A Letter To a Friend
I woke up at 9:00 this morning, threw some clothes on and
headed out the door. I was meeting with
the a ministry leader at 9:20 that morning because I had expressed an interest
in joining their care ministry at my new church. Just before I left, I sent him a
letter that I had written that week for a young man who I had visited in the adolescent
psych unit at the hospital. I thought it
would give the ministry leader some insight into my interactions with my care
receivers, as I had been a Stephen Minister for 5 years and a lay chaplain at my previous church. When I got there, I sat down with the ministry leader. We got to talking and I asked him what he did
for work previously. He said he was a
pharmacist. Then he said something that perked my ears: He said his first rotation
was for a Psychiatric Hospital in Ohio.
He said there was razor wire around the high wall surrounding it and
double locked doors on every ward. I
asked him if it was for people with mental issues that had committed a
crime. He said it was not; it was supposed to be a mental health facility. I asked when he
was there. He said 1991. He related stories of his time there. The first day he was attacked and he
had to go to self-defense class. He told me how there was one area with only
one toilet because people would drink the toilet water until their electrolytes
were imbalanced and they would go into shock.
I know someone who did the same thing.
It is a desperate act. The picture that he painted, a picture that I know all too well, sounded as though the people there were caged like animals. And I know from experience that that leads people to do things they wouldn’t
normally do. I have seen the inside of similar places in my life. We have digressed in many cases to a point where the hospital in "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest" comparatively resembles a vacation. I have been to a "mental health facility" in East Detroit where the orderlies were mostly moonlighting prison guards. And it was barely one step above prison. Fist fights in the halls nightly while we were trying to talk on the bank of pay phones with 2' cords to our family members. Mold in the showers. Bugs in the beds. Prison food and prison portions. We were hungry all the time. Difficult doctors who dished out the cheapest, oldest medications from the 1950's and 60's that had tons of side effects. I threw up constantly. I lost 30 pounds in less than three weeks. Knowing him, I know he had as much compassion as he could in a difficult situation. And it sounded like it was a very
negative experience for him as well. We talked some about the care ministry and what I would be doing. I told him about the letter I had sent to a young man close to me who I had seen that week while he was in the hospital for depression. Luckily that young man got into a regular hospital with one of the best mental health programs in the nation, so he didn't have to deal with the hell I have been through. This is the letter I sent to that 14-year-old
boy earlier in the week:
Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, as well as many of our great poets, writers, musicians and thinkers dealt with it. Some would be Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Beethoven, Edger Allen Poe, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Vincent Van Gogh, Winston Churchill (Bipolar), Albert Einstein (autism), Pablo Picasso (depression), Buzz Aldrin (depression), Elton John (bulimia), Ozzy Osbourne (Bipolar), Robin Williams (depression), Princess Diana (depression and Bulimia), Jim Carrey (Bipolar), and Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana (Bipolar). (You can look all of these up.)
Western society has a propensity for drawing lines and putting things
into categories. The box it has put all these great thinkers, leaders, actors and
creatives in is “mentally ill.” I think
Western society has mislabeled this box. Instead of calling the box “ill,” it
should be called “great creative men and women.” 20% of American citizens - 1 in 5 people in
America - were diagnosed with mental illness in 2010. It is probably more than that now. Our
western medical community has to make categories so they can treat people with
the treatments available to it. Thus, the
categories mentally ill or bipolar or depression. You, just like any person,
don’t fit into a neat little box. Having to take medication or go into the
hospital doesn’t define you. Don’t let
it. You are not ill. You have gifts that you may not have
discovered.
Everyone is different. Everyone deals with their own issues - every
single person. And we all spend our lives growing out of these things toward
the best person we could be. I am convinced, after many years, that all of the
people I listed were creatives who just needed to find their creative
outlets. I think anyone can be creative
if they can harness their emotions. If you find something creative you like
doing, all that anger will be channeled into passion. And you will get good at it because you love
doing it. Doodling may turn into drawing
and into painting. Journaling may turn
into writing and then to authoring books.
Listening to music may lead to playing music to writing symphonies.
(Listen to the song “Battle Born” by the Killers – the lead singer has been
through some stuff and it shows). Little inclinations now can become passionate
outlets if you find you like doing them.
I write poetry and have my spiritual
blog with about 600 readers and I have just finished my second book. I am currently having people read my book and
I am going to send it off to an editor this month. That is one of the things they are trying to
get you to do in the hospital: find your outlets. Along with turning your
feelings outward instead of inward, they are trying to help you find creative
ways you can use your emotions and thinking.
You can use them to make stuff that no one else has ever thought of. You can use them to create things no one else
can. I think listening to music is one such outlet. For my wife, it is singing and leading bands.
Having to go into the hospital and
take medication may very well be a temporary bump in the road for you. Regardless, if you are open to it, you can
learn lessons from it that will help you your whole life. And they will make you a better person. When I was young I didn’t pay much attention
to people who hadn’t been through some life-changing difficulty. They seemed
shallow. But as I got older, I found
that everyone has something they have been through that was difficult. Sooner or later, everyone has their trial. And
if they learned from it, it made them stronger and better than they were before
it. My experiences have been rougher than
most people’s. But they have made me a great Stephen Minister and lay Chaplain. And, in this capacity, I have helped a lot of
people get through tough times in their lives. The good things I have taken away from my
difficult experiences have also made me a pretty good writer. I got good at it simply because I love doing it and
I pour all my emotions into it.
Surviving my depressions gave me a lot of grit. When I was in college, I got depressed for
the first time and had to go into the hospital.
When I was better, I got a job.
Then I went back to school. I worked at a demanding full-time job in Information Technology and went
to school part time in an honors college: I paid my way through school as I went. I
would come home from work and classes, grab dinner, and go out to the café and
study late into the night. I did this because
I enjoyed what I was majoring in. Then I went to Ghana and Guatemala to build
houses for the poor - because I had a heart for it. Then I went to seminary for three years. You
aren’t "defective" or "messed up." You have
a gift (or possibly many gifts) that you have yet to discover and cultivate.
Listen to the doctors and therapists
and the people you meet along the way.
Take what you want and leave the rest.
Try to find something in what they are offering that would be a help to
you. Question what you tell yourself. Find
something you can grab on to and “take with you.” I promise, it will help you the rest of your
life. Those things you learn in times of
trial will make you better than you would have been without them. Isn’t that the point behind most movies,
songs, video games, and books? It's because people know when someone is real.
People intuitively sense when someone has had to face something and come
out the other side. Because they come
out the other side better. What you take
from this experience will make you stronger and better. Find your creative outlets. They may not seem like much at first. But if you follow them, you will find there
is more to you than you could have known before this.
Your friend, Jeff
I call that meeting with the care ministry leader a “divine
appointment.” I hadn’t intended the
letter to have the purpose with which it ended up. Just as my meeting with the
young man earlier that week was a divine appointment. To me, a divine
appointment is an exchange between two people where God is present in a
tangible way. In a divine appointment, God uses your gifts, experiences, and hardships to bring comfort or
another point of view to the person with whom you are chatting. This is a very
common experience most practicing Christians have had from time to time. I had
no idea what the ministry leader and I were going to talk about that day when I
sent that letter to him. I think it will
soften his views that were hardened by the difficult experience he had. Jesus went from one divine appointment to
another just about every day during his short, three-year ministry.
One person after another felt the presence or wisdom of God coming
through him in their interactions. And Jesus
said to his followers, “you will do even greater things than these.” What an exciting way to live! - living from one
divine appointment to another. God uses
our experience, talents, and trials to be a help to others. And every time I have had a divine
appointment, I get filled up and refreshed.
It happens naturally. I don’t
have to look for them. What I do have to
do, is to stay in scripture and prayer, so when the opportunity presents itself, I
will recognize it for what it is. In
this little way we bring the kingdom of God into the lives of the people we
meet. And Jesus said the kingdom was all around us. When he went away to pray with his disciples,
he taught them that if anyone wanted to follow him, they must deny themselves
and take up their cross daily. Then he
said, ”But I tell you most certainly, there are some standing here who will not
experience death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27).
Jesus wasn't talking about some pie-in-the-sky "Heaven." He said, over... and over.... and over again... that the Kingdom of God is all around us, now, today, and every day. If we could only have eyes to see it. Creation is pregnant
with it. The kingdom of God is released
into the world any time someone communicates the love of God to another in
these divine appointments. If everyone
did, we all could be in the kingdom of God on Earth: Heaven itself would be here, as the writer of Revelations poetically says,
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“See, the home of God is among mortals now.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his people,
and God himself will be with them;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the old things have passed away.”
And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev 21)
