You might be interested in the last few posts on Scholtes-Blog. Check them out below!
Navigating Depression: My Journey with Antidepressants
Navigating Depression II: My Journey with More Antidepressants
You're Not Alone: The Gospel's Message for a Struggling Friend
A letter to a friend in the pews...
Dear Friend,
Perhaps you’ve wondered where I’ve been. Perhaps you’ve missed me. Perhaps you’ve worried about me. I’m okay right now. I’ve been gone a while, and while I haven’t been okay the whole time, I’m okay now. Thank you for your concern.
What have I been up to? I’ve been spending this time in self-care, doing the things I know I need to do in order to be healthy. Things like meditation and exercise, practicing what I’ve learned in therapy. Oh, but you can see through that, can’t you? I really shouldn’t lie to you. The truth is, some of my time away has been self-care, but some of it has been giving in to the darkness, the worry, the sad voices. You know the voices, the ones that tell me that I need to back off, that I need to shut up, that I need to be alone. The ones that tell me I’m unworthy of love, unworthy of grace. I’ve given into them a lot. And of course they’re the exact thing I need self-care for.
So, I’ve been up and down. And I wonder what you think of that. I wonder what you think when you hear about my troubles, about the questions I continue to struggle with. Does it bring you some comfort, to know that you’re not the only one who hears the good news of grace, and yet can’t seem to believe it? Does it bring you hope to know that a leader in the church struggles as much as you do?
Or does it do the opposite – does it make you question whether the good news is real? After all, I am the leader, the pastor – the one who preaches the good news, the one who pours the baptismal water of promise, who breaks the bread of Christ’s covenant of love. Does my struggle make you question whether there’s any truth to this news? Whether your faith is in the wrong place, if even a spiritual leader is so fragile?
Welcome to Issue #83 of Biblia Luna, the (approximately) weekly newsletter about the intersection of mental illness and faith, written by a pastor who lives with depression. I put the holy back in melancholy! If you find this newsletter helpful or interesting, please consider sharing it with someone else (or on social media). It might help them too. And it will help me grow my audience, and reach more people. Thank you!
Hopefully Tomorrow
The Impossibility of Depression
For people with depression, the word impossible can feel like an old friend, a companion in the dark walk.
For instance, there are times when it seems completely impossible to do anything. Get the kitchen cleaned up? Impossible. Get that newsletter written? Impossible. Even get up off this couch? Impossible. Depression saps energy and motivation like a magic eraser. I’ve heard it said that the opposite of depression isn’t happiness, it’s motivation. Depression can be like the heaviest blanket, a weight that adds so much inertia that it feels like an insurmountable obstacle just to get up. So often I berate myself for being lazy, but that’s really not a fair assessment. But when you have a condition that both reduces both your motivation and your self-image, then attacking yourself for being lazy is pretty much the obvious conclusion.
There are also times when it seems completely impossible that anything will change. Depression can trick you into thinking that you’ve always felt this way, that you have never been happy or joyful, that there’s no hope that you ever will be. Even remembering a time in the past when things were different or better can get twisted, as the blurry greys of depression smudge out the vibrant colors those memories might have once had. And when it seems like nothing has ever been better in the past, it is really easy to believe that it will never get better in the future.
There are also times when it feels like you’ve tried everything. Medication, therapy, mindfulness, yoga, exercise…and to what end? You’re always back down in the end. Nothing ever gets you out, not permanently. It feels completely impossible that there is an end to the eternal spiral of downward mood swings.
The Impossibility of Salvation
In the 10th chapter of Mark, Jesus said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Now, if you’ve been around the church for a while, you might have heard a story that there’s a gate into Jerusalem called “The Eye of the Needle.” This gate was said to be very low, so that if a laden camel came, it would have to be unloaded, and then duck its head down to enter. Thus, a rich person certainly could enter the kingdom of God, it’s just that he would have to bow down and be humble.
The trouble is – there is absolutely no evidence that there ever was such a gate. This was a pious story invented in the middle ages to let wealthy people feel better about themselves. No, it seems like Jesus meant what he said – just as it’s impossible to get a literal camel through the literal eye of a literal needle, it’s impossible for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of God.
His disciples were astounded and said, “Then who can be saved?”
And Jesus said, “For mortals it is impossible.” Impossible.
Impossible.
“But not for God – for God all things are possible.”
The Possibility of God
And there is the good news of the Gospel. The good news is that “for God all things are possible.” Through God, salvation happens. Through God, people of all sorts get through the eye of the Kingdom’s needle – rich people, poor people, old people, young people, even mentally ill people.
So I wonder if maybe this is hope for people lost in the impossibility of depression. Even there, there is hope. There is hope that things can get better, because we have a God who lives in the land of impossibility, stirring up the sand and watering the land, nurturing the plants and leading all in dance. And maybe, who knows, maybe making tomorrow a little better than today. Maybe, who knows, maybe bringing an unexpected moment of grace and joy into our lives.
It's not certainty. It’s not a sure thing. But maybe it’s enough. Maybe that’s exactly what God’s up to, and maybe it’s enough.
Harvest Full of Hope
If you’re in driving distance of the Lehigh Valley, consider attending Harvest Full of Hope next week, the annual conference seeking to promote mental wellness and provide education on emerging topics in the field of mental health. This year’s event will be Tuesday, October 15 at Steelstacks in Bethlehem. I plan to be there learning and networking. Click here for more info!
Biblia Blessing
The God of all consolation bless us in every way, grant us hope all the days of our life, restore us to health and grant us salvation, fill our heart with peace, and lead us to eternal life. Almighty God bless us, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Welcome to Issue #82 of Biblia Luna, the (approximately) weekly newsletter about the intersection of mental illness and faith, written by a pastor who lives with depression. I put the holy back in melancholy! If you find this newsletter helpful or interesting, please consider sharing it with someone else (or on social media). It might help them too. And it will help me grow my audience, and reach more people. Thank you!
Hopefully Tomorrow: Is Your Body Wrong?
Next Sunday’s gospel reading (Mark 9:38-50) includes these verses:
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell. (Mark 9:43-47, New Revised Standard Version)
Reading this reminds me of a very rare but serious psychological condition called body integrity identity disorder. A person with this condition has a strong desire, an obsession, with removing a part of their body that’s healthy. It might be a leg, an arm, an eye, or some other part. They have a strong feeling that that particular body part doesn’t belong there, or doesn’t belong to them, and it feels as though they will only be a complete person when it is removed. They know that it’s healthy, they are able to use it, but they can’t let go of this feeling. Many seek out a physician to perform an amputation.
Body integrity identity disorder is considered to be a type of body dysphoria, where a person feels that there’s a mismatch between who they are and what their body is. (Another type of dysphoria is gender dysphoria, in which a person experiences a mismatch between their assigned gender and their identity. This is generally the experience of people who identify as transgender.)
It’s not uncommon to have complaints or concerns about our bodies, to wish something about our bodies was different. But dysphoria takes that complaint and concern to another level, to the point of strongly desiring irreversible procedures to change the body permanently. I have often thought that many mental illnesses appear to be normal human emotions and feelings, raised to an extreme power. (Depression is kind of like sadness to an extreme, anxiety is kind of like worry to an extreme, OCD is kind of like perfectionism to an extreme, and so on.) Perhaps body dysphoria is like normal body concerns to an unhealthy and uncontrollable extreme.
But I don’t think Jesus is actually talking about body dysphoria in the text above – at least not directly. I think he’s using hyperbole to make a point that there are some things even more important than your body. He says it’s better to lose an eye or a foot than to be lost in sin, which means that following God is so important that it’s worth losing a body part for. He’s saying that doing what God has called you to do, being who God made you to be, is more important than the specifics of your body. And maybe, just maybe, that’s a message that can be helpful for people with body dysphoria. To hear that your identity, your God-given self, is more important than anything about your body. That you have integrity just as you are, no matter what your body feels like. Maybe that feeling can make decisions about your body easier. Maybe?
Trying to Find Spiritual Direction
A spiritual director is a trained and certified professional who works with you to help you discover what’s going on in your spiritual life, where God might be stirring within and around you, and what might be good things to feed your spirit. There are spiritual directors of all faith backgrounds (or none), and in my case I’m looking for someone with a liturgical Christian background. In my experience, spiritual direction is kind of like talk therapy, but the focus isn’t so much on the mind or brain as on the spirit.
The spiritual director I’d been working with for the past seven years recently retired, so I’ve been looking for someone new to work with. I used the website of Spiritual Directors International to help find one. It’s a great place to start if you’re looking for a director. So, the site gives you the option of looking for someone to meet with virtually (in which case their location doesn’t matter), or someone to meet with in person (in which case you then enter your address and the radius you’d like to look in). I wasn’t sure which kind I wanted, so I started looking in both. Before too long, I narrowed it down to one person locally, and another person virtually. (I had not yet reached out to either of them.)
Then I had to decide between them. This was a tough decision. Did I want the immediacy of working with someone in the same room, or did I want the convenience of meeting with someone online? Did I want the 30-minute drive which would enable me to do some processing before and after the appointment, or did I want the ability to connect more quickly and fluidly throughout my day? This was a surprisingly hard decision for me!
I finally decided, after a lot of thought and prayer, to pursue a local spiritual director, whom I could sit in the same room with and breathe the same air. I worked up the nerve to reach out to her. (Why was this so hard?) I wrote and rewrote and rewrote an email to her asking if she was taking new clients, etc., telling her some things about my spiritual life, etc., and sent it. And I waited.
She wrote me back a few hours later, and I’m going to quote part of her email here:
I recently moved back to […] after 25 years in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (Your email brought to my attention that I have not updated the website with our new location. Thank you and sorry!) Our time together would be via Zoom.
So, all that thought and prayer about local or virtual. Yep. Man plans, and God laughs.
This Week’s Question
I’d really like to grow a conversation from this newsletter. So please consider leaving a comment with your answers to the questions I pose each week. This week’s question is:
What’s one thing you really like about your body?
Note: It was brought to my attention that you can’t comment anonymously on a Substack newsletter. I’m sorry – I didn’t know that! If you try to post, a box pops up asking you to create an account. I checked it out, and it looks like it needs a name and an email address. The email address does need to be legitimate, because it will send you an email you’ll need to click on. The name can be whatever you want — pick a pseudonym if you want. No need to create a password, just share your email address and some sort of name. I do hope you’ll consider doing it – I’d love to get a conversation started here!
Biblia Blessing
The God of all consolation bless us in every way, grant us hope all the days of our life, restore us to health and grant us salvation, fill our heart with peace, and lead us to eternal life. Almighty God bless us, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Welcome to Issue #81 of Biblia Luna, the (approximately) weekly newsletter about the intersection of mental illness and faith, written by a pastor who lives with depression. I put the holy back in melancholy! If you find this newsletter helpful or interesting, please consider sharing it with someone else (or on social media). It might help them too. And it will help me grow my audience, and reach more people. Thank you!
Hopefully Tomorrow: Am I the GOAT?
The gospel reading for next Sunday includes these two verses:
Then they came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. (Mark 9:33-34, New Revised Standard Version)
“They” here refers to the twelve apostles. But it’s funny…I can picture a slightly different version of this story involving not a group of twelve, but just one person – me.
I can imagine myself and Jesus walking through Galilee, toward Capernaum. Or maybe we’re walking through my own town. Jesus knocks on my door, let’s say, and says, “Wanna go for a walk?” I reply, “Sure.” I get my sneakers on, and off we go. We walk for a while, not talking, just walking silently. Perhaps Jesus is listening to the birds, the breeze, the still small voice of his Father, who knows. But as we walk, I am listening to the voices inside my own head.
And they are loud today. I am hearing a voice saying, “Jesus chose to walk with you. It must be because you are something really special. Jesus knows that you’re an incredible writer, an outstanding pastor, and just a darned good person.” And I hear a voice say, “Jesus didn’t choose you for that. He chose you because you are his weakest link. His worst follower. The most hypocritical and worthless person ever to get baptized. You’re a charity case for him.” I hear a voice say, “You are nothing but a poser, a fraud, a charlatan. Just a sad sack who brings people down and brings shame upon Christianity.” I hear a voice say, “You are actually an amazing and faithful disciple. You honestly speak about your mental health struggles, and make a difference to people who struggle with similar things. You are brave and loyal.” I hear a voice say, “You’re nothing.” I hear a voice say, “You’re great.”
When Jesus and I return to the house, he asks me, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But I am silent, for on the way I had argued with myself who was the greatest.
Oh, who needs friends when you’ve got voices in your head, am I right? I wish I could say this was an exaggeration to make my point, but really, all the voices I quoted above are real. I have heard those things echoing in my head over and over again for so many years. Ever since I was a child, I’ve gone back and forth between thinking I was the smartest and greatest person on earth, and the biggest and most worthless hypocrite. I find it very hard to think of myself as anything in the middle. I’m always at the extreme. And so I argue about whether I’m great or not.
I’m not sure if we’re all like this, or if this is a manifestation of my depression. But I know that it’s so tiring, and so destructive. I think, though, that Jesus’ next words to the disciples might be helpful to me, and perhaps others in this situation as well:
He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them, and taking it in his arms he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
There’s an old proverb that goes something like this: “I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother, and I found all three.” That’s the message I hear Jesus saying here, at least to me. I hear Jesus saying, “Stop arguing with yourself. Stop trying to judge and figure yourself out. Be a servant. Take care of someone. Like, say, this child. Get out of your head and help someone.”
And I think maybe it does help. It’s not that by doing so you solve the riddle of whether you’re good or bad, great or worthless. It’s that by doing so you step out of the riddle, un-ask the question, and just live. And by deliberately, mindfully doing something to help another person, you --- it’s funny, I keep wanting to finish that sentence with something like “you become a good person” or “you then become great.” But no, that’s not the point. That sentence just ends with the word “you” trailing off with an ellipsis…
…because by doing so you just get out of that eternal infernal internal dialogue, and out into God’s world, the place where there is no need to be great. God’s world is a place to simply be. And simply being means helping others.
I think.
An Old Poem
Someone training to be a pastor usually needs to complete a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE). This is often a three-month full-time intensive experience, where you are placed as a student chaplain in a clinical setting (often a hospital or similar place), and where you also receive some very intense small group work and scrutiny with a supervisor and your peers in the program. When I did my CPE at Penn Foundation, a mental health and recovery center in Bucks County, I deliberately brought my own mental health “stuff” into it, and tried to work on myself even as I ministered to others.
In a way, my work at Penn Foundation, as it was intrinsically related both to my inner calling to be a pastor and my inner struggles with depression, was the first iteration of Biblia Luna.
Anyway, the proverb I quoted above reminded me of something I wrote in my final self-evaluation for CPE. It was this poem:
“I sought my soul, but my soul I could not see. I sought my God, but my God eluded me. I sought my brother and I found all three.” But that never worked, never quite worked for me. For when I looked at my brother, I always saw my own eyes Obsessed with their lenses, their transparent disguise I tried to ignore them; I told myself lies I thought avoiding myself was exceedingly wise For the way I was seeking was wrong from the start I was using my brain, but rarely my heart I see now that compassion is no science, but art It’s about keeping awake, not about being smart. I’ve explored who I am, I’ve explored what I feel I’ve experienced a grace that has forced me to kneel I’m still not quite sure if I can explain what is real But exploring with another can help us both heal
This week’s question
I’d really like to grow a conversation from this newsletter. So please consider leaving a comment with your answers to the questions I pose each week. This week’s question is:
What’s something you wish your “inner voice” would stop saying?
Biblia Blessing
The God of all consolation bless us in every way, grant us hope all the days of our life, restore us to health and grant us salvation, fill our heart with peace, and lead us to eternal life. Almighty God bless us, the Father, the + Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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