The question was recently posed amongst a group of friends whether our depressions and anxieties are sinister voices that hail from a spiritual realm or are but the echo of our own inner cynic.
I rarely feel the need to opine on such things, but it just so happens that I have been pondering the same line of thought over the past few months myself.
I don't have the ability or desire to speak definitively, but wouldn't mind joining the conversation.
Here's what I've got so far :
Not that long ago, I realized something helpful: every thing a particular human enemy was saying aloud to me was exactly what a spiritual force bent on destruction would say if given a human voice.
This person was close enough to know what was important to me and where I was most prone, so that is where they aimed their lashing tongue.
I came to believe that, because this person was not yielded to kindness, they had offered themselves as an open tap for discouragement.
One name used for a spiritual force bent on destruction is The Father of Lies. I began to understand why. A lie so well fashioned it appears to be truth, conceived by a destructive spirit - human or otherwise- and birthed from lips of flesh and blood.
When I took the time - and courage- to examine my attacker's words closely, I could see the sloppy seams holding those lies together. In the dark, they looked like authentic claims, but held to the Light, my identity in Christ could be seen underneath. I was not a mistake, or the worst mom ever or even a fake.
I also realized that I tended to replay those comments internally and let them re-surface long after they had been identified as counterfeit.
In this way, I was agreeing with the lies more than I was embracing truth.
I believe that, spiritually speaking, we have similarly revealed our vulnerabilities by yielding to the same sins and schemes repeatedly over the course of our lives.
Just like various fish prefer different baits and environments, some of us prefer greed to gluttony, while others find gloom tastier than gossip for digesting our hooks.
We have revealed our preferences and vulnerabilities to any who can watch, and like the stain on a carpet that keeps coming back, sadly, I believe we also harbor pet tendencies within ourselves, too. Including the choice to embrace mock truths.
Those of us who routinely entertain bleak voices may find that they are near because we were born this way - that we are Siamese twins with a seething head. We may have a valid genetic excuse why discouraging voices echo longer and louder in our mind's ear. But we aren't written an excuse to sit on the bleachers. We are all born afflicted in various ways and we must all run the race according to the same instructions:
Focus on what is good, and true and lovely. Build each other up. Sing songs of joy. Be thankful. Pray continually.
~*~
Several months back, while standing in line at the bank to take care of some complicated domestic affairs and desperate for a glimpse of understanding about how things can be allowed to go so terribly awry when we believe our intentions are good, I opened the Bible app on my phone. I didn't choose a book or search a keyword, I just looked down and started reading until my turn at the teller arrived. (I Samuel 18)
Here's what caught my attention:
"The next day an ugly mood was sent by God to afflict Saul, who became quite beside himself, raving..." (backstory: Saul got the results he thought God wanted but not the way God prescribed... he was angry that God rejected his offering. I have been guilty of this same kind of flawed thinking...)
Other translations say "a black mood" "a tormenting spirit" and "an evil spirit" but the most curious phrase to me was "sent by God"
Many scholars agree that "allowed by God" is a fair translation of that phrase, as well as an understanding that the word "spirit" used here can apply to one's own inner psyche.
This black mood caused Saul to think within himself that he would like to pin David to the wall when Oopsie! his spear flies out of his hand and David ducks just in time.
Saul verbally commits not to harm David... until the next 'black mood' arrives special delivery, postage paid and once again attributed to God.
The next chapters devolve into a fully involved man hunt and murder scheme involving that age old trick of placing a dummy with goat's hair in one's bed as a decoy. Works every time!
Did God send a murderous spirit upon Saul?
Or - did He turn Saul over to his (Saul's) own self centered counsel ?
Throughout the Bible, God takes credit for some pretty interesting things.
We are told in both Isaiah 45 and Romans 9 that a smart pot doesn't argue with the Potter about the way it is made.
Our ways are not - will never be- His ways.
Which lands us now on the slippery slope "If I'm chronically depressed, has God turned me over to a futile mind? "
I believe the answer is ultimately a choice we must make.
If we go back into Samuel 19 and read the commitment that Saul made concerning David's life, we see that he made David's survival contingent upon God's existence: "As surely as the Lord lives, so will David."
Saul reached a place where the reality of God no longer took priority over his (Saul's) actions and desires.
David himself knew what it was to be downcast in his soul. He moaned to the Lord, he cried and melted and wasted away quite routinely throughout the Psalms.
In contrast, when a 'black mood' enveloped David, he remembered God was above him and cast his eyes upward with hope and expectation.
~*~
Timely as Big Ben, I encountered my final example this week.
I'd been experiencing sleeplessness over the past week, compounded by falling into a bad routine of staying up into the wee hours and rising later than I wished. It is a vicious cycle, a pet tendency I harbor myself.
And, this particular week, I was at the notch in my personal anxiety cycle where sleep was crucial.
And so, I tried to spiritualize something that was as much the result of bad physical habits as it was the result of being anxious.
I prayed for a good night's sleep, restorative rest and the ability to wake early enough to get a lot done. These things did not come to pass. And here is what I heard down in my heart: "In vain you get up early and stay up late, working hard to have enough food— yes, he gives sleep to the one he loves" (Psalm 127)
Well! There was all the proof I needed - right there in the Bible. God doesn't really love me. If He did, He would grant me sleep.
I don't know about you, but the notion that I've been rejected by the 'God who rejects no one' wasn't an effective meditation for getting more rest.
I should have looked more closely at the seams. And I should have looked up the verse I was using to trod myself lower. Scripture doesn't trod on us where it doesn't also offer to restore our hope.
I've been steeped in 'knowing' this stuff so long, it is embarrassing to admit how silly my thinking can get. How much I really don't know, despite the many years of hearing and reading and seeking to know.
But that's sometimes the trick isn't it?
Fatigue causes us to miss or forget the small but essential details.
I should have remembered that as surely as the Lord lives, so do I. And as He lives, He is good, merciful, loving, restorative, and kind. But I didn't remember... until half-past dark o'clock in the morning.
Somewhere in the twilight, I turned the Bible app on audio as I often do to try and get back to sleep. I like that I can set a timer and not kill my phone's battery. The soothing narrator read "For the second test, the devil took Jesus to the Holy City and sat Him on top of the temple and said "Since you are God's son, jump." The devil goaded Him by quoting Psalm 91:'He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone.'
Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God." (Matthew 4)
Oh, yeah.
Scripture can be twisted.
I had lost sight of that.
God allowed even Jesus to be goaded by the voice of malevolence - a voice quoting Scripture, no less; not once, but three times in this passage.
Not unlike Paul's plea for thorn removal, and David's many entreaties for rescue. Those who are routinely goaded need not think ourselves downcast nor outcast any more than the examples set before us in the Chronicles of the Downcast (Whose Faces Were Turned to the Light.)
Jesus modeled the importance of a steady diet of truth to combat those destructive voices.
It wasn't just memorizing passages from Deuteronomy that helped, it was in knowing how to apply them.
The passage in Psalm 91 is a promise that God will protect, that He will save and redeem if we will draw near to Him and get to know Him. The temptation to claim God's promise in another context is the same temptation Saul had been presented with.
Jesus saw the fallacy of telling God "If you love me, you'll stop this from hurting me" was twisting a promise of relationship with Him into one of selfish gain.
After talking to my 'AbbaFather' about what a silly goose I can be, I slept. And the next night, I went to bed at a decent time. Both approaches were called for and effective.
Later, I re-read the verse in context that I had allowed to twist me out of right thinking. (A rule of thumb I know but was too tired and cranky to practice and see where it got me? )
Indeed, He gives rest to those He loves. The sentiment is couched between a warning against building one's life without Him and the admonition that children - those adorable creatures known for waking us up all through the night - are a gift from Him. In context, we can go to bed, even when there is a lot to be done - or thought about- because He is in control, not us. And we can rest when we have purposed to let Him remain in control.
Whether we're on the job site all day working on our legacy, or burning the midnight oil with a colicky, silly-goose baby, we don't have to go it alone.
God never sleeps.
He stays up with His children, helping us with our science projects and telling us true bedtime stories of heroic love and rescue. He rises early with us and is glorified in our faithful decisions both large and small. And that's a far cry from leaving us out in the cold.
~*~
To my little band of sometimes-suicidal friends,
And also to the ones who wrestle with blue every now and again, it may seem cliche to say "Turn to the Power-That-Is-Greater-Than-You-And-I." when those dark clouds roll in... but so is jumping, cutting or saying goodbye. And how very melodramatic we can be, no?
Here's what I realized that day in the bank, and it is a theme I've been on the lookout for ever since: In whatever form or realm God sent the black mood, He did so already at work on "the rest of the story" as Mr. Harvey used to say.
He used the black mood to bring David into the palace, playing his harp.
David's musical talent was also sent by God.
(I wonder if David's downcast spirit was what we think of as artistic sensitivity these days?)
Both men experienced downcast moods and responded differently.
God weaves their responses with ours into an epic tapestry where we are all given a scarlet thread.
Hang on to it. (please)
Whether the speakers that discourage us are internal, external or a mixture of both, turning the truth up drowns them out.
We overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
What's your story? What has been true and good and lovely so far?
Have we not been redeemed?
Was there ever been a moment worth celebrating in our lives?
Remembering aloud together helps us spot those seams.
I love you all and hope you stick around for a long time.
Friday night and we are out to eat, two widows proper and me, widowed by the death of a girlish dream.
Our waitress leads us to a four top, one empty chair for the phantoms we bring.
We three share genes and a bloodline, but have different ideas about dressing a biscuit.
My aunt asks for apple butter, my cousin requests honey from a bear and I opt for maple's syrup.
The phantoms are silent. No one asks what they would have liked.
My aunt, alone the longest and of a quiet nature, is content to share our company.
My cousin, twice widowed yet too young to retire, is - unbeknownst to our waitress - a former five star general in the order of Cracker Barrels.
I feel the need to create content, to lift countenances; we are not begged by little voices to please, pretty please, play checkers.
The phantoms clear their throats and I push the peg game meant for one in front of their empty chair.
"I wonder if they have blueberry muffins tonight?" my cousin asks aloud
"Oooh, mmm!" my aunt replies.
They've been here before, done this a time or two.
But now we are three. And tonight, we are all free.
Freewheelers... like three, but free.
When our Rising Star appears beside the table, our general in disguise requests three blueberry muffins, sliced and thrown onto the grill.
Most people don't know you can do that.
I object. I've already had a syrupy biscuit and a corn muffin is promised with my meal.
Too much bread, daily.
"Trust us, you want one." they agree
We linger, not over coffee, for our cadet is struggling to learn the juggle.
Sometimes, as we chat, a phantom gets a nod, for our lives and theirs used to be one.
We box up the abundance, including three blueberry muffins, sliced and grilled through the middle.
"That will be just the thing with your coffee in the morning" the experienced widows tell me.
A curl of smoke rises from my cousin's porch rocker to the Gospel music playing overhead.
My aunt rocks on steady, watching the clouds change color, as the sun sets behind the Lowes across the street.
They have chosen rockers on either side of an old church pew.
"Are you guys saying I need to go to church?"
I sit on the pew with my leftovers and a bag of general store goods.
"If the shoe fits!" laughs the rocker to my left.
And it is accidentally, instantly funny, for I've invited them to church with me countless times.
But on Sundays, I sit alone.
We each take home a miniature toy that represents childhood joy,
reminders that we've come far and do not walk alone.
The phantoms let us open our own car door, withholding their good night kisses.
We, busy making plans for next time, gladly fail to notice.
~*~
I scrawl this out over rapidly cooling coffee, the crumbs of a grilled blueberry muffin sinking into silt at the bottom of my mug.
They were right, it was delicious, and just the thing to start a Saturday morning in a house devoid of children. They have more than muffins to teach me, I know.
I'm looking forward to our next Freewheeling Adventure, I hear Fuddruckers might be involved.
Meanwhile, I'm happy and content.
Alone, but not lonely.
In my quiet house, 'where no one now is sleeping...'
This week, my youngest child is with her Nanny (the goat is silent).
I only said that because it is a funny play on words ~ and funny.
I have no feelings of ill-will against her father.
I also have no choice in this whole visitation arrangement per the state of Georgia.
So I have chosen to embrace the positive notes in this otherwise tone-deaf arrangement.
Before the divorce, I never had this much help with the children.
I couldn't be gone for an hour without the phone ringing, wanting to know how much longer I planned to be gone. It was understood that if I left the house, the girls and possibly 3/4 of the crew were to ride along, too. Especially during football and golf season.
Now a court has ordered the father of my children to take responsibility for entire weekends at a time so that I may finally attend to my writing. I've been given a whole new blank book, this time, to write myself as I truly am.
Today, it was the simple enjoyment of sleeping in, writing over coffee and surrounded by my favorite books that formed a line.
<< more stuff here >>
Venturing out into the rain to take care of a friend's dog and planning for my job in the fall.
Rarely do I feel the word 'quintessential' applies - especially in regards to myself.
But you have transposed me into the notes of a song, quintessentially.
Thank you.
When I was first diagnosed (ha.) as a nine, I didn't think I could be sure of my own results.
"Who am I to say, what any of this means..." indeed.
I tested a few more times over the past few years, ever and always a nine. But, for some reason I kept my results close, replying to the few people I allowed to know "I tested as a nine" in case maybe later my actual number came to light. I never shared the visual caricature that captures the key 9 attributes publicly, because... what if there was something I wasn't remembering, something I wasn't letting myself be honest about? What if eventually I would admit that I have always been a five?
As I type this now, being a nine stands out to me from every line.
You helped me "see myself through someone else's eyes."
You have helped me to recognize me.
You've given the gift of translation to all us bleary-eyed nines by standing in the open, naming our parts as you point to your own.
I thank you for allowing the vulnerability it took to make nine ring true.
I am still learning to allow the free pour of myself.
I appreciate your leading by example.
~*~
A few weeks ago, before Nine released, I started an unpublished draft for and about a friend who recently encouraged me to get back to writing.
Someone else wanted to hurt me and told me point-blank "You are not a good writer."
My friend, noticing my absence, asked me why I was sleeping.
He let me describe the hurtful encounter then took me around the back of those cruel words and pointed out their shoddy construction.
The healing of that wound simply couldn't come from me.
I needed to see it- and myself - from outside of myself.
And so, I write again. I free-pour me onto the page, sometimes cringing at my own voice, but not allowing 'bad' to be the only valid perspective.
An excerpt from that as of yet unpublished draft:
Rolling cloud brings no doom Quenching rain floods my room
Unfiltered truth, bold and wise Mirrored glass Me, through his eyes
'Write your moments, trade them in To speak the truth is not a sin.'
Writing, for me, is an attempt to see, and to sound-out-loud my search for the unifying thread.
I feel if I can just lift my perspective to that of Narrator, not only can I tell which domino is going to fall, I can tell you the back story of all the dominoes and help us make sense together why that particular domino needed to fall for everything to work together for good.
Though it is futile, as echoed in the writings of my soul-author Thornton Wilder, I want to both intertwine a silver lining and untangle the question "Why?"
(see: 'The Bridge of San Luis Rey')
~*~
This is a good place to say I love the way you make music; you are certainly one of my soul-musicians. The structures you build lyrics on are thoughtful, zooming out and back in again, the words and music echo the way we walk both through this big world and on top of little tiny ones.
With planets floating above and the complexity of anthills beneath, your music is trimmed in meaning. It echoes a larger story, still being told.
I first realized this when I heard you talk with Mike Foster. You described the project you were about to adventure forth on and shared One with us. You described realizing that you couldn't schedule times of creativity... it was more like the wringing of a sponge.
With an internal "YES! Exactly." I began to listen to your voice.
I am glad there is a you, and that someone handed you a microphone.
I do not feel I have listened completely to your songs until I have heard their blueprints, and fingerprints, too. I like music with meaning. I like music I am invited to understand.
When I thought of writing this, I thought I'd offer back to you what you give to us each song, a line by line dissection of my gratitude. Alas, I have broken my own rules and quoted some lines out of order already.
And as I proceeded to go line-by-line, I was completely and utterly a nine.
I had to tend other people's things before I was mentally free to do this thing so close to me.
I got up from this draft a half a dozen times.
I fed the dog.
I fed the cat.
I decided I had better finish my laundry.
I stalled.
I went to bed because I was too tired to think
I made coffee.
I went looking for a quote and re-read old blog archives
I fought the urge to doze
I typed a line
I deleted three
I listened to the podcast again and again
And by the time I was ready to finalize this reaching out to you, I no longer felt so much needed to be said.
I believe that's why -one of the reasons why- we can be slow to pull a trigger . . . to let the chaff blow away before we bind the wheat.
I find this annoyingly true even as I stand in the market trying to pick an ice cream flavor.
So many of them are good.
Which one do I want - and why?
Let's start with the ones I don't want.
Process of elimination, I fancy myself a detective.
But you said as much using dominoes.
See, it felt redundant to speak it back to you.
And yet, you like me, often desire to see yourself spoken back.
Even from a stranger.
Maybe especially a stranger and a nine.
And you deserve every glimpse that assures you are valued and your craft is truly good.
The term 'Hopeful yeses' resonated with me.
As did the concept of misunderstood empathy.
When I took the EQ, I was surprised that my score wasn't higher. I had believed myself to be empathetic, when often times I was merely observant, perceiving or sympathetic.
And you led my thoughts to this: We avoid conflict but we also cannot take a compliment.
Are they not two sides of the same coin?
Saying aloud "I do like it" or "I don't agree" is to imprint ourselves upon another person.
It is to ask them to carry us along the next mile.
We are wearied from striking a balance of energies other people may not mind expending.
One of the worst truths I've had to face is that sometimes, people will just not like me for no apparent reason and there's nothing to I can do to change it.
Sometimes, also, for the same reasons they will lie.
And because I hate that, I try to like everybody - even the people I don't really all that much like.
See?
And it causes me to greater treasure authenticity, to be that which I want to see in this world- even if it is uncomfortable to be.
"I check my vital signs" ~ literally, I do. My blood is sluggishly slow , my blood pressure sometimes alarmingly low. And my blood type is O- , the type that becomes all the other blood types and thus saves other people's lives.
Yet O- can only receive life saving support from another O- soul.
"Choked up" ~ I viscerally hate to cry. It is not unlike nausea to me. I may know it is surfacing, I may know it is inevitable but I will try to stifle it, to keep my tears at bay. And when I spring a leak, please let it be dark or let me be alone. Tears weigh a ton and since they are mine, I must bear them alone.
Sometimes, it is embarrassing to be human.
"I've been less than half myself, for more than half my life" & "Show me what to do to restart this heart of mine" & "How do I forgive myself for losing so much time?" ~ This year, I am going through a divorce.
We were married twenty years.
I was 18 when I said 'I do"
This line resonated because, unwittingly, I committed to making up half of another person's being before my whole self had ever truly developed.
Now I am finding out who she would have been; who she wants to be.
I've wrestled all year with this notion that I wasted twenty years.
I couldn't hold myself accountable for waste for I believed I needed every moment of those two decades to be certain of the shot I must fire.
And yet I also thought I was probably just being stubborn about mourning so much lost time.
I've learned the answer isn't always either/or.
More often it is yes and also.
The domino was always going to fall, either way, indeed.
Now here I am further down the road, almost out of gas.
There was a rest station ten miles back, why do I have to press onward til my tire is completely flat?
Being in the body- what an informative line of thought... maybe that's why I don't realize I am cold or hungry or thirsty until I've long since been. Last month, I was covered in poison ivy and had a worse than typical outbreak because it took me so long to realize I had come in contact with it in the first place.
I could bore you all day with tales where it took me too long to realize that all the rules of gravity (and life and my third grade classroom) apply to me as well. Not that I felt above the rules, but so humbled beneath learning them all.
Ending on an inhale ~ beautiful and significant. I relate to that too.
I've got a blank page in front of me now, and a lot of work to do.
That this was your longest podcast to date was also so fitting. We want to be clear, don't we? Express ourselves carefully and clearly- so that others may see, might understand and not take any unnecessary chaff from our humble attempts at being. We can be plodding in that thorough endeavor.
I, too share a deep fondness for certain aspects of Disney/Pixar, also animation and childlike wonder. It's really indescribable so instead of trying, I leave you with the DMV run by a bunch of nines (though I would likely argue my spirit animal is more likely a Koala)
The laughter at the end is worth the wait.
And that's pretty fitting, I think.
Thank you for all that you are and sing and do.
I am glad we are humans together in this big, beautiful story.
You add meaning to my chapters.
I hope your own hold stories of fulfillment and redemption all the way through.
