Welcome to Issue #66 of Biblia Luna, the 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!
Hopefully Tomorrow: Who Am I?
Do you ever have the feeling that you just don’t know who you are? You don’t understand why you do what you do? You don’t understand why you said that thing you said, or ate that thing you ate? As St. Paul wrote in Romans 7:15, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” I can wake up in the morning with a firm plan of what I’m going to get accomplished that day, how I’m going to respond in particular situations, and in the moment it all goes away. I look back at the day and wonder, what happened? Sometimes part of it is about the situation going differently than expected, but part of it is really just me. Why am I the way I am?
I think this question of identity is a common thread among many types of mental illness. I know that in my case of depression, I’ve got this nasty voice inside me that tricks me so often into thinking that he is me. And that I am as worthless as he tells me. I recently heard a podcast about Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously known as Multiple Personality Disorder), a condition in which multiple individual personalities are existing in the same brain. It’s mind-boggling to someone like me who hasn’t experienced it, but I am sure that questions of identity, “Who am I,” are constant to someone living with that.
But I also think that many people without diagnosable mental illnesses question these things as well. From one perspective, it can be exciting to discover anew who you are throughout your life. But on the other hand, it can be frightening to realize that, decades into a life, you don’t have the first idea why you are the way you are.
Here’s where faith can come in handy. When I get confused or depressed, I try really hard to remind myself that I am baptized. And that through that baptism, God gave me an identity: “beloved child of God.” I try really hard to remind myself of the words of Psalm 139:
O LORD, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely.
My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed.
Psalm 139:1-4, 15-16, New Revised Standard Version
God knows us, even when we don’t know ourselves. God knows us, and even more importantly, God loves us. God knows us better than we will ever know ourselves, and God loves us better than we will ever love ourselves. And hopefully tomorrow we will know ourselves and love ourselves just a little more, and through that grow closer to God.
Over on the Blog…
Last week, I wrote an essay called “A Gen-Xer reflects on What Happened to Gender,” that I encourage you to read. Thinking it through has helped me to come to terms with the sea change that our culture has recently undergone regarding how we understand gender. There’s also a new sermon up.
Mental Health in the News
To help young people with #mentalhealth, researchers team up with TikTok influencers (NPR)
Bipolar disorder linked to early death (Science Daily)
Latino Next-Gens Face Off With Parents in Cultural Divide Over Mental Health (MindSite News)
Some helpful resources from VeryWell Mind
How to Be Open-Minded and Why It Matters
I Hate People: Why You Feel This Way and What to Do
Biblia Blessing
I look behind me and you’re there,
then up ahead and you’re there, too—
your reassuring presence, coming and going.
This is too much, too wonderful—
I can’t take it all in!
Psalm 139:4-6, The Message