A Labyrinthine Journey

A couple months ago, I wrote that little postit note and stuck it up near my desk. It was an expression of frustration and an attempt to get something going in my psyche. Something akin to energy. It has remained as a rally call, trying to muster up some anger energy to not sink into the swamp again, to not accept this gray as the inevitable conclusion to life and such. It had moved off to the side lately and I had forgotten it was there until the other day. I saw it and realized I was allowing myself to sink again.

There has to come a point when I have to say “No” to the force of gray and darkness and open my life up to the “Yes” which is life. I guess I have to acknowledge that I have to keep choosing that “Yes.” I don’t have to accept the depression, but I do have to accept the idea that depression is always just around the corner trying to tempt me into the fog of not caring about life. That isn’t a cure all, but until I realize that, any cures will be temporary and the pride of “being healed” will only set me up for surprise.

Earlier this week, we had a leadership orientation for the church (because of snow we only had 8 people come). I was introducing the idea that we need to have a time for prayer at board and committee meetings. One of the passages I used to support that idea was Psalm 127:1-2:

If God doesn’t build the house, the builders only build shacks. If God doesn’t guard the city, the night watchman might as well nap. It’s useless to rise early and go to bed late, and work your worried fingers to the bone. Don’t you know he enjoys giving rest to those he loves? [The Message]

As I caught myself in the middle of a no-energy day this week and trying to decide if giving up was really the best thing to do, these words came to mind. It reminded me that while I have things to do seeking healing in my life, they must follow the cry to God for God’s presence. With that presence, the other healing tools become powerful. I had been trying to do it all on my own again (that old control, not need any help from anyone trap).
No magic in that moment, but a step in the direction of God’s healing touch.

My little sign is back in front of me to remind me to never give up to the existing gray of depression, but to surrender and trust the God of the full color life.

Sorry for not being very communicative lately. I am hoping to renew a rhythm of reflecting and posting in the next few days. This is a personal saga so you don’t have to read.
So whence the chaos?

A combination of personal factors have left me arid in thoughts to write about, well sort of. This has not been an unproductive time, as I have collected seeds of ideas on my scattered pieces of  5 1/2 X 8 1/2 yellow paper. I haven’t been able to sit down and allow the seeds to grow. Of course we have the natural chaos of the Christmas holiday season, both in preparing for, worshiping through, and sharing with family. It was an enjoyable celebration season, now comes the cleaning up and the regathering energy.

I became ambitious and moved furniture in my home office. Not too long ago, I moved it from a small room upstairs to a big room in the basement. After using it for a while, I realized I did not choose the best place for it. So I moved it. The cost? I still have 3 boxes of stuff that is waiting a usable home. I have a lower back that has been reminding me constantly that I am 48 and half and I need to be careful moving furniture now.

Oh, did I mention a nasty head cold that left me without a full voice (a tragedy for preaching and singing) and developed into bronchitis (that I don’t think completely went away).

My journey through depression has taken an interesting turn, and it too is a factor in the chaos. I have been getting better. The counseling and spiritual direction has been laying bare some important clusters of thought, attitude, and emotion that led to the failure factor. By not running away form them (much) the failure factor has been diminishing enough to begin to cut back on the medication (step one). This brings a whole new set of stresses and coping mechanisms that need to be reinstated or remade to keep the reality in place. That is good and not so good. Not so good in the sense that the waters are stirred up and the silt swirls with chaos, but good, because the waters are stirred up and the silt has a chance to wash down the stream. This is good in that 30 year old crap is being unearthed, moved out and allowed to air itself toward fertility instead of toxicity, bad because other resistances (old and new) are needing to discovered, explored and integrated into life.

The nice thing is that I know that while Chaos will never be completely removed from my life I am able to sort through it and tame it for a while … again … and again … and again.

Tomorrow will be a good day.

The other night I was up really late after trying to cough up my lungs (or at least that is how it felt) while struggling with my fall head cold. While up trying to settle my breathing down to return to bed, I flipped on the television and found Bill Nye the Science Guy. I am still too much of a geek; I love that show. The topic? Newton’s law of inertia: a body at rest stays at rest (or a body in motion stays in motion) until acted upon by an outside force.

I’m stuck in spiritual inertial pause right now.

I can name some of the forces that have stopped my inner motion: the physical affects of this bad cold, fatigue from possible sleep apnea (I have to say possible because we know I have apnea, Linda observes it regularly, but my sleep study a couple weeks ago didn’t show any–primarily because I didn’t sleep), and the ongoing affect of both depression and the anti-depressants; there have been many people trying to force my ministry direction but not in helpful ways or counter to the direction I keep trying to get myself going.

Every once in a while I try to get myself started. I try to grab onto some task or project that I will break the inertial pause. Yet other than a quiver of brief movement, things end up returning to the same place but only now I am frustrated and self-judgmental (which reinforces the failure voice of the depression). Then I give up. It’s too hard. I can’t do it. Maybe I never could and never can. Why don’t I just give up the illusion. That at least temporarily deadens the frustration.

But then I wake up and tell myself the Depression Sucks and I really don’t want this to be my life. Yet, what am I to do.

Thanks be to God,  that usually whenever I wake up to that thought, I also remember that I am not an outside force, I am the one needing to be moved. And even another person, while outside of myself, is not outside enough to really break the bonds of failure and weakness that hold me here.

In that “doh” moment I remember God.

The Beloved who is just waiting. Waiting for me to stop being so absorbed in my own little frustrations to reach out for real help. Waiting for me to realize I have tripped over my own toys and need a hand to get up. Waiting for me to realize that I need to clean up those toys and put away all those distractions and let go of all those attachments so I have a place to go when I am moved. Waiting for me to remember that spending time together helps me to let go of all those forces that stop me.

Now I must become the one waiting. Waiting with hands unclenched for the firm push of grace. Waiting without knowing which direction love will choose. Waiting knowing that healing does not come on my terms, but always with love. Waiting with anticipation that God is already moving my life.

Sometime last week, I was having  a conversation with someone and the topic of the language of images came up. My friend commented that our language goes a long way in determining how we might face, lose, or triumph over what we are struggling with in life.

That got me thinking about my use of battle imagery with my depression. I talk about struggling with it, or fighting with it. I rejoice when I have won a battle and I get depressed again when I am defeated. As I reflected on that idea, I played with the idea that maybe my image of facing depression made it harder to become free of its affects.

The one image that I am playing with now is the idea of untying or unraveling depression. It sometimes seems that the negative attitudes and the responses of failure form knots and tangles that snarl my soul and heart. So the path toward healing is not found in adding to the frustration, but carefully and persistently following the threads and untangling the knots. When I have woven in the past, those knots would just appear somehow and to go further in making the cloth I had to stop and gently yet surely get the tangles out. Responding with frustration only made it worse and threatened to destroy the whole piece. My life isn’t as fragile as a cotton warp on the loom, but I do know that frustration does not help. A little bit of anger that can fuel the unraveling process is good, but the key is persistence.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t think this is magical by any means. But anything that can help lead more and more to freedom and vitality is welcome.

I am open to that anyday.

This is a post that has been simmering for quite a while. One of the things that I have heard from folks when I first started sharing about my journey through chronic depression (dysthymia) was “what can we do to help?” Whenever that is asked, my mind goes temporarily blank and I can’ think of anything. But over time, I have recognized some things that would help me the best. So I am going to share some of them.
I have called this the Care and Feeding of This Pastor, because I do know for sure that these things would help me and that is all I can know for sure. Yet, I have a feeling that these things would be valuable for others as well. And since in many places October is Pastor Appreciation Month, this might offer some ideas for folks.
First, Marc Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in San Francisco, shared these statistics:

Pastors

• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• Fifty percent of pastors’ marriages will end in divorce.
• Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
• Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
• Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
• Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
• Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
• Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors’ Wives

• Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
• Eighty percent of pastors’ spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
• The majority of pastor’s wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

Those are sobering statistics for sure. Marc goes on in the article to talk about some things that pastors and their families can do (some very good thoughts), but I want to turn to those who want to support the pastor and their families. I am addressing this to someone asking how to care for This Pastor.

Throw Away The Pastoral Mold

This is a big one and it is more attitudinal than action, yet a shift in attitude can affect your relationship with your pastor immensely. I know you have had some great preachers in your life, you have experienced some excellent teachers. You have also had some pastors active with youth, with older adults, and in visiting everybody in church. The problem is that those were all different preachers who you have rolled into one Mold of the Pastor.

There is no such thing as the Perfect Pastor. We are not made out of a mold, each one with identical gifts and strengths. We are each created and hand fashioned by the Holy Spirit and our experiences in life.

So, please take an interest in finding out what my strengths are, and the experiences that have formed my faith and ministry. Listen for my perspective on life and Scripture. And while I have aligned myself with the doctrinal standards of this church that doesn’t mean I view it with the same colors and textures (interpretations) as my colleague in the other town or in a magazine or newspaper article.

If that is true for me, that is more true for my family. My children do not fit the mold of “Preacher’s Kids” unless you force them into that place, so I ask that you don’t do that, and allow them to grow into the particular images of God that God is forming them to be. And my spouse? Trying to force the pastor’s wife/husband into a stereotyped understanding of that a pastor’s spouse is supposed to be is disrespectful and hurts.

So, appreciate us for who we are, and not how any other pastor’s family might be.

Make a Personal Connection

That leads right into this one. Befriend us.

Many parts of the depressive side of pastoral ministry (see statistics above) keep returning to isolation from relationships. I don’t want to embarrass you by telling you how few people have invited us out for a social gathering in the years that we have been here. But I can count them on one hand.

We are regular people. We have a job and a role to play in our community, but beyond the role we are plain and simply human beings with hopes and dreams, pains and desires. We like to have fun and we also want to have friends we can trust when we need friends we can trust.

So invite us over for supper, or ask us to go to a movie. We like to play cards or other games, do you have a card club? ask if we are interested (I love 500). We have received gift certificates for restaurants before and that is great to be able to go out and have a date with each other. Yet, what would be better would be to take us out to dinner. You get to show appreciation to us as well as have a chance to get to know us.

Oh, and if you do want to get to know us, please don’t make it a quasi-pastoral visit. You know, “we are having some problems and if we invite the pastor’s family over maybe they can help us.” Understand, we will come and we will help as we are able, but we can tell. And while we can’t help but talk about church business, lets see if we can fast from church business so we can just spend time truly getting to know each other.

Care for Us and Pray for Us

This is an important one. The best help I receive with my stress, or depression, or anxiety, or whatever is having someone stop by and simply ask how I am doing. Then sitting to listen ith interest, but without judgment of even a lot of advice (I don’t need fixes, I need support). And then respecting the confidence and trust I place in them.

Each part of that is important. It is a great relief to be able to say to someone, “I’m really worn out.” For many stresses in my life, there are no simple solutions. For many tasks on my list, many of them are mine to do, but to know that I am not facing them alone brings new energy and renewed vitality. Sometimes I do need a nudge, but a loving nudge, not a put down or discouragement.

And I am sorry to say that there have been some people who I have shared struggles with who have shared that conversation with others. That makes it very hard to both trust that one personally and in ministry together. It also makes it more difficult to trust others; there are only so many times one is willing to get burned.

Oh, and if you want to care for my wife? Ask her how she is doing. She needs the personal touch as much, if not more than I do. I am the one who learns the names faster and hears the stories more, so it is easy for her to feel even more left out and isolated. I tell Linda that the only expectations I have for her as This Pastor’s wife is to be herself and to love the Pastor. That’s it. Please care for her in the same way.

We are not Super-beings

Here is another attitude check. Usually, many of those pastoral myths that I hear about and bump up against is the one about the one who works tirelessly caring for all people in every place and at all hours of the day. These fantastic beings are able to attend all meetings, visit everyone (no matter how far away the hospital is) and is still able do all the reading, study, paperwork, sermon preparation, and have full office hours for people to call or stop by. Oh, and they always look awake and alert and are impeccably dressed.

Well, I might have exaggerated that description a bit, but unfortunately, not by much. Those pastors who try to hold to that image of perfection and functioning do it at a cost. A human cost. I know of pastor’s spouses and children who came to hate the church because of that toll of time. For many of you, time with your family is very important and you pick and choose activities to allow you time to do that (if it isn’t, we need to talk). So why can’t you allow me the same opportunity to value my wife and children and spend time with them? True, I need to learn to say “No.” You also need to accept my answer sometimes.

Another cost for me is energy. Marc Driscoll in the post linked above talks about “filling our [energy] plate” Some people have a lot of energy for being active and personable. Others, like me, have smaller plates for that ministry work and need more time for recharging and reflection. I have literally damaged my health at times by pushing myself too far and too hard. And a big part of my own chronic depression stems from those times and never fully recovering from the emotional cost of ministry.

Another cost is for the church community. If the pastor is overfunctioning by being involved in everything and by doing too much then that leaves little room for talented and gifted people in the church to follow God’s call for their ministry. Sadly, there are too many congregations that have fostered under-functioning among the members for so long, it is very hard to break out of the lethargy that underfunctioning brings. Yet, God is in the work of raising the dead, not in granting super-powers.

Have a Problem? Bring it to me, please

Unfortunately, since I don’t have super powers and I am not perfect and I am only human, I will miss things. I will make mistakes. I will make choices that you might not agree with. If so, come and talk to me first. Don’t complain to my wife. Don’t grumble to the church secretary, the Bishop, the DS, or even the chair of the personnel committee until you have talked to me first. And if anyone else decides that they want to grouse about me, don’t even listen until they have brought their concern and issue to me.

This is basic human respect in my book. By taking an issue to anybody and everybody other than the person who is at the heart of the issue accomplishes nothing except spreading a lot of negativity throughout the community, the church, and other relationships. Maybe the issue is a simple misunderstanding that can be cleared up simply in a one to one conversation. Or maybe I need to be nudged (remember, lovingly) into something that I need to be doing, but if you don’t tell me, I cannot know what I can do differently. And even if we disagree on something, we can at least take the time to listen to one another and at least understand the other person a little more clearly.

The alternative is for me to hear about something through the gossip chain. That’s uncomfortable at the least and frustrating and hurtful at the most. Once something gets out there, nothing can be done to change it. Another alternative is for me to be sitting in a board or committee meeting and hear a list of problems that have been heard. That form of ambush is very painful, raises my defenses very quickly, and breaks trust and respect in the relationship.

But this is not only the way I think it should work in my book, Jesus lays out the same basic steps in Matthew 18:15-19.

Summing Up

I know this is a bit longer than usual, but I needed to get some of these things out. Notice that all these things have to do with being in right relationship with one another. My wife and I are Christians first who are just trying to live our lives as God intends each of us to live our lives. The role of pastor is one role within the church where all of us are called people with our God-given roles. Caring for us is still person to person, loving one another.

Consider the question of who cares for the pastor and family? If the pastor is there to care for the members of the church, someone has to care for that person. Who? I believe the caring flows back from the congregation. We are given one another to care for. I care for you in my way and God invites you to care for me and my family in your way. Together we can do it.

Haven’t been on to blog much lately. Not a lot of things have come up that I thought, “Wow, I need to blog this.” So I decided to at least step up to the keyboard and start writing to see what comes out.

The last week has been fun and busy with my Dad coming up from Arkansas for a visit. I did have work to do so he enjoyed just relaxing and then playing golf with his twin brother. I was able to join them for a round later in the week. That was fun with my youngest daughter driving the golf cart. I suppose I could call her my caddy since I did toss my wedge to her a couple times to return to my bag after chipping. I celebrated coming 3 shots away from a lifetime goal, beating my Dad at golf. You would think a 48 year old would be able to beat a 73 year old, but I haven’t found my touch yet this year.

Touch is a good image for my life at the moment, or the lack thereof. Touch in golf is knowing the right speed to swing the club to get the ball just where you want it, not short, not long. I find myself fumbling through my life lately. I know I have had the touch in the past, but it isn’t there. Either my attempts fall short of what is needed, or they miss the mark and speed by. Frustrating.

Maybe that is what I am supposed to be learning right now, but it is hard. One thing that I realized I am prone to with both my personality type (INFP in Myers-Briggs and 9. Peacemaker in Enneagram) and my depression (which is still toxic to my soul and spirit) is a lack of self-awareness, that then becomes a lack of self-assertion. It is too easy to not see the whole picture in life. This is especially true in terms of experiences that trigger anger, frustration, and resentment. In too many places I have not allowed myself to even begin to feel anger, so I shut-down my emotional processor. I feel not anger, I sense a hint of pain and ache, but no more. I even sometimes feel like I deserve it. So the depressive thoughts take over and I become lost.

The lack of self-assertion goes hand in hand with that. By internalizing the blame (sometimes not even my on blame, but others’ shame as well) I get easily stuck in not thinking what I have to say is that important for anyone to hear. The one place where that has not really stuck yet is in my preaching. Now if I can take the humble boldness of preaching and embrace my life with the same mode of being, I will be a long way toward recovery. (Hence my blogging is an exercise in self-assertion. It takes no risk to write things in my journal, but I have to step up to my own plate when I write these words.)

Anyway, that is a sort of aside from where my thought process started: about what I am supposed to be learning at the moment. The whole embracing my life through self-awareness and self-assertion goal is what emerged from my prayer retreat. And since then it has been one challenge to that goal after another. I have been faced with having to choose again to allow myself to feel pain and resentment at criticisms fair and unfair. I have been placed in situations where I would normally just sit back and say nothing even though I do not agree with what is being said, but challenged to attempt to say something that goes counter to those ideas. It isn’t getting any easier, but my head knows that this is the way it has to be to wake up the inertially challenged spirit that I have allowed myself to become.

I am looking for the day when it will not be a struggle, but that the “touch” will come back to my life and I won’t feel like I am just tripping and fumbling all over it.

Yet, there are moments. There are moments when the heart and mind are clear and the beauty that is God around us comes into focus. There are moments when the words of compassion not only flow toward the one whom I am sharing God’s love with, but illuminate the beauty God has created in my own life. Moments when it all clicks and I can go “Yes, God! Thank you.”

Then the next shot goes into the woods, three fairways over and I am not sure I know how to play the game at all.

Yet, there are moments.

I was just trying to find the quote and couldn’t, but I was thinking about what someone said that they knew there was a normal, because they see it every time they go screaming past it. This has been one of those screaming past it weeks.

Last week was a good week, fed in silence to contemplate my life, my relationships, my hopes and dreams, as well as my fears and stumblings. I walked, napped, took pictures and prayed. A type of a mountain-top experience: good and enriching, not necessarily high emotion, but good emotion.

Now, this week, has been like tumbling into the swamp in the bottom of the valley. Every evening filled with a meeting and the days wrestling without focus. Frustrating after all the hope and promise of last week.

Yet. Yet, I find myself strangely hopeful in the midst of the frustration and uncertainty and the challenges of the week. When I consider that I have spent this week making some relatively small yet important changes in the routine of my life, a reaction was to be expected. I was just hoping it would give me some breathing space and not be quite so pervasive. If you will indulge me one more comment before I try to clarify things, the fact that my own internal response is as quick and profound as it has been this week tells me that my Inner Depressive Council and my Shadow Cabinet are scared.

One of the things I did at the end of the week of prayer was to try to identify one or two important things that I wanted to take with me beyond the week. There are some attitude items that I will write about a bit later, but there are also some practical things.

The most important one was that I decided to change my morning routine. Isn’t that great? Ho hum, you say? Well, I think that one thing has the been the biggest contributer to my being slung into the valley. My old routine was to get up, come right into the computer room and check the night’s email. Then I have a couple web sites that I like to check in the morning and lately I have been checking out some of the blogs I read. Then I will get around to maybe grabbing a little something for breakfast and then shower, dress and if I have time, spend some time in centering prayer and then off to work.

Beginning Monday, I instituted a new morning routine: wake up, go right to the shower and get dressed, then spend about 15-20 minutes with a little prayer journal praying for the various people in my life and ministry (usually with Orange juice and a little breakfast with Jesus), then about 20 minutes in centering prayer. Then and only then will I head into the computer room and depending on my time frame will check email, websites and blogs until it is time for work.

The reason for the change? Establishing the priority relationship. I realized that my time in prayer was not an important priority, it was a good thing to do and if I could find the time to do it, I would. While I would not have said it that way, that is what I was convicted of during my week of prayer and reflection. I was living it that way. I didn’t like that and it was time for a change to reflect the important things in my life. So prayer becomes the first thing I do in my day (after getting cleaned up and shaved and dressed).

There might be a day when I am running late and I won’t get a chance to check all I want to check on my computer first thing in the morning. Well, that is fine. I and the vast tubes of the internet will survive quite nicely. I will have made sure my day started with prayer though. That primary relationship needs to be an important priority just as I know each day I need to spend time talking and listening to my lovely wife and my daughters (when they are here) to nurture the relationships.

This is only the beginning of moving some very important things from the realm of “That’s a Really Good Idea” to “This is What I am Going to Do.”

I should be in bed, but wanted to spend a couple minutes trying to honor my commitment (to myself) to blog at least ten minutes a day. I’ve missed a few days and I can only plead temporary schedule insanity. This last week needs to be marked as a personal testimony to the need for a better way of organizing my life. A lot of things caught up and needed to be finished before Saturday.

I was able to take care of most of them, and now am trying to enjoy a week’s vacation.

What pray tell, you ask, did I find myself needing to push myself to do?

Iowa Annual Conference was this last weekend, Wednesday through Sunday. For that, there is reading through the pre-conference material (not done, but there is plenty of time to catch up while the debates are going on, doable, but always much better to have read first), the construction of a new canvas labyrinth for use at the conference and then eventually to reside in the conference center (that was actually done 5 days early, but it did put a limit of time to get other things done.

Stuff needed pre-vacation: well, there was two Sundays of liturgy (I was preaching on AC Sunday at 2 of the 3 services because for some reason I hate to take 2 Sundays off in a row), the revision of a fund raising letter for one of the churches to send to the membership (fortunately I had already typed in the initial draft so just needed to go through and revise, but finished that on Saturday night, oh, and I needed to see what bills needed to be paid (Saturday night again).

Saturday Class. This was the biggest set of staying on top of tasks failures. I needed a 2-3 page single-spaced paper reviewing the whole year and how I saw changes in my understandings of spiritual direction, God, self, and relationship of self to God. Just  a little, throw together paper right? (Written Saturday morning at 1:00). Then there were 4 two page papers on 4 books read on various topics related to spirituality and spiritual direction … all really due in May. Well, when I started the week, I had two books read. So over the course of the week I needed to completely read two books, then go through and find key points from all 4 books to reflect upon in the papers and then to write the papers. Somehow, I was able to finish them, but I printed them out at 2:00 in the morning on Saturday.

I’m not proud of my procrastination. I am someone familiar with it since I have tended to always do it this way, but there is a price to pay in missing other important tasks and duties all in the name of needing to catch up at the last minute. One source I read has linked procrastination and depression. I don’t doubt it in the least. So no part of my treatment plan for depression is to work smarter on taking care of things in a more timely manner so everything gets done when it needs to be done.

You will hold me to that, right?

Well, getting through conference and that last class for the year takes care of 80% of tasks that have been waiting to be done. Now there is space to become smarter in how I decide what to do and when.

There is one year left on the Institute for Spiritual Guidance class and there are 4 more to page book reports to have done over the Summer, due in September. As a sign of my commitment, I have brought the first of those books with me and will try to find some time to begin to read it.

PS. I do have a few things I have been accumulating to blog about, so with time this week I hope to write more things.

I have continued working with the Getting Things Done system of David Allen. I was able to finish the second reading of the book (first reading was a few months ago) and I am glad I did. A couple weeks ago (I know I said it then) I again went through and collected and processed a bunch of my stuff that had been accumulating. It did help and I got a lot of things done (and threw a lot of things away). Yet, it didn’t stick for very long. I was back against the piles of things not being done and the procrastination that is interwoven with my depression was as present as the desert of the disease.

One thing I keep learning about facing depression is that I cannot attack it headon, I have to work at reducing the power of some of the peripheral pieces of it to shift the whole system back toward health and balance. So last week, I decided that I had had enough with my dis-orientation and my dis-integration and my dis-ease with the way I handle my life. So I made the choice to make the re-integration of my life’s tasks and roles as my top priority for a few days. I also faced a couple weeks where I had a lot of deadlines and I wasn’t sure I was going to make any of them.

So, the GTD book was opened up again and a new and deeper reading was begun with an eye to really figure out how I can make this work given the way I am wired. I also had in mind the things that did work before and the things that didn’t work. Fortunately, I found some other people who had used a little PDA program I liked to implement the GTD system successfully (Bonsai by Natara software)

One of the things I have come to see through my counseling and spiritual direction is that I have many things that I accept as real good ideas, but I hadn’t chosen to make them happen. This was a big attempt to make one of those real good ideas happen. Well, I’m still tweaking things, but so far I am giving it a good go.

An interesting insight came tonight while I did my evening labyrinth walk. In considering the purpose for why I have devoted so much energy and time to this lately instead of other things. If I was thinking of things from the perspective of a manager (which is a viewpoint I used to have about being a pastor, but no longer) then I would talk about the larger view of productivity and the long-range benefits in future efficiency. But, I am not a manager. I have no product to produce, I have no employees to supervise (not counting the church secretary and custodians), I only have a message and a hope to bring to people who choose to participate in the life of the church. So efficiency and a management view of things doesn’t fit at all. The insight from my labyrinth walk was that the purpose of learning to focus my energies and to always be looking for the next action step is a question of faithful stewardship and a making of space for God’s Holy Spirit to creatively work in, around, and through me.

I realize now that poor stewardship has so bound us that there is no space in our minds, hearts, schedules and useless todo lists for God to come in and do wondrous and glorious things.

Time to make space and see what the Spirit of God can do with it.

Darren Friesen up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, relays an interesting give and take about his recent struggles with Depression.

Go read it to see some understanding comments to him and some less than helpful … ahem … comments. Hence the discussion.

I only want to add that part of the difficulty in people understanding depression is that it is a complex disorder. It does involve series of choices made and then not made, but you can’t reduce it to a matter of the will. Nor can you simply point to the presence of sin anymore than you can claim the presence of sin in each person’s life. It does involve the nature of one’s relationship to faith and to God, but you can’t reduce it to simply a spiritual matter. It also involves one’s resistances to intimacy and love, but you can’t reduce it to simply a matter of isolation or loneliness. It is a matter of losing control of one’s moods and emotional responses to life, but it cannot be reduced to simply a matter of feelings. It does involve one’s brain chemistry and the pathways for the processing  of neuro-transmitters, but you can’t reduce it to simply a matter of chemistry.

In my own struggle with my depression I find that whenever I have tried to address only one part of the complexity I have have temporarily felt better, but ultimately felt worse. I am thinking more and more that the reason depression is becoming so prevalent is that we try to reduce it to just one thing instead of the impairment of body, soul, heart, and will that it reflects. So medication AND counseling AND working on relationships AND growing one’s connection with God AND bringing more influence upon one’s active life AND whatever else comes up in that context (I am trying to leave this open-ended) reflects the true life struggle for a depressive.

I realize how intimidating that is, and I suppose it comes out of my Nth attempt at my depressive struggle, but I am finding that while it is a challenge, the fact that it begins to come closer to the reality of my experience actually brings me more hope in the struggle. Even though there are still days and weeks when the fog descends (or the swamp rises) one must chose again to embrace life even though the embrace is as small as a mustard seed (oops, am I mixing metaphors?).