Category Archives: Jesus

enabling OCD and telling the truth

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I have not written about this in the past because this is not an area that I have a good grasp on.  To me, there is a fine line between enabling an obsessive-compulsive and just being a helpful supporter of that person.  When I was going through cognitive-behavioral therapy, my therapist had me tell my roommate and friends that they were no longer able to reassure me about anything silly.  I was instructed to tell them that if they did this, it would interfere with my therapy and decrease its opportunity for success.

So, all those times when I would ask, “Do you think that is okay?  Is this sinful?  Do you think I’m going to hell?” … they were supposed to answer it with something like, “I’m not allowed to answer that question.”  Or “I don’t answer silly questions.”  Or “I’m not going to answer and enable your OCD.”

It’s a hard position for them to be in.  For the OC too!

As a Christian who believes the Bible when it says, “The truth will set you free,” I had (and still have) a hard time thinking that it is not helpful for a friend to tell someone the truth– shouldn’t that help set them free?

But then I think how I asked those questions for years and years, and all that stated truth piled up like a mountain but never moved me.  Why was it that listening to a LIE– an audio recording telling me repeatedly that I was going to hell– is what ultimately unlocked the doors of my prison?

A student at the university where I worked asked me that earlier this fall– how listening to a lie could rescue me.  I didn’t have an answer for her then.  The more I thought about it afterward though, I realized that what had happened was that listening repeatedly to a lie started to make the lie SOUND like a lie– and that was the truth!  CBT helped me recognize truth, and so in that way, it was still truth that set me free.

Does that make sense?

I’m still processing all of this and would love insight on this!

~4

How/why does a good and all-powerful God allow bad things to happen?

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In light of the recent shooting at the Connecticut elementary school, many people are asking this question.  Years ago at a youth workers’ conference in Atlanta, I heard one of the most stirring messages of my life, delivered by Louie Giglio, and I have never forgotten what he had to say there.  In fact, his message has taken up residence inside my heart so permanently that it made its way into the novel I’m writing.  Here’s an excerpt:

He moved so that he was sitting beside me, both our backs against the tower wall.  “You know, West, I believe that God is in control of everything.”

“Even over the bad things?”

“Yes.”

“Death?  Disease?”

“Yes.”

“Catastrophe?”

“Yes.”

“Solipsism syndrome?”

The pause was brief.  “Yes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“The cross,” he said simply, and when I didn’t answer, he took my hand in both of his and explained, “When Christ died, his followers looked at his bloody body on the cross and said, ‘That is the worst thing in the universe.’  The ugliest.  The most horrific.”

I nodded, prompting him to go on.

“After the resurrection, Christians say that same image was the most incredible, amazing thing in the universe,” he said.  “How is that possible?  How is it that one weekend separated the worst thing from being the best thing?”  He leaned his head back against the wall, looking up toward the tower roof.  “That is how I believe that God is in control of everything.”

One thought wrestled its way to the front of my mind, and I blurted out, “But why was it necessary?”

Silas frowned.  “Eden.  The fall of man,” he said.

I shook my head.  “Even that,” I said.  “If God is in control of everything—like you say—then why did humanity fall at all?  Why wouldn’t God just have life go on perfectly, like in the garden at the beginning?  He could have stopped Adam and Eve from ever screwing things up.”

“I think,” said Silas with a sincerity that almost frightened me, “that God favors redemption over perfection.”

“You mean … you mean, he prefers a rescue operation over having no need for one?” I asked.

“That,” said Silas, “is exactly what I mean.”

You can watch the sermon that so impacted my life below, and I hope that you will.  Forty-five minutes of your time is a small price to pay for such a life-changing message.  If you choose to watch, will you post your thoughts in the comments section below?  I’d love to start a healthy and friendly discussion.

OCD and suicidal thoughts

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Recently Janet at the OCDtalk blog posted about her friend whose obsessive-compulsive son had just committed suicide.  The post broke my heart.  It reminded me of earlier this fall in Boston where I met Denis Asselin, the winner of the International OCD Foundation Hero Award.  Denis’s son Nathaniel, who suffered from intense body dysmorphic disorder (on the OCD spectrum), took his own life in 2011.  It was beautiful but devastating to listen to him talk about his beloved son.  My heart is heavy as I think about these families, now missing an important member, and about the horrific pain that these young men were experiencing that made them see no other way out.

It’s a dark, heavy topic, but tragically important to discuss.

OCD is so often thought of as simply being neat or orderly– or sometimes even anal retentive about certain things.  Media portrays obsessive-compulsive disorder as a quirky, nitpicky, and sometimes comical disorder, but let me level with you: OCD is debilitating, devastating, and torturous.

Can you imagine feeling nothing but sheer, unadulterated terror for days, sometimes weeks, on end?

I remember some of my darkest, hardest, most terrifying days.  I lived in the Brighton Village Apartments with Becky and Tricia.  During the day, I was given the small grace of suspending my obsessions– at least enough to make it through work (most days– not all), for which I am grateful.  In the evenings, I would return to our apartment, where I would drown in an ocean of terror.  My soul felt untethered, lost, condemned; I felt the hot, ugly breath of hell on my neck all evening.  I felt unforgiven and completely cut off from the God I wanted so desperately.  (It is making me cry right now as I write about those dark days.)  And the torture of not knowing— heaven or hell?  saved or condemned?  found or eternally lost?  heard or ignored?– was the worst kind of mental anguish.

Those apartment buildings were built like an X, with the pool and laundry facilities at the center where all four wings came together.  I remember– and this is not an isolated event but something that happened every time I was in that third-floor laundry room– I would look over the balcony down to the first-floor pool area, usually empty, and I would think, If I threw myself off this ledge head-first, I would finally know: heaven or hell.  I would have my answer, instead of the torture of not knowing.

But what if the answer was hell?  I couldn’t hurry that on.  What I wanted even more was annihilation— to cease to exist.  I craved oblivion.  That is true pain for you.

I realized that I was already in hell– just of a different stripe.  I was living like a condemned person, in TERROR and heartache and loneliness, and in constant combat with the blasphemous thoughts that plagued my mind.

Most people wouldn’t have guessed it.  I smiled a lot at work.  I even managed to fool those closest to me who knew the anguish I was experiencing.  But I would look over that balcony at the hard floor, and I would think about it.  OCD is that devastating.  I believe obsessive-compulsives (even those who take their own lives) are some of the strongest people you will ever meet.  They fight a constant war.  It is no wonder to me that many want to lay down their weapons and surrender.

And yet, here I am, eight years later, happy and healthy and secure in my faith, enjoying life and friendships and a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  I am not tormented by my own thoughts, and uncertainty isn’t anguish any longer.  I want to gently take the faces of the anguished obsessive-compulsives into my hands, stare them directly in the eye, and tell them, There is hope.  There is help.  It doesn’t have to stay this way.  I would hug them and cry with them and personally drive them to my cognitive-behavioral therapist.  I was once where you are.  Follow me to freedom.

If you are struggling today with intrusive thoughts, obsessions that plague you, compulsions that take over your life, THERE IS HOPE.  I promise you.  This is a disorder– just a disorder, albeit a powerful, ugly, life-thieving one.  Follow me to freedom.  There is Truth, and it is not what you are hearing from your OCD.  Rescue is possible.  Follow me to freedom.  Email me.  Joy, happiness, laughter, truth, peace, safety– these may seem like impossibilities, but they can be yours too.

suicide

Mary’s Song by Luci Shaw

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Luci Shaw is an incredible poet, and she has a book entitled Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation, which I love to pull out around Christmas and Easter.  Here is one of my favorite of her Christmas poems:

Mary’s Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest …
you who have had so far to come.)
Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world. Charmed by doves’ voices,
the whisper of straw, he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed who overflowed all skies,
all years. Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught
that I might be free, blind in my womb
to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must see him torn.

The LightdeviantART by ~ninebreaker

The Light
deviantART by ~ninebreaker

Socrates, alive and well and emailing me

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I think it was Socrates who said, “The more I learn, the more I learn how little I know.”

I have a very dear friend who is experiencing this same truth right now, and since she is just fantastic and brilliant and compassionate and humble, I wanted to share some of her thoughts with you.  One thing you should know about my friend is that about a year ago, she underwent a painful divorce, a devastating experience that drove her right into the arms of God.

The following is essentially a series of emails she sent to me, edited to keep her anonymous:

This morning I was thinking about my life and where I was 4 years ago.  I thought I had so much figured out at that point.  There would be times throughout the past 4 years where I’d look back and think about how things were better back then, how I had a relationship with God, I was happy and stable and figured out, and I would regret so many of the mistakes I made.  But today, I realized that…I didn’t really know God back then, or at least not how I know him NOW.  Even back when I was [in Bible college], when I was surrounded by Christians and learning about the Bible, I didn’t know God the way I know God now.  That if my life had not totally blown up (oh heck, if I hadn’t totally blown up my life), I never could have ended up where I am now.  And I don’t mean “here” like “in this job/house/etc,” but “here” as in…being forced to look at the world we live in, to think about the God I thought I knew, and to look to the Bible and ask myself, “Have I ever really understood God?”  There were times I thought I did; many more times when I knew I wasn’t living for him but threw his name around anyway; times when I desperately wanted to find him so I could know that I hadn’t screwed up to the point of no return; times when I wanted a quick fix of good feelings before going on my own path.  Recently, I’ve had to throw away everything I used to think about God and start fresh.  I never could have done that if I was still married.  I wouldn’t have dared look at what I thought was right and asked, “Am I sure?”  When I stopped asking questions about God, he stopped answering.  When I started asking questions, he started blessing me.
Now I feel like I just get so much of him.  Why did God ignore the “righteous” and look to the “sinners”?  It’s not just that he is merciful and not just that the sinners needed him…it’s also that the sinners were the ones willing to ask the right questions.  They were the ones to say, “Really, God?  There’s room for me, too?  Even though this is who I am?”  So much of my life I lived like one of the Pharisees while thinking I was a lamb.  HOW MUCH I’ve learned; HOW MUCH I’ve gained from realizing that I really never sat down and asked God about who he is, what he wants, what he thinks.  I just listened to others, looked at some words in the Bible, and thought I knew it all.  I knew nothing.  Now, in doubting him and his plan, I’ve actually come to my greatest knowledge of who he really is.
I can’t remember, but I think I told you a few weeks ago that I received the first EVER assurance of my salvation.  How funny that it came at a time when I’m looking skeptically at the Bible and digging deeper to ask questions instead of accepting it at face value; funny that it came when I’m divorced instead of married; funny that it came when I’m more focused on being a strong, SINGLE career-woman instead of a wife and mother.  My whole world has flipped upside down.  I think it saved me….I think it (my sin, my knowledge of my sin, the loss of my marriage, the loss of my faith) actually saved my faith and my soul.
I just can’t help but regret all the years I’ve wasted not really knowing God.  That I sat at a [Christian college] and took in everything I was told about God, adopted beliefs because they were “God’s beliefs,” and never took advantage of the resources and community I had.  That I was too afraid to say, “Yes, but what about…” and that any answers to tough questions were either dismissed with, “We just need to accept that’s who God is” or “we live in a fallen world, so that’s how it goes.”
I know now that I’m way too radical for most mainstream Christians to take me seriously.  I know that 4 years ago, I wouldn’t have taken me seriously.  But now I can look back and know that when I thought I had all the answers, I really had none, and when I thought I knew God, he was a remote figure to me.  Now I have REAL fath, REAL knowledge, REAL love, REAL security.
You’ve said before that you think God allowed sin into the world because the Cross was just a better way.  I read recently that someone suggested the fall occurred because all good stories need conflict to move the story forward.  I think about these things and I can ask myself, “Why am I divorced?” and “How can I forgive myself?” and even, “How can GOD forgive me?!”  But if the whole reason for all of this was for me to get to a place to really know God, and if I couldn’t have arrived there without all of this, then I am a very very lucky woman to have a God who loves me enough to put me through hell to get to heaven on the other side.
Wow.  Just wow.
~1

my sister’s powerful dream

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On the night of March 1st, 2004, my sister Kristin had this incredible dream that I’d like to share with you.  Here she describes it in her own words:

Jesus is thrown into a whipping cage and I am thrown in with him by accident. He lays on me and says “I do not want anything to touch you. I love you SO much and because of that love I am going through this. I do not want that whip to touch you at all”. As he is saying this he is being whipped over and over again. I am crying and trying to hug him, but he won’t let me because he does not want any chance of the whip touching me. Blood is dripping on me, and there is so much because of how long they keep whipping him. I am seeing this up close and he is telling me over and over even with the whip hitting him, that he loves me so much and is going through this horrible death because he loves me. I am sobbing by this time. 

Can you imagine?  To experience this protection of Christ in a firsthand way like that?  Living in this century, when we view Christ’s great rescue, it always seems to be from the spectator seat, not looking up from the base of the cross while His blood drips onto us.  Even though it was sad and intense, I wish the dream had been mine.  That is an experience to hold onto for life.

holidays are hard for some of us

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Last year, I posted that Christmas isn’t fun for everyone, and today I am thinking again how that is true.  And not only Christmas, but other holidays too.

Thanksgiving is just behind us, and to be honest, I am glad.  Mine was fine, very lowkey– I spent it with my sister and brother, eating pizza and banana cream pie, watching the Dallas game and hushing my voice when the Cowboys fell behind the Redskins and my brother raged at the TV screen.  It was fun, very chill, lazy, and we all met up at Mom and Dad’s house, even though the parents were in Missouri to see Grandma and the rest of Mom’s family.

But it’s these winter holidays that do me in.  While everyone else is giddy with anticipation, I am anxious mostly for them to be OVER.  Somehow there is an expectancy surrounding the actual holiday, something that stresses me out and makes me just want to return to normalcy.

I think, for me, it’s a combination of the cold weather (it snowed all afternoon in Minnesota on Thanksgiving), the claustrophobia of bundling up in jackets and scarves, real or imagined seasonal depression, and memories of high school, when the holidays were the hardest.

1997.  Thanksgiving.  It was the first real breakdown of my life.  I can remember it like it was yesterday and not fifteen years ago.  Was God real?  How could anyone ever really know?  And if I didn’t know, then wasn’t I hellbound?  (Such a paradox, I know– if there was no God or heaven, then there would also be no hell.)  I was in 10th grade, and OCD was swallowing me whole, and it would still be another seven years before it would even have a name.

I was in Missouri with the rest of the family, breaking away from the games and conversation and cooking upstairs to retreat to Grandma’s basement, lock myself in the bathroom, and sob.  The ground had been taken from underneath my feet, and all I could do was weep– all while hiding it from the rest of the family, all those happy Christians upstairs, secure in their beliefs.

I can picture myself now, doubled over on the bathroom floor, lost and sad and scared and not understanding that God Himself could supercede my disbelief and make Himself known to me.  It was a dark year that followed.  I was scared of everything, especially of dying without knowing that God was real.  I held my breath when I’d pass a car on the highway, knowing I was inches from my death– and maybe eternal death.

OCD, you thief.  I hate you with such intensity.

For years after that, I could not return to Missouri without being triggered into a complete relapse which would take weeks to recover from.  Once I went to college, I refused to return.  I wonder what my mom’s side of the family thought– if they wondered if I was stuck-up or selfish for not making that 11-hour drive to see them.  It was only once a year, for goodness sakes.  They didn’t know any of the background, didn’t know the way that just crossing that state border into Missouri had become the instant switch for me to question my faith.

Christmas stumbled along after Thanksgiving, and it was just as hard.  And so, these holidays over the years cemented themselves into difficult seasons that I would have to survive.  And even though November and December are nothing like they were even ten years ago, those memories are strong.

I know there are a lot of people out there who will have such a hard time this season, those of you who have Christmas hang over you like a stormcloud, who will breath a sigh of relief when you return to “life as usual” on the day after New Years.  I’m so sorry, and I totally understand.  I hope that this year will be different for you– that God will supernaturally supercede your painful memories and depression and general feelings of wrongness, and that He will give you joy in your hearts instead of these.

As Christmas approaches, my prayer for you is this: Jesus Christ, You are the Word that became flesh, a holy incarnation that blows my mind every time I stop to consider it.  Please overwhelm us with the sacred mystery of it all in ways that memories, depression, OCD, anxiety, and other mental illnesses can’t defeat.  Jesus, be the mighty redeemer that You have been and continue to be and REDEEM this holiday season for those of us who need a rescue.  Hold us in real ways that we can feel.  Amen.

Holy Communion

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I am not even joking, every Sunday morning after the pastor has preached and prayed and the band begins to play, it is all I can do to keep from running down that aisle toward the communion table.  I am always eager for that bread and cup, that holy reminder of my Savior’s body and blood, and as I swallow in the pew, I think, This is the best meal of my week.


I am so grateful for Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, and I think this eucharistic sacrament is a beautiful and sacred way to celebrate it.

Gala at Death

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As I wrote yesterday, sometimes heaven scares me.
Here was an attempt to process my thoughts while in college:

Gala at Death

Consequently, my poems all died—even those unwritten—
when I realized that Revelation promises the annihilation of my pages,
that I will not be archived in Heaven’s library,
my words jacketed in celestial gold.

So now the hollow worth of writing’s result faults me
for delighting in my bookcase of sale-annex idols,
bothered by heavenly boredom—
nothing to read but the Bible for a slow eternity.

The apocalyptic book humbled my hands, but bowing, I knew
I’d wear white to the funeral.  There all poems everywhere
then died to me—how easily paper curls and burns.
But literature’s epitaph reads, The Author of Life Wins,
and that graveyard is where writers worship God.