Caffienated Confessions

I once claimed to be a coffee enthusiast. Certainly I enjoyed my morning cup-a-joe but I didn't need it. I just enjoyed it...And it instantly improved my level of AlertnessAttentionAndOverallQualityOfLife. I could go without, if I really wanted or needed to, but I didn't. So each morning began with a mug of instant life force. Still--just an enthusiast.

Recently, however, I have been learning that without my morning mug I rarely seem to fully join the living. No matter how much sleep, no matter what hour I arise, whether I exercise or vegetate, I do not fully wake up until a cup of coffee (or several cups of strong tea) are coursing through my veins.

Confession: I, Jillian, am addicted to caffeine.

A Peptalk

Coach Chambers: Get moving! (from Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost for His Highest" June 15 reflection. "Also...add to your faith..." -2 Peter 1:5)

"In the matter of drudgery. Peter said in this passage that we have become "partakers of the divine nature" and that we should now be "giving all diligence," concentrating on forming godly habits (2 Peter 1:4-5 ). We are to "add" to our lives all that character means. No one is born either naturally or supernaturally with character; it must be developed. Nor are we born with habits— we have to form godly habits on the basis of the new life God has placed within us. We are not meant to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to be seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace. Drudgery is the test of genuine character. The greatest hindrance in our spiritual life is that we will only look for big things to do. Yet, "Jesus . . . took a towel and . . . began to wash the disciples’ feet . . ." ( John 13:3-5 ).

We all have those times when there are no flashes of light and no apparent thrill to life, where we experience nothing but the daily routine with its common everyday tasks. The routine of life is actually God’s way of saving us between our times of great inspiration which come from Him. Don’t always expect God to give you His thrilling moments, but learn to live in those common times of the drudgery of life by the power of God.

It is difficult for us to do the "adding" that Peter mentioned here. We say we do not expect God to take us to heaven on flowery beds of ease, and yet we act as if we do! I must realize that my obedience even in the smallest detail of life has all of the omnipotent power of the grace of God behind it. If I will do my duty, not for duty’s sake but because I believe God is engineering my circumstances, then at the very point of my obedience all of the magnificent grace of God is mine through the glorious atonement by the Cross of Christ."

Coach M. Ward:Epistemology!

Coach Peter: "For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with sisterly affection, and sisterly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more diligent to make your calling and election sure, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall. For in this way there will be richly provided for you an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:5-11)

a memoir worth mulling over

the dark side of innocence: growing up bipolar
by Terri Cheney

This is the book I read and have been mulling over this week. Having depression myself, some passages deeply resonated with me and some I just found worth sharing. Here are a few:

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"Was this the kind of friend I was? Unreliable? Untrustworthy? Would I always be at the mercy of the Black Beast, unable to show up as I'd promised unless he was in the right kind of mood? Most of the sorrow in my life had come from unreliability: my father's failure to live up to my ideals, my mother's unpredictable storms. Now here I was, as guilty as either one of them.

I looked ahead into my future and saw an endless string of failed relationships: friendships I would surely sabotage, love I couldn't commit to. What in God's name was wrong with me? It would be so easy just to blame it all on the Black Beast, but some speck of honor, some modicum of truth, wouldn't let me do that. I truly didn't know how much of it was him and how much was simply me--at tragic character flaw that kept me trapped in infidelity" (242)

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"In fact, with the unexpected success of my book, I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw many people who were much worse off that I was--deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness the way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode." (265)

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"I wanted--what? Revenge? Retribution? No. I wanted my childhood back.

"Tears welled up, and I welcomed them. Over the course of these many years, I've learned an important lesson: melancholia has its value. Sadness is not depression. Tears can heal, or so I hoped as I wiped them off my cheeks, my chin. I was still able to think clearly, logically, as I picked the pieces out of the puzzle and tried to rearrange them into some semblance of order.

It wasn't my parents' fault--it was nobody's fault--that I was born with a chemical imbalance in my brain." (269)

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"...please, don't let the silence triumph. Listen and learn and read and discover and most of all, believe your child (or relative or friend). Name the Black Beast with the impunity if he dares to show his face. If there's one thing I can claim to know, it's this: naming a beast is always the first step toward taming him." (270)

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No matter what the illness (but particularly mental illnesses) there is a definite, and righteous, sense of loss. Those who suffer need the language of lamentation. Ironically, those of us with depression probably have the weakest grasp of lamenting; Oh we get despair, and I for one live into that far too often. But lament...to grasp the gravity and weight, to come to the doorstep of despair only to look up and see hope. Lament is acknowledging the complete brokenness which surrounds you, to mourn that loss in the light of hope.

Please know that mental illness is real. It is not something one wills, but it is real--it is sometimes more real than reality for it distorts all that we perceive, how we process, and how we react, and isn't input and output reality? It is a loss, a loss worth lamenting.