Tag Archives: Jesus

brokenness

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After we watched the Blue Like Jazz screening, my former writing professor Judy and I went to the St. Clair Broiler for some late-night breakfast and conversation.

A few things you should know about Judy: she is brilliant, a gifted writer and teacher, and she loves Jesus very much and connects with him in lovely and unique ways like Taizé and lectio divina.

One thing she said to me over pancakes and French toast was this: “Some people hold their brokenness at arm’s length.  Some people embrace their brokenness.  And some people celebrate their brokenness.”

That’s what I want to do– celebrate my brokenness.  I am not ashamed of my obsessive-compulsive disorder.  The Lord’s power is perfected in my weakness.  His grace is sufficient.

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9b).

How about you?

Christian media

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Last Friday I had an adventure with my former writing professor Judy.  We went to Macalester College to meet Donald Miller, the author of Blue Like Jazz, one of my favorite books, and watch a special pre-screening of Blue Like Jazz: The Movie.

The movie was very well done, a fictionalized account of Miller’s time at Reed College in Portland, Oregon– a story about a young Christian who is stepping away from his faith and trying his hand at life.  I loved that it didn’t shy away from any tough issues.  The movie was gritty and raw and real, and I encourage everyone to go see it on April 13th.

Steve Taylor, the movie’s director, was at the event as well, and he introduced the film by saying, “Since when did ‘Christian’ come to mean ‘family-friendly’?”  He pointed out that the Bible itself contained stories that kids might not be old enough to hear.

When I think of Christian movies, I think of cheesy, overdone movies with bad acting and fairytale endings.  When I think of Christian books, I think of poorly written, G-rated romance novels with unbelievable, over-the-top conversion scenes and lots of scenes where the protagonist “happens to” come across a Bible verse directly suited to her situation.  No thanks.

Writing about Jesus is tricky, let me tell you.  How do you write about an eternal God who supernaturally reaches into people’s chests and grips their hearts without sounding insane?  How do you write about spiritual experiences in a way that people who do not love God can come along for the ride?

I think this movie is going to be a big step in the right direction.  Check out the trailer here.  Let me know your thoughts on all this!

not only neurotic, but a writer too

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If you subscribe to my blog, you know that my posts revolve around obsessive-compulsive disorder and that I sometimes post scenes from the book I’ve been writing about OCD.  Tonight, instead of writing about OCD, I want to write about writing.  Meta-writing … now there’s something an OC can latch onto!  Haha!

Words have been important to me since I was young– summertimes, my mom would have to yell at me to go play outside, since all I wanted to do was lie in my bed and read.  We met halfway: I took my book outdoors.  My sister and I and the neighbor girl would play “library,” setting all our books out on the stairs to the deck, carefully each selecting one, “checking it out,” and retreating to various areas of the yard to read.  They would abandon their books long before I would.

When I was in third grade, I remember creating a whole made-up family of characters so that I could write stories about them.  In junior high, I started to mess around with poetry.  In high school, I wrote an episodic soap opera and passed it around for friends to read.  When the notebook made its way back to me, I wrote some new scenes.  In college, I studied creative writing and finally discovered a true family of other writers, who– let’s be honest– are all a little strange.  It’s not mean.  We just are.

In 2008, I began chicken-scratching some thoughts about my latest Paxil-induced obsession, which turned into a four year novel-writing project that I’m pretty proud of.

Well.  That is, until I read some fantastic new book.  Then I feel like I will never be more than mediocre.

Readers love books.  Writers do too.  But sometimes writers kind of hate them as well.  Take, for example, last night when I read The Fault in Our Stars, the latest by John Green, and found myself simultaneously DELIGHTED by it and MORTIFIED as it revealed my own weaknesses.  One of my greatest desires in life is to be a good writer, and so, reading great writing from others is wonderful/horrible, an honor/shameful, a gift/a rebuke.  I would never “forfeit” the opportunities to have read The Book Thief,  Jellicoe Road, The Last Unicorn, For the Time Being, Peace Like a River, and absolutely anything by Billy Collins.  Doesn’t mean I didn’t seethe with envy while I read.

I complained to my friend Kyle, who wrote me You can trust a good giver that He’s given you what you need. So, take heart, and write.

And my friend Erica patiently encouraged Remember you are part of the body of Christ and have greater purpose.  I totally believe in your writing.

Both were needed reminders for this neurotic writer.

The Last Battle

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On this first night of 2012, I am thinking about my favorite book, The Last Battle, written by C.S. (Jack) Lewis.  If you haven’t read The Chronicles of Narnia yet, then 2012 is your year!  These books have been so important in my life that I find myself reading the entire series about 6-8 times a year.  They are well worth the time invested.

In The Last Battle, there is incredible confusion in Narnia– there is an imposter pretending to be Aslan, the great Lion, who is making terrible commandments.  There is one bit of dialogue I’d like to share with you:

You will go to your death, then,” said Jewel.

“Do you think I care if Aslan doomes me to death?” said the King. “That would  be nothing,  nothing at all. Would it not be better to be dead than to have this  horrible fear that Aslan  has come and is not like the Aslan we have believed in  and longed for? It is as if the  sun  rose one day and were a black sun.”

“I know,” said Jewel. “Or if you drank water and it were dry water. You are in the  right,  Sire. This is the end of all things.”

During my darkest OCD moments, this is how I felt– and actually some of my issues I refered to as “black sun obsessions”– obsessions where the ground was taken from beneath my feet, where I felt as if my entire worldview was being dismantled.  Those nights, my soul felt as if there were no place to land.  I was in free-fall.

But, later in the book, the King and Jewel discover the Truth— that an ape is behind this entire masquerade.

But now, as Tirian looked round on the miserable faces of the Narnians, and thought how they would all believe that Aslan and Tash were one and the same, he could bear it no longer.
“Ape,” he cried, “You lie. You lie damnably. You lie like a Calormene. You lie like an Ape.”

What I am trying to say is this: there are no black suns if you love Jesus Christ– only things that appear to be black suns.  He is bigger than our obsessions, and He is the solid ground beneath our feet.  It may feel as though Christianity could crack down the middle like a split log, but God is our gravity.  I was never in free-fall; I was lying in the great palm of my God.

Christmas isn’t fun for everyone

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My roommate is a Christmas fanatic– every year, she chooses one day after Thanksgiving where we pause everything else to put on some Christmas music, drink hot cocoa, and decorate our apartment.  Every Christmas decoration in the entire apartment belongs to her.  Well, time out, I guess we each paid half for our little four-foot tree.

Desiree has this entire Willow Tree nativity set, as seen below.

Can you picture her as a senior in high school, eagerly opening up each element of the scene?  It makes me laugh– but in a good way!  Des is the sweetest girl ever, and this is a great metaphor of each of us.  Des is “steady eddie”– not that she doesn’t have her own issues to deal with– but she is strong and caring and clean and a good cook.  And then there’s me, a tornado who is still learning how to take care of herself.

Christmas is an interesting time for me– to be honest, I am learning to enjoy it.  Growing up, it was a very difficult time of the year for me.  Picture Minnesota in the winter: it gets dark so early, there’s usually piles of snow, and the temperature is below freezing– sometimes dangerously below.  It’s like a dream location for seasonal depression.

And then, with OCD stacked on top of it, pretty much everything about Christmas was a trigger: my mind would race with thoughts of whether I believed in God, and if He was real, if He had saved me.

There is an image of me that we still have somewhere at my parents’ house– me, hovering somewhere around 17-20 years old, with this look at the camera.  I can remember exactly what I was thinking in it.  I was looking at the camera and asking my future self, Are you okay yet?  I hope you don’t feel this way still.

These days, I can answer my past self, I am better.  I am healthier.  And no, most days I do not feel that way.

Praise GOD!  Thank You, Jesus, for cognitive-behavioral therapy.

So tonight I’m thinking about different kinds of folks– I know there are some– actually, MANY– who are like Des, yearly filled with holiday cheer, basking in the glow of the Christmas lights, huddled comfortably around the tree and the nativity scene.  But there are others who spend their holidays the way I did– filled with doubt (laced with the tiniest bit of hope), depression, confusion, and sickness– and all while feeling that instead, they really ought to be happy.

If you are in the second camp, I hear you.  I’ve been there.  This prayer is for you:

Jesus, I celebrate You– I celebrate Your marvelous incarnation, the Word becoming flesh.  Tonight, Lord, I lift up to You all those who are burdened with heavy, laboring hearts this season– whether from depression, anxiety, mental illness, or internal crisis.  YOU ARE STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD US ALL.  Just as that first Christmas was the initiation of Your inexplicably great rescue plan, I pray that this Christmas will be the start of Your new rescue mission in the lives of these sufferers.  You are Love.  You are Truth.  You are the mighty redeemer.  I entrust my heart to You and ask that You would hold those for whom I’m praying– in a way that is felt.  Amen.

I boast in the cross.

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I give the credit for my rescue from OCD to Jesus Christ alone, and I believe that CBT and medicine and doctors were the tools He used.

Tonight I listened to a sermon online given by John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church, right here in Minneapolis.  He was talking about something that won’t make sense to some:

“[F]or redeemed sinners, every good thing–[and] indeed every bad thing that God turns for good–was obtained for us by the cross of Christ. Apart from the death of Christ, sinners get nothing but judgment. Apart from the cross of Christ, there is only condemnation. Therefore, everything that you enjoy in Christ–everything you boast in, everything you exult in–is owing to the death of Christ. And all your exultation in other things is to be an exultation in the cross where all your blessings were purchased for you at the cost of Christ’s life.”

Essentially, if I follow the path of blessings back to its source, there I will find the cross–the death–of Jesus Christ.  Because the death of Christ was an act of grace, an act of rescue.

I am grateful and blessed and pleased to be free from the clutches of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  In doing so, I am exulting in the cross of Jesus.

As Piper said, “[Being dead to the world] means that every legitimate pleasure in the world becomes a blood-bought evidence of Christ’s Calvary love and an occasion of boasting in the cross.”

I’m a Christian and I take MEDS!!!

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After I wrote an article for the college newspaper, one of my former professors asked me if next year I would speak to his biblical counseling class.  Apparently, the day after the paper came out, the class had had a whole discussion on whether believers should use medications.  This professor said that in general the class seemed to think that therapy should be “enough.”

And it may be.  For some people.

I’m not going to preach, but I will do a little copy-and-paste job here and share an old story:

A man who couldn’t swim very well was stranded in the middle of the lake. He prayed to God, asking Him to save him from drowning. Shortly after, a man on a boat came by.

“Do you need some help?” He asked, slowing his boat to a stop next to the man.

“No thank you,” The man replied. “God will save me.” The man with the boat shrugged his shoulders and kept going.

Next, a man with a canoe paddled next to him, slowing to a stop and asking, “Do you need some help?”

“No thank you. God will save me.” The man replied, smiling. The man on the canoe shrugged, and paddled on.

Next, a man in a tiny paddle boat came by, stopping next to the man and asking, “Do you need some help?”

The drowning man replied, “No thank you, God will save me.” The man in the paddle boat shrugged, and paddled away.

The drowning man did indeed drown, and when he reached heaven, he asked God “Why didn’t you save me?”

God replied “I gave you three boats. What more did you want?”

lately

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I was on the phone with my mom yesterday; she called because she read my last blog post about re-taking the MMPI, so we were discussing that.  I’ve been stressed lately, and struggling with some different things, but the truth of the matter is, I feel lots of freedom and very healthy.  I think it’s because I can compare everything to OCD.

I said to my mom, “Compared to the hell I went through in the throes of OCD, I don’t believe that anything could be worse than hell itself.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That surprised her.  She said, “You always seemed to be so well put together, seemed to cope so well.”

It made me laugh.  Facades can be so strong.  I was an absolute, total, complete wreck during that time.  I said to her, “I think what happens is that, with OCD, feeling awful just becomes the new norm, so it appears that way.”  Sad but so true.

Hillsong was in the Twin Cities, and Erica and I went to their concert/worship experience last evening.  The last time I went to a concert at Grace Church was in college … Audio Adrenaline and MercyMe … and last night we sat near where I sat all those years ago (would have been 2003).  I can remember that night, eight and a half years ago, and how I felt I was on such shaky ground with God.  Last night, I felt redeemed and free and grateful and healthy.

It just gives me so much hope for others who are in a bad place.  Please, Jesus, free those who are held captive by their own minds.  Work mightily through the means of Your choosing– miracles, medicines, therapies– to restore Your incredible freedom to obsessive-compulsives, and please draw all these rescued people’s eyes to You, to clearly see that You are, even now in 2011, in the business of redemption.

today

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… was a hard/stressful day and I agreed to see a therapist (but this time NOT for OCD– wow!).

BUT today was also really good in a couple of ways:

1) I re-took the MMPI last week (read here for my past blog about this test), and I went over the results at the doctor’s office today, and they were saying how HEALTHY my results were. I teared up there in his office and said, “You don’t know. I was a MESS. Praise God.” He said, “Good for you for working so hard and coming so far,” which showed me he completely missed my point. It wasn’t me. That’s for sure.

2) My writing group has a write-up on the NWC English department’s blog. Check it out!

One thing that would really be meaningful for me would be for you to post a comment saying that you read my blog.  I can see the analytics, and I know people are stopping by, but it all feels so anonymous, and I need some names and faces please.  I wish I could sit down and have hot cocoa with you blog readers.  With marshmallows.  Lots of them.

tricho

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In Matthew 10:30, Jesus says, “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”

That is lovely to know as someone with trichotillomania.

Trichotillo-whatta?

Trichotillomania.  The compulsive urge to pull out one’s hair.  NBD. 😉

I’ve suffered from this for years, can’t remember how long– I think maybe I started compulsively pulling my hair out in college.  I am blessed though– some people have it waaaay worse than I do– to where I’ve googled some images and have deemed them too disturbing to post.

Here’s one that’s pretty mild:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My own pulling is from a very specific spot on the back of my head.  Over the years, there have been many times when the back of my head actually is sore because of how much pulling I’ve done.  For a long time, I’ve had a “tuft” there– a small “sprig” of shorter hair, since I let it grow to be a couple inches and then pull it again, so there is a patch of continually short hairs.  But now I have short hair, so you can’t see it, suckas. 🙂

It’s not as big a problem for me now as it used to be, although when I get stressed, I will just sit on the couch and pull and pull– just ask my roommate.  I am gaining mastery over it now, but it used to be this COMPULSION– if I didn’t pull I’d miss this tiny release.  I learned that if I squeeze my hand into a very tight fist, I could sometimes get the same release as a pull.

I know, I know.  One more weird tale from the obsessive-compulsive.

At least I didn’t eat my hair then, as many tricho sufferers do.  If you’re ready for nightmares, google it.