. And read this book. I look forward to your thoughts on the matters

-LL

Sophie's Choice


I recently finished reading an intriguing book by William Styron entitled Sophie’s Choice. Styron is the same author who wrote Darkness Visible, which I have commented on before. As a disclaimer, I will say that there is LOTS of poor language, sex, and other generally in appropriate things in the book, and that as a Christian reading it, you need to be prepared.

Having said that, it really is an amazing book.

Sophie, a Polish refugee who survived Auschwitz/Birkenau, is haunted by the terrible things she did in Cracow and again at the concentration camp. She went face to face with a great evil, and in her mind, she failed. Depression doesn’t even begin to describe her mental state. She is suicidal clearly, and is in the midst of a bizarre abusive relationship that the reader doesn’t truly understand until near the end of the book. Her boyfriend is schizophrenic, and so goes through periods of extreme violence and periods of “normalcy” along the way. In the end, she and her boyfriend complete a suicide pact which they had aborted some months earlier.

[spoiler: don’t read this paragraph if you want to read the book and be in suspense.]
The choice which she had to make was which one of her children would get to live, and which would get to die. She is forced to make this choice because she was Polish; for the Jews at the time, all the children died. But she got to choose one to live. The ultimate evil, or pretty darn close.

Now a number of things about this book have gotten me to continue thinking about it. First, the obvious traumatic event which triggers as deep and dark a depression as one can imagine. There was no history of depression in her family. Of course, I expect that seeing those kind of horrors will change a person no matter what. But to be asked to choose which child lives, and which dies. That would be the ultimate breaker of a personality, I would say.

The second is her obvious desire for redemption and forgiveness, even though she has abandoned her Catholic upbringing, because God “abandoned” her. Here is a perfect example of where do you go to look. She tried them all. Music, alcohol, sex, living the wild side, the whole gambit. She went everywhere except to the One who could help. The narrator (Stingo) is also an agnostic, and so the thought never really occurs to him.

Finally, we can see in Sophie’s Choice the devastating effect that events and how they are interpreted in our lives can have on us. There is no happy ending or making good with choosing between two of your children, only to have both of them die in the end.

For the Christian, how one address people in pain and suffering is a critical understanding. On the one hand, we can’t simply dismiss despair in whatever form it takes as merely unbelief to be squashed. In sin, every sinner is both the participant and the victim. Our task (esp. as pastors) is to minister to them, to draw the sin out, and to provide healing that is real and lasting. A part of that means when it comes to despair that there are real reasons why people fall into despair.

It also means providing them with hope to give hope where it belongs, in Jesus Christ and him crucified. But this doesn’t mean pat answers. It means tackling tough questions, admitting when we have no idea, and weeping with those who weep.

There is a fascinating paper out in cyberworld that addresses this topic by Dr. Bev Yahnke. It’s called Prescriptions for the Soul: The Taxonomy of Despair. Read it. And read this book. I look forward to your thoughts on the matters

-LL

On Chase, Preaching and Other Signs of Light

As I continue on the road to recovery, there have been a couple bright spots that I thought would be worth mentioning here. You never can tell what is really going to be important to you somehow.

Chase
For my children, the mark of my illness and recovery is very simple. Chase. If I can play chase, I must be getting better. If I can’t play chase, then I’m still sick in the head (or something to that effect). Because right now the hardest thing for me to handle is my children, chase sort of represents a reentry into my family’s regular life schedule.

Chase is hard. I know, I know. It’s just running around like a crazy person with a few kids. But for the person suffering from depression, that kind of unwanton abandon, noise, suddon movement and general insanity is way outside of the normal comfort zone. It requires energy, excitement, the ability to say BOO at just the right time, etc.

In other words, just about everything that is difficult, all wrapped up in something that is so easy that most people do it even without thinking. But that is so often the case with depression. Things that you believe should be easy can become difficult on the way to impossible.

I think I’ve played chase once in the last year. This is down from at least once a day, maybe more. The once was last week. If we can move to once a week, that will be a huge step in the right direction

Preaching and Preparation
I’ve been preaching more and more the last couple months. Right now I’m pretty close to every week. Most of the sermons have been reruns, or last-minute throw together jobs. They were not my best were, or if they were, they were my best work from 2-5 years ago.

But last week was the first week that I had “normal” preparation for my sermon. Look at the text early in the week, read patristic and Luther sermons, see if there’s anything worthwhile that’s modern, and then write it down early enough in the week so I have time to edit it. Something like that. This happened last week. I don’t really even know why, it just did. So my Sermon on Sunday was much more relaxed, more “normal” for me. The congregation probably couldn’t tell the difference, but I could. It was a good sign.

Here are some questions for you:
1) What have you found the most difficult thing to come back to doing?
2) What made or is making it the most difficult?
3) What has been the easiest part of your life to return to “normal” and why?
4) What will never be the same?

Food for thought,
-DMR

On Chase, Preaching and Other Signs of Light

As I continue on the road to recovery, there have been a couple bright spots that I thought would be worth mentioning here. You never can tell what is really going to be important to you somehow.

Chase
For my children, the mark of my illness and recovery is very simple. Chase. If I can play chase, I must be getting better. If I can’t play chase, then I’m still sick in the head (or something to that effect). Because right now the hardest thing for me to handle is my children, chase sort of represents a reentry into my family’s regular life schedule.

Chase is hard. I know, I know. It’s just running around like a crazy person with a few kids. But for the person suffering from depression, that kind of unwanton abandon, noise, suddon movement and general insanity is way outside of the normal comfort zone. It requires energy, excitement, the ability to say BOO at just the right time, etc.

In other words, just about everything that is difficult, all wrapped up in something that is so easy that most people do it even without thinking. But that is so often the case with depression. Things that you believe should be easy can become difficult on the way to impossible.

I think I’ve played chase once in the last year. This is down from at least once a day, maybe more. The once was last week. If we can move to once a week, that will be a huge step in the right direction

Preaching and Preparation
I’ve been preaching more and more the last couple months. Right now I’m pretty close to every week. Most of the sermons have been reruns, or last-minute throw together jobs. They were not my best were, or if they were, they were my best work from 2-5 years ago.

But last week was the first week that I had “normal” preparation for my sermon. Look at the text early in the week, read patristic and Luther sermons, see if there’s anything worthwhile that’s modern, and then write it down early enough in the week so I have time to edit it. Something like that. This happened last week. I don’t really even know why, it just did. So my Sermon on Sunday was much more relaxed, more “normal” for me. The congregation probably couldn’t tell the difference, but I could. It was a good sign.

Here are some questions for you:
1) What have you found the most difficult thing to come back to doing?
2) What made or is making it the most difficult?
3) What has been the easiest part of your life to return to “normal” and why?
4) What will never be the same?

Food for thought,
-DMR