Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Biblia Luna #82
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.
Being December 2 (just getting around to seeing this post) I get to share my gratitude for all of my body. It has taken time and effort to keep care of my body, but to narrow down to one body part I'd say my legs. That is my relationship to the earth - it keeps me upright (hopefully) and grounds me to the earth. My legs defy gravity and carry me to wherever I wish to walk or (ugh) run. Love this article. Love what you do.
Mike, at eighty two there isn't a part of my body of which I am proud. Each morning I'm thankful for the opportunity to enjoy the wonder and beauty of God's creation. I truly enjoy reading each of your posts.