Tag: personal comments

When You’re Out of Control (A Reblog from 2013)

Originally written August 29, 2013 and shared today hoping it will bless someone.

 

“I’m must show myself; things are not going well, to be honest.  I’m becoming more and more fragmented.  And I can’t seem to hold it together.  Essentially, I mentally can’t keep it centered on the things I know are right and appropriate. My mind is in a muddle, and my heart is not far behind.

I can’t go on like this.  I have to confess that I’m spinning out of control.  There are too many issues that hammer me, without any resolution or finality.  I need a “booster shot” of grace. (Perhaps, maybe an I.V. would be better.)

All I want is to escape, and to shake off these ‘parasites’ that sap me of any strength I might generate.  Far too many things are draining me of any vitality and hope.  Despair and despondency have suddenly shown up at my door, but I treat them as unwelcomed visitors, and hope they will leave me alone.  All they want to do is take me apart, and dismantle me, and I seldom advance beyond this. I haven’t invited them.

This simple blog has kept me going.  The posts that I write are sincere, and I know for a fact they touch many hearts.  I’m astonishingly grateful for this.  But they can’t minimize my own issues.  I am constantly on the edge, a step one way or another could push into a desperate fall. (Funny, I’m starting to scare myself.)

I have a deep confidence in Jesus.  I believe that he loves me in the most intense way possible.  I trust in his deliberate and careful love.  Resting in his arms is the very best thing I could do.  He is the only one who can lead me through my mental illness.  Or to give me the grace to move above it.

I do not want to offend or alienate anyone.  That simply is not what I am about.  But I simply can not try to take Brokenbelievers much further in this ‘frame of mind.’  I will try to post as often as I can– but both my therapist and psychiatrist want me to go into a hospital.  I have already been there several times and I do not want to be admitted any time soon.

The next several days should be interesting.  I’m definitely committed to avoiding hospitalization.  The “professionals” I trust are trying to commit me, but I do intend to make a scrap of it.  “I will not go lightly.”

Please try to be patient with me.  I want to post, it runs through my veins.  But I simply don’ t  have the resources that extend into transparency and clarity.  Please forgive me. There’s is no way I can make this work without avoiding a “shutdown.” We will see.

***

kyrie elesion, Bryan

(Lord, have mercy on us.)

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There is a Crack in Everything

“Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

Leonard Cohen,  Anthem

A crack in everything. As someone who has experienced brokenness in my life,  I appreciate the wisdom of these simple words. You see, I am intensely aware of being different then others.

I had a night job working my way through school frying donuts.  I remember clearly an incident were I overheard my boss telling someone that, “Bryan is one of the most eccentric people I have ever met.” Now I honestly was not trying to be odd, or eccentric.

To put this in perspective, I just happened to be taking N.T. Greek at the time and knew that the word for eccentric was a contraction, (of ek, meaning “off, or off to one side, and “centros”, meaning, “center”).  He was saying that I was “off centered”. That really troubled me because I always felt like I was intensely stable, and very much a well-balanced person. (But I was just 22.  I guess that fact alone explains much.)

Cohen’s poem tells us certain things. First, he describes bells that can’t be used, they don’t work anymore. Second, he tells us of our need to get real and to understand that “a perfect offering” is beyond our capability. Maybe 30 years ago, ‘naive idealism’ might have carried the day for us. But now I’m in my mid-50s  and I have tried to figure out a thing or two.   By then we start to see the cracks in everything, nothing has gone by untouched. We live in a fallen and broken world.

But the poet delivers a paradoxical truth, he states, “that’s how the light gets in.”

To learn this deeply, is to turbocharge your recovery. You’re a broken person. But that is actually a good thing. It summons up a discernment of how we grow spiritually.

I find it quite astonishing that the broken, weak, and the burned-out are closer to the Kingdom then the strong, the sure, and the gifted. This is a rich and an incredible truth, we are to see our brokenness and ruination in a whole different perspective.  We must see that that is how the light gets in.

“Blessed are the poor in Spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.”

Matthew 5:3

“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.”

Vance Havner

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Peanut Butter, Hot Lunch and Dreams

Warning: Rambling post, very tedious. Don’t operate heavy equipment for two hours after reading this post.

I grew up in a big, brick house in Northern Wisconsin. Our beautiful home hid our desperate poverty, and it was quite difficult. My father and mother scraped by enough each week to feed and clothe us. But just barely.  Mom would take some elbow macaroni, and mix it with stewed tomatoes (from a dwindling supply she tried to manage.)

I was oblivious to our precarious situation.  I carried a plain peanut butter sandwich to school for years, but I had a simple dream of getting “hot lunch.” I was tired of peanut butter, as I watched all the other kids eat pizza, hamburgers and (my fav. mashed potatoes with a pat of butter.) I ate PB for several years.  You could stucco a house with what I ate.

I wasn’t really settled in my heart or thinking.  I developed into a bipolar childhood that had quite a bit of depression, and a load of impulsivity.  I was an impossible child, and I  was out-of-control. I was either terribly manic or profoundly depressed.  My Mom and Dad simply didn’t know or grasp my mental illness and how it was effecting me.

A repeated nightmare worked its claws into my thinking. I would wake up sobbing, almost inconsolable. I had this dream several times in my teens, and can still 40 years later taste the panic. In this dream, I would be lifted up and laid on a slow conveyor belt.  I would be on my back, and I would see over my feet a giant roller.  This roller had big nobs on it and it was rolling over what the conveyor belt brought to it.  In this dream I was paralyzed, unable to escape this giant crushing roller.  I kept fighting, and trying to escape.  But, I was completely frozen.

I would waken just as my feet met the roller.  The fear I had was as intense as any I ever had.  (Except when I had to go down to the basement, but that was more reasonable.)  I would repeat this dream several times, and it was always the same.  I haven’t had this dream for 30 years or more, but it still has a potency and fear to make me edgy.

Over the many years I have thought about this.  I certainly don’t want to mysticize it, or try to force an interpretation out of it.  But it has struck me as a metaphor of my life to some degree.  In this dream I was moving toward an inevitable crushing.  The paralyzing panic was a fair description of where I was at spiritually.

This explanation may sound childish and simplistic.  But it is so workable, and brings a certain comprehension to these terrible moments of fear. And our dreams, well, they are funny things.  All of us, somehow, and in some strange fashion are treated to a surrealistic and fantastical mini-story as we sleep. But what does it mean?

Much of the time, upon awakening, we try to piece together both the chronology and the meaning of what we had just dreamed.  It’s hard to do, most of the time it justs slips away.  Yet, our inner heart always wonders if that particular dream was “good, bad or ugly.”  There are rare times when we can grab on a sequence of events, and relay it to a close friend.

Some things will never be revealed in this lifetime.  But I believe there are certain things in our dreams that the Holy Spirit chooses to bring to light.  We are never sanctioned to seek the meaning of our dreams, but only the Lord Himself.  We should never lean on our understanding, but on our Father and His Word.

P.S. I realize in writing this, I don’t like peanut butter at all.

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Dressing Up to Please, [Authenticity]

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,”

 – Colossians 3:12, ESV

I used to always get dressed up for Sunday church, hey– our whole family dressed in their best.  “Windsor knots” and jewelry, and we looked good.  I was pastoring at this time, and we felt compelled to make a statement.  We were examples, after all. (But we were also idiots.)

This now seems a little ‘kooky’ living in rural Alaska.  During the spring breakup, we would wear big rubber boots as we navigated the mud, and then in the church foyer we would all change into our dress shoes before we entered into the sanctuary.  I admit, I’m glad that we are no longer compelled to do this.

But “dress up” is a major spiritual issue with real consequences.

Not the physical dressing, nor our preening and posturing– but spiritually, getting dressed.  Paul urges us to put on our spiritual man clothing that will honor our Father.  He lists the clothes in our “wardrobe”.  These are the things we should put on, and be seen in.  We are to cover ourselves in what really matters.

“Put on…compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience”

This is a list of items the Lord wants us to wear.  If my dear wife Lynn tells me she really likes to see me in a particular sweater, I will wear it and frequently.  I know she likes it on me, and I want to please her.  The list just above is what the Father really wants you to wear.  He wants to see you in these things.

I just want to urge you today, that you would think about your spiritual clothing.  What is covering your spiritual man?  What do you look like?  This might mean changing your clothes and putting on something that the Father really thinks you look good in.

“Father, when will I learn to dress the inside? Help me attend to the things that really matter to You. Amen.”

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