Hi friends! This Depression Profile is actually in two parts and is not exactly about depression. A wonderful woman, Katie L, contacted me and told me about her years of struggle with Pure-O OCD and the effect it had on her spirituality as a Mormon. (While this lady was not clinically depressed her struggles did lead to some depressive episodes.) Pure-O OCD is a (somewhat disputed) anxiety condition where the sufferer obsesses about unwanted, intrusive thoughts without any recognizable or outward compulsions. For me this kind of obsessing was the defining factor of the postpartum period with my first child. It's also how I know when I am on the brink of a breakdown. Having experienced a version of this myself, I really appreciate how Katie L. describes this. Her writing is vivid and the information she gives important. For more info on Pure-O check out the website The Other OCD or the books The Imp of the Mind by Lee Baer, Brain Lock: Overcoming Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, and When in Doubt, Make Belief by Jeff Bell.
Name: Katie L.
Location: Pacific Northwest
Age: 29
Religion: Mormon
I can't remember a time in my life when I didn't struggle with anxiety. It became more pronounced around the age of nine, though. Before then, I'd feel very guilty about things I did wrong and make conscientious attempts to avoid sin; by the age of nine, my flirtation with guilt and doubt had blossomed to a full-blown romance.
OCD is sometimes called "the doubting disease," and that description resonates deeply with me. From 9-years-old on, I not only experienced doubt about things that are "normal" to doubt -- such as the existence of God or the truthfulness of the Church (though perhaps the severity was abnormal for someone so young) -- but I also began to have very strange doubts. For example, I would feel guilty for doing something and then feel unsure about whether or not I actually did it.
I developed a fairly severe confession compulsion. Whenever I did something wrong, I confessed it to my mother. If I wasn't sure whether or not something I'd done was actually wrong, I confessed it anyway, just in case. Sometimes, questions arose about who had done one thing or another -- who broke the scooter in the basement, who took Dad's quarters off the dresser, who made a mess in the laundry room -- and I confessed, even though I had no recollection of doing it.
Eventually, my mother caught on that something wasn't quite right. We didn't have enough information to call it OCD, but it became okay for me to say, "I don't know if I did it or not!" Although I imagine that some parents would have assumed that their child was trying to get out of punishment, somehow my mom understood that I was being honest -- I really wasn't sure -- and she didn't press me on it. In fact, she often reassured me that I probably hadn't committed the crime in question.
I also found myself praying constantly. I prayed for forgiveness. Unwanted thoughts about the truthfulness of the church would trouble me, so I prayed for a stronger testimony. I prayed to "know" whether or not I had actually committed the sins I worried about. I prayed for help overcoming my weaknesses, both real and imagined.
As I grew older and learned about sex, I became troubled with disturbing sexual images that would flash through my mind frequently (well, disturbing for a scrupulous pre-teen; I realize now they were pretty tame). [Laura's note: scrupulosity is a technical term for a moral or religiously fixated OCD. What Katie L describes above is a quintessential definition. For more on scrupulosity check out this scrupulosity blog and this article from Catholic Culture or the book Devil in the Details, about a girl growing up Jewish and with OCD.] For a period of about a month when I was 10 or 11, I refused to take the sacrament, because I believed I was unworthy due to "dirty thoughts." I feared that by partaking of the sacrament I would eat and drink damnation to my soul. (Finally my mom asked what was going on, and when I told her, she said it was okay to take the sacrament even if you couldn't completely eliminate bad thoughts from your mind, because that's what the atonement is all about.)
I began to fear the Second Coming because I believed that I would be cast into the fire due to the intrusive obsessions and my inability to be perfectly clean. I started begging God to wait to send Jesus until I was worthy, to give me enough time to properly repent of my sins.
As I've gotten older I've found that Doubt targets whatever is the most important to me. For example, in my late teens, I fell in love for the first time and began to think of myself as a sexual person who could be attractive to men. So OCD hit me there: I developed an obsession about my sexual orientation (this is different from real homosexual attractions or sexual curiosities; what I experienced were overpowering fears that one day I would wake up and suddenly "discover" I was gay).[Laura's note: H-OCD is a subset of OCD where the sufferer worries that they are actually gay but don't know it or that they have somehow done something that makes them gay but don't remember it. Often it takes the form of obsessing over the fact that the individual cannot ever remember being not-gay, not just straight but not-gay--a distinction that really only makes sense in the context of OCD. For more information on understanding the difference between sexual orientations and HOCD check out this website, Gay or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:Homosexual fears and OCD. Please, please, please don't think this is a comment on sexual orientation; it's not.]
On my mission, my doubts about the truthfulness of the church intensified to near-deafening levels. I found myself agonizing over the use of "you"-pronouns in the Book of Mormon -- did it use "ye" vs. "thee" properly? I struggled with feelings of unworthiness, and questions as to whether or not I had done bad things arose again. I confessed several non-sins to priesthood leaders on at least five separate occasions.
When I was pregnant with my daughter, I began obsessing that I might harm her after she was born. That's when I finally checked myself into therapy -- I simply could not bear those thoughts, nor their implications.
These days, although my symptoms are much milder thanks to effective treatment and a softer worldview that I've worked consciously to develop, I continue to struggle with obsessive thoughts. Lately, they tend to focus around whether the people I am close to "really" love me, the veracity of my religious beliefs (this one dies hard), and whether the food I'm about to eat is going to make me sick.
On my worst days, the obsessions are so overpowering that I think about little else. My stomach is in knots. I spend the day praying, checking things online, seeking reassurance -- and, of course, ruminating. Rumination involves trying to solve whatever unsolvable problem is in front of me, an attempt to "think" myself out of Doubt. Since I'm "Pure-O," this is by far my most consuming compulsion.
Because my compulsions are primarily mental, unless it's a really, really bad day, it's easy to hide my disorder. This is both a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because there are often legitimate reasons why you might want to keep something like this private. But it's a curse because it isolates you. For example, for years my husband -- yes, the dude I live with every day! -- had no idea I struggled with anxiety because I was so skilled at hiding it, so adept at going through the motions of daily life, even while I was suffocating in Doubt's stranglehold.
I have had perfectly normal, funny, seemingly carefree interactions with people, while inside my mind and stomach are absolutely churning. I have often excused myself from a class, meeting, or conversation to retreat to the bathroom, drop to my knees in anguish, beg God to take it away -- and then stand up, look in the mirror, put my smile back on, and return to face the world.
That's a terrible way to live. I don't recommend it.
[Laura's note: Please come back and read part II. I promise this story has a better ending!!]
Showing posts with label perfection. Show all posts
Showing posts with label perfection. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Katie L and Doubt: the story of a Mormon girl with Pure-O (part II)
This is part II of Katie L's story. For part I please read here.
My obsessions have almost always revolved around religion. (This is actually a common enough theme for OCD sufferers that it has its own term, "scrupulosity.") This has made my relationship with both the church and God very complicated. To be totally blunt, there are aspects of Mormon teaching and practice that make life hell for OCD sufferers like me (and that I believe are unnecessary burdens for the rest of the membership) -- and if I were in charge, I would change them in a heartbeat. (Which, let's be honest, might be one of the myriad reasons why God hasn't seen fit to put me in charge.) ;-)
Still, my commitment to my Mormon faith goes very deep. It has supplied me with so many beautiful things: my family, many of my closest friends and most rewarding associations, dozens if not hundreds of life-changing experiences, a language and culture and framework for service and worship that feed my soul.
When it comes right down to it, though, I consider myself a disciple of Jesus before anything else. Mormonism is my religious community where I fellowship and live out my faith; but my hope is in Christ alone. OCD has required that I let go of minutiae and details, or I'll drive myself crazy -- quite literally! -- and so, out of necessity, I choose to focus on one thing. That one thing is Christ. (And I'm not sure, but I the more I learn the more I discover that that just might be what the scriptures ask me to do anyway.) :-)
Bottom line: it's taken me a long time to get some space between OCD and what I really believe about God, but what I've discovered is full of hope. Still, I imagine that this is something I'll be unraveling until the day I die.
Since I've been officially diagnosed with OCD -- specifically, "Pure-O," or "Pure Obsessional" OCD things have gotten better. (This is really a misnomer; as best I understand it, OCD always contains both obsessions AND compulsions. It's just that a "Pure-O" sufferer tends to have mental, as opposed to physical, compulsions.)
For treatment, I've tried traditional talk therapy (this was before I was diagnosed, and while it was helpful in addressing some of the collateral damage my disorder caused, it didn't touch the core issue), mindfulness therapy (helpful!), and a 4-step process from a book called Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive Compulsive Behavior by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz (SUPER DUPER HELPFUL!). There is nothing I won't consider, though the Brain Lock treatment I've been using lately has been effective enough that I might not need to explore too many more options. [Laura's note: from what I understand the majority of OCD sufferers do very well with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but there are also many who do not find relief until they try medication. For some, it takes a combination of both for relief.]
Having Pure-O OCD has made me much more spiritual than I believe I would have been without it. I have a tendency toward rigid, dogmatic, black-and-white thinking, and without OCD, I probably would have stayed there comfortably. But because I took my dogmatism to such an extreme that it was debilitating, I was forced to change my perspective for my very survival. Living like a Pharisee (like I did for years) is a spiritual dead end. Achieving moral perfection is simply impossible -- believe me, I've tried.
When God opened my eyes to the good news of His gospel, to the reality of His grace and mercy and love, it was like oxygen for a dying soul. I am now able to handle the messiness and ambiguity of life much better. I find myself filled with compassion and tolerance for others and their sins and weaknesses, because I have so much time agonizing over mine.
I believe that God gave me OCD to teach me how to love other people and to remind me how desperately I need Him. As painful as it has been over the years, I praise Him for that and consider it a gift.
On my best days, the anxiety is just a blip. An obsessive thought will come, and I'll make a mental note of it (or write it down on a note card), take inventory of the compulsion it wants me to perform, and then say, "Screw you, OCD. I'm NOT going to spend two hours agonizing over this. I'm gonna go do something else." And then I do.
I never expect the thoughts to go away. Maybe one day they will, but for now, I'm stuck with them. So I simply accept them, train myself to ignore them. I remind myself that if my heart is pumping, my stomach twisting, my hands cold and sweaty, then chances are it's an OCD thought and not something I need to take seriously.
So, on my best days, I don't.
I wish people understood how dang freakin' hard it is to diagnose this. Many Pure-O OCD sufferers go years, even in therapy, without a proper diagnosis. That's because, on face value, it can look a lot like general anxiety. A Pure-O OCD sufferer will come in with one obsession or another, and because there are no obvious compulsions like hand-washing or lock-checking, the therapist will treat the content of the obsession as opposed to the disorder itself.
In the end, it doesn't matter what you're obsessing about: OCD is about doubt (the obsession) and trying to neutralize that doubt (the compulsion). Whether you doubt that you really locked that door, or if your hands are really clean, or if your bad thoughts are enough to make God damn you for eternity -- and whether you respond by checking the doors, or washing your hands, or praying or confessing or ruminating -- it's irrelevant. You have to treat OCD like OCD to get better.
If anything that I've described today sounds familiar, I strongly recommend that you seek an evaluation from an OCD expert. I went through three counselors over five years before I finally found one who helped me figure out what was really going on with me. Getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment has made all the difference in my life.
Also, please feel free to reach out to me if there's anything I can do to help. I feel as though my own experiences have purpose and meaning when I can help others who are struggling. My email address is katiel2952 AT gmail DOT com.
To read more from Katie check out her blog Standing, Sitting, Lying Down. Also, if you'd like to share your own story of mood disorder or mental health issues feel free to email me at lolapalooza AT hotmail DOT com. Be sure to put "depression profile" in the subject line so I know you're not a spammer!
My obsessions have almost always revolved around religion. (This is actually a common enough theme for OCD sufferers that it has its own term, "scrupulosity.") This has made my relationship with both the church and God very complicated. To be totally blunt, there are aspects of Mormon teaching and practice that make life hell for OCD sufferers like me (and that I believe are unnecessary burdens for the rest of the membership) -- and if I were in charge, I would change them in a heartbeat. (Which, let's be honest, might be one of the myriad reasons why God hasn't seen fit to put me in charge.) ;-)
Still, my commitment to my Mormon faith goes very deep. It has supplied me with so many beautiful things: my family, many of my closest friends and most rewarding associations, dozens if not hundreds of life-changing experiences, a language and culture and framework for service and worship that feed my soul.
When it comes right down to it, though, I consider myself a disciple of Jesus before anything else. Mormonism is my religious community where I fellowship and live out my faith; but my hope is in Christ alone. OCD has required that I let go of minutiae and details, or I'll drive myself crazy -- quite literally! -- and so, out of necessity, I choose to focus on one thing. That one thing is Christ. (And I'm not sure, but I the more I learn the more I discover that that just might be what the scriptures ask me to do anyway.) :-)
Bottom line: it's taken me a long time to get some space between OCD and what I really believe about God, but what I've discovered is full of hope. Still, I imagine that this is something I'll be unraveling until the day I die.
Since I've been officially diagnosed with OCD -- specifically, "Pure-O," or "Pure Obsessional" OCD things have gotten better. (This is really a misnomer; as best I understand it, OCD always contains both obsessions AND compulsions. It's just that a "Pure-O" sufferer tends to have mental, as opposed to physical, compulsions.)
For treatment, I've tried traditional talk therapy (this was before I was diagnosed, and while it was helpful in addressing some of the collateral damage my disorder caused, it didn't touch the core issue), mindfulness therapy (helpful!), and a 4-step process from a book called Brain Lock: Free Yourself from Obsessive Compulsive Behavior by Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz (SUPER DUPER HELPFUL!). There is nothing I won't consider, though the Brain Lock treatment I've been using lately has been effective enough that I might not need to explore too many more options. [Laura's note: from what I understand the majority of OCD sufferers do very well with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, but there are also many who do not find relief until they try medication. For some, it takes a combination of both for relief.]
Having Pure-O OCD has made me much more spiritual than I believe I would have been without it. I have a tendency toward rigid, dogmatic, black-and-white thinking, and without OCD, I probably would have stayed there comfortably. But because I took my dogmatism to such an extreme that it was debilitating, I was forced to change my perspective for my very survival. Living like a Pharisee (like I did for years) is a spiritual dead end. Achieving moral perfection is simply impossible -- believe me, I've tried.
When God opened my eyes to the good news of His gospel, to the reality of His grace and mercy and love, it was like oxygen for a dying soul. I am now able to handle the messiness and ambiguity of life much better. I find myself filled with compassion and tolerance for others and their sins and weaknesses, because I have so much time agonizing over mine.
I believe that God gave me OCD to teach me how to love other people and to remind me how desperately I need Him. As painful as it has been over the years, I praise Him for that and consider it a gift.
On my best days, the anxiety is just a blip. An obsessive thought will come, and I'll make a mental note of it (or write it down on a note card), take inventory of the compulsion it wants me to perform, and then say, "Screw you, OCD. I'm NOT going to spend two hours agonizing over this. I'm gonna go do something else." And then I do.
I never expect the thoughts to go away. Maybe one day they will, but for now, I'm stuck with them. So I simply accept them, train myself to ignore them. I remind myself that if my heart is pumping, my stomach twisting, my hands cold and sweaty, then chances are it's an OCD thought and not something I need to take seriously.
So, on my best days, I don't.
I wish people understood how dang freakin' hard it is to diagnose this. Many Pure-O OCD sufferers go years, even in therapy, without a proper diagnosis. That's because, on face value, it can look a lot like general anxiety. A Pure-O OCD sufferer will come in with one obsession or another, and because there are no obvious compulsions like hand-washing or lock-checking, the therapist will treat the content of the obsession as opposed to the disorder itself.
In the end, it doesn't matter what you're obsessing about: OCD is about doubt (the obsession) and trying to neutralize that doubt (the compulsion). Whether you doubt that you really locked that door, or if your hands are really clean, or if your bad thoughts are enough to make God damn you for eternity -- and whether you respond by checking the doors, or washing your hands, or praying or confessing or ruminating -- it's irrelevant. You have to treat OCD like OCD to get better.
If anything that I've described today sounds familiar, I strongly recommend that you seek an evaluation from an OCD expert. I went through three counselors over five years before I finally found one who helped me figure out what was really going on with me. Getting the right diagnosis and the right treatment has made all the difference in my life.
Also, please feel free to reach out to me if there's anything I can do to help. I feel as though my own experiences have purpose and meaning when I can help others who are struggling. My email address is katiel2952 AT gmail DOT com.
To read more from Katie check out her blog Standing, Sitting, Lying Down. Also, if you'd like to share your own story of mood disorder or mental health issues feel free to email me at lolapalooza AT hotmail DOT com. Be sure to put "depression profile" in the subject line so I know you're not a spammer!
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Depression and Spirituality (more from BCC)
So I am horrendously late (in internet terms) when it comes to blogging about
this. But we've been busy (Sell house? Check! Find other house to buy? Check! Do all the mortgage junk? Check! Oh, and since Baby #4 is due in 9 weeks, see the doctor all the time? Check! Do all the normal life stuff? Check!)and now is the first chance I've had to get back to it.
They covered a lot of ground, starting with how some versions of Mormon thought promote black and white thinking patterns that exacerbate depression and then moved on to how depression has actually changed their religious lives. I hope you'll go over and read the whole post, but I wanted to touch on a few things here that I identified with.
"Depression can be a completely different animal than any other type of adversity, because it screws with your ability to access God. And you know God could break through that wall if he really wanted to, so you’re left with the conclusion that he didn’t care to."
The biggest way depression seemed to interact with the BCC-ers depression was in their connection with God. Most of them couldn't confidently assert any thing more than a tenuous connection with their Heavenly Father--and that made them feel like they were bad Mormons. This has been absolutely true in my life. When I am at worst is when God is hardest to access. Praying, fervent focused pleading, does little to no good. I don't know if it's because my brain blocks out the spirit (I firmly believe there is a link between our physical conditions and our abilities to discern spiritual matters) or because it is somehow God's will that I not feel Him, but when I am down I cannot feel His love or access Him. That's one of the most obvious signs of my own depression: sitting in testimony meeting and seeing that everyone else is feeling it and not feeling it myself. I've come to expect this spiritual loneliness now and don't take it personally, but in the beginning it was vastly disorienting for my Mormon perspective. I mean, God loves us and is supposed to be there for us when we need Him, right? But sometimes it doesn't feel like He is. Or maybe I just haven't learned to see His hand. Either way, it's lonely. And scary.
"It seems to me that we have become more comfortable in Mormon culture about talking about depression, precisely because it has been medicalized, and we can explain it in comfortingly technical terms like 'serotonin re-uptake' and 'dopamine receptors.' What we still can’t do is talk about the spiritual aspects of it–it’s ok to stand up in testimony meeting and say 'the Lord has helped me recover from postpartum depression through priesthood blessings and medical care,' but it simply isn’t ok to say 'I feel abandoned by God. When you talk about your close relationship with Him, I wonder why I can’t feel what you do, and it makes me feel terrible.'
We countenance talking about grief, depression, and anger only when they’re safely in the past tense, or when we can explain them away as a physical, brain-based phenomenon. It’s understandable, of course, because it is painful and unsettling to see someone suffering and have prayer or priesthood blessings seem not to work–'mourning with those that mourn' can be (perhaps must be) a genuine challenge to the faith and testimony of the comforter, as well as the comforted. What does it mean to bear one another’s burdens, when one of our brother’s or sister’s burdens is despair, or the absence of hope and faith?"
This is something I have struggle to articulate and one of the reasons I started this blog. Since I've been depressed, I've come to believe that as Mormons we sometimes spend too much time thinking about the end of the road and not enough about the path we take to get there. We're all about the tree of life(which isn't necessarily bad) and sometimes forget about the mists of darkness and the clinging to the iron rod part of it all. Being righteous doesn't always mean that our lives will be without trouble. We wish it did. But it doesn't. Life is going to be hard and when we forget that I think we neuter our spiritual growth because, really, you can't get to the tree of life without the long walk through the mists of darkness. I'm glad the folks over at BCC owned this and said it out loud.
A lot of the discussion also centered around how being depressed has caused people to rethink their testimonies. Several contributors said that their testimonies were smaller now--stronger but smaller. For almost all of them there came a point where they felt they might need to leave the Church, but they decided to keep working at it. This is true for me, too. I'm not comfortable saying that I know all the things everyone else in the congregation knows. I feel like my spirit has been shaken to pieces and my testimony has been rebuilt from the ground up. But the things I believe are truly mine now because I have gained them through experience.
"I’m starting to realize that one of the greatest gifts we can give another human being is to be willing to reconsider our version of reality for their sake, to make uncomfortable shifts inside ourselves in order to make room for them."
This was beautiful to me. This is the thing I think I need the most sometimes. I just need to know that other people aren't dismissing me simply because my reality makes them uncomfortable. That attitude is the heart of successful, Christlike parenting and marriages. I think it's that idea that shaped the Home Teaching and Visiting Teaching programs. The ability to "reconsider our version of reality" for someone else strikes me as one of the most loving things we can do and is what it means to be true disciples of Christ.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Going Quiet
Adenoid update: gone. J's adenoid's were successfully removed and the whole process took less than 40 minutes. Seriously, we were at the surgery center for a mere two and a half hours. I asked if we could stay longer since it was so nice and quiet, but the nurses politely (and forcefully) kicked us out. J is doing very well. Too well. They told me it would take at least twenty-four hours for the anesthesia to wear off and he would be pretty groggy. What they should have said was that he would basically be a drunk toddler: as much energy as usual but none of the coordination and prone to lots of mood swings. He is blissfully asleep right now and my husband even witnessed some nose breathing. There might be hope. (In answer to the question of the day, "What the heck do adenoids do, anyway?", here's a link.)
I wasn't so sure of that a few hours ago. Like I do in most stressful situations, I had a break down just after the crisis was done. I threw a toy, cussed a little, cried a lot, argued with my husband, and vowed to make an appointment with my therapist.
However, like scripture tells us revelation is not in the earthquake or the wind or the fire but, rather, in the stillness that we feel after those things. Once my fire burned itself out I heard at least one of the things God has probably been trying to teach me all my twenty-seven years: be quiet.
For my birthday my parents gave me Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water and, while the book was not everything I wanted it to be (which of course it couldn't be because L'Engle is like a surrogate mother for me and, at some point, all mothers must fail their children so they can grow), I got something very important out of the book: a new prayer, "Lord, slow me down."
I think part of my reaction to my depression is to push myself. I'm so afraid of falling apart I overcompensate by trying to do everything at once. It's a good distraction to the gnawing emptiness. I also think it's just part of who I am. For as long as I can remember I've always wanted to feel everything and know everything and be everything--I'm always seeking the next step or sensation--preferably all at once. Knowledge and experience are heady drugs and fill up all the places inside me that are empty. I think that's one reason why I like to be pregnant; somebody else's being fills up my emptiness and I can slow down for a little bit.
Of course, part of managing my mood disorder is learning to appreciate the present and experience it fully instead of shunting things away to be dealt with later. It's about not distracting myself. It's about listening to what message the chaos is hiding. It's about slowing down. So, like Madeleine L'Engle, I've been praying that the Lord would slow me down. That He would make me quiet.
Be careful what you wish for.
Apparently, the only way the Lord could slow me down was by giving me enough rope to hang myself. Or, more aptly, by giving me enough projects to exhaust myself. Tonight I finally quit trying to fight the exhaustion and I'm slowing down; I'm going quiet.
For the first time in my life I'm cutting back and saying no. I've already backed out of a couple obligations and my blog is the next step. I'm a little bummed--I'm always sad when a friend gives up blogging because I love hearing their stories (even though I'm terrible at commenting!)--but it feels right. I need to quit focusing on my noise and busy-ness and start finding the slow and quiet things and listening to them. In my haste to become some sort of awesome writer I forgot the number one rule of good writing: listening. Good writers listen to everything around them, whether spoken or unspoken. And to listen like that you have to slow down and you have to be quiet. I've scratched the surface of that idea in relation to my kids and it's been amazing. It's time to open up the rest of my life to the quiet.
I'm not going to quit blogging entirely. This thing is an important brain dump! I am, however, going to be sporadic. In my mind once or twice a month should do. The cutbacks include Mirthful Mondays. Sorry. Maybe one of you should take that over that segment on your blog! Let me know if you do and I'll link to you. Anyway, if you haven't before, now is the time to sign up for my feed.
So, with all the extra time you will have because I'm not blogging as much, you should read this memoir: The Year My Son and I Were Born by Kathryn Lynard Soper. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. If I had the money I would buy every single one of you a copy. This is a must-own for every mother. In the story of her baby with Down Syndrome and her struggle to love him and herself, Soper has embedded the story of every mother and the divinity that motherhood can cultivate within us. Soper is writing from a beautifully transcendent (and perhaps fleeting) place. And because of that the book is never preachy but still guides and uplifts. It is honest and gritty but never depressing.
Seriously--tell your husband or father or whoever to buy you this book for Mother's Day. You'll want to read it again the minute you finish it.
And as a final touch, here's some quiet for you to meditate upon. These are the mountains I live by. I think that they embody some of the quiet I need to find. I need to go lay on one and fell the earth supporting me and radiating God's power and beauty.
photo credit
I wasn't so sure of that a few hours ago. Like I do in most stressful situations, I had a break down just after the crisis was done. I threw a toy, cussed a little, cried a lot, argued with my husband, and vowed to make an appointment with my therapist.
However, like scripture tells us revelation is not in the earthquake or the wind or the fire but, rather, in the stillness that we feel after those things. Once my fire burned itself out I heard at least one of the things God has probably been trying to teach me all my twenty-seven years: be quiet.
For my birthday my parents gave me Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water and, while the book was not everything I wanted it to be (which of course it couldn't be because L'Engle is like a surrogate mother for me and, at some point, all mothers must fail their children so they can grow), I got something very important out of the book: a new prayer, "Lord, slow me down."
I think part of my reaction to my depression is to push myself. I'm so afraid of falling apart I overcompensate by trying to do everything at once. It's a good distraction to the gnawing emptiness. I also think it's just part of who I am. For as long as I can remember I've always wanted to feel everything and know everything and be everything--I'm always seeking the next step or sensation--preferably all at once. Knowledge and experience are heady drugs and fill up all the places inside me that are empty. I think that's one reason why I like to be pregnant; somebody else's being fills up my emptiness and I can slow down for a little bit.
Of course, part of managing my mood disorder is learning to appreciate the present and experience it fully instead of shunting things away to be dealt with later. It's about not distracting myself. It's about listening to what message the chaos is hiding. It's about slowing down. So, like Madeleine L'Engle, I've been praying that the Lord would slow me down. That He would make me quiet.
Be careful what you wish for.
Apparently, the only way the Lord could slow me down was by giving me enough rope to hang myself. Or, more aptly, by giving me enough projects to exhaust myself. Tonight I finally quit trying to fight the exhaustion and I'm slowing down; I'm going quiet.
For the first time in my life I'm cutting back and saying no. I've already backed out of a couple obligations and my blog is the next step. I'm a little bummed--I'm always sad when a friend gives up blogging because I love hearing their stories (even though I'm terrible at commenting!)--but it feels right. I need to quit focusing on my noise and busy-ness and start finding the slow and quiet things and listening to them. In my haste to become some sort of awesome writer I forgot the number one rule of good writing: listening. Good writers listen to everything around them, whether spoken or unspoken. And to listen like that you have to slow down and you have to be quiet. I've scratched the surface of that idea in relation to my kids and it's been amazing. It's time to open up the rest of my life to the quiet.
I'm not going to quit blogging entirely. This thing is an important brain dump! I am, however, going to be sporadic. In my mind once or twice a month should do. The cutbacks include Mirthful Mondays. Sorry. Maybe one of you should take that over that segment on your blog! Let me know if you do and I'll link to you. Anyway, if you haven't before, now is the time to sign up for my feed.
So, with all the extra time you will have because I'm not blogging as much, you should read this memoir: The Year My Son and I Were Born by Kathryn Lynard Soper. Amazing. Amazing. Amazing. If I had the money I would buy every single one of you a copy. This is a must-own for every mother. In the story of her baby with Down Syndrome and her struggle to love him and herself, Soper has embedded the story of every mother and the divinity that motherhood can cultivate within us. Soper is writing from a beautifully transcendent (and perhaps fleeting) place. And because of that the book is never preachy but still guides and uplifts. It is honest and gritty but never depressing.
Seriously--tell your husband or father or whoever to buy you this book for Mother's Day. You'll want to read it again the minute you finish it.
And as a final touch, here's some quiet for you to meditate upon. These are the mountains I live by. I think that they embody some of the quiet I need to find. I need to go lay on one and fell the earth supporting me and radiating God's power and beauty.
photo credit
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Gift of our Spiritual Childhoods (or, Praying with My Mouth Full)
I have a hard time keeping my eyes closed these days during prayers. This mostly has to do with the fact that my children don't keep their eyes closed during prayers. You know, they are always looking around, picking their noses, giggling, or, if it's a meal prayer, they're stuffing their faces.
The usual culprit on this last one is my youngest. J is always hungry. He usually walks around the house with a bag of cereal or a box of crackers in tow. He also checks all the cabinets, the refrigerator, and even occasionally asks me to open the oven so he knows where all the food in the house is located. If one of my girls leaves food unattended--you know, like if they drop their fork on the floor and have to pick it up--J is there finishing their food for them, whether they wanted him to or not. I don't usually hound him about his face-stuffing habits because I think he's still making up for the weight he lost as an infant due to his acid reflux disease, but, well his behavior during prayers is something else.
J is always the first one at the table. In fact, he follows me around while I cook and questions me. "Food?" he asks. "Snacks?" "Cheese?" "Juice?" "Cracker?" "Food!" From the moment his plate is on the table he is shoving fistfuls down his gullet. I know it's a meal he really likes when his utensils hit the floor and he's asking for more before he's done with the first helping.
There is no stopping his quest for satiation, not even asking him to pray breaks his stride. He's only a toddler so at best his prayers are guttural approximations of the words I tell him to repeat. At his worst (read: normal) his prayers are unabashed shows of what he has already eaten through sprays of chewed up sustenance and drool. This, of course, makes the rest of us giggle quite a lot. The best part is that J doesn't seem to notice how bizarre or ridiculous his behavior is. That's the gift of childhood: the oblivious ability to meet your needs regardless of how inappropriate your behavior is.
I was watching him pray tonight and was quite surprised by the emotions that filled me. I was so touched by his messy, chimpanzee-like behavior. It's the only really babyish thing left about him and it charms me. As I watched him trying to say "Jesus" around an impossibly big mouthful, and felt a smile spread across my face, I wondered if that is how I look to my Father in Heaven. I wondered how many of my spiritual efforts are akin to praying with my mouth full.
I mean, think about it. How often do we read our scriptures while simultaneously tucking ourselves in bed? How often do we fast with most of our hearts and minds while planning our big dinner with the rest? How often do we bear testimony with our logical, socially acceptable phrases instead of the words the Spirit is trying to get us to articulate? For me, I think that the demands of my temporal existence infringe on my spiritual efforts more often than I realize.
The other part of this realization is that, just like I can't help but smile when J prays with his mouthful, I think Heavenly Father smiles when we do the same thing. After all, no matter how old we are we are still spiritual children. Compared to the greatness and the glory of our Father in Heaven, we basically are spiritual toddlers. And maybe the blissful ignorance of our inconsistencies is the gift of that spiritual childhood too. J's ignorance leads him to keep trying even when he's inconsistent because that's how he'll learn; he's not afraid of failing or doing it wrong. What matters is that he's doing it, figuring it out.
So often I get discouraged because of the distance between me and perfection. But maybe it isn't distance that keeps me from my eternal goals, it's time. I just need to grow up and that's something that really only happens day by day, food-filled prayer by food-filled prayer. J is going to grow up and he will eventually stop praying with his mouth full and we too will grow up and be able to give our hearts more fully to God. Life--existence!--is like that. We learn and progress sometimes imperceptibly but we are learning and progressing all the same. And that's why God can smile when we are praying with our mouths full: it's a temporary phase and He knows our potential and He knows we will grow out of it and He can enjoy the small successes we have. That's what makes Him our Father in Heaven, as opposed to some impersonal god, He knows us that intimately and loves us that deeply.
Maybe learning to bask in that love is as much a step on the path to perfection as learning to wait until after the prayer to eat.
The usual culprit on this last one is my youngest. J is always hungry. He usually walks around the house with a bag of cereal or a box of crackers in tow. He also checks all the cabinets, the refrigerator, and even occasionally asks me to open the oven so he knows where all the food in the house is located. If one of my girls leaves food unattended--you know, like if they drop their fork on the floor and have to pick it up--J is there finishing their food for them, whether they wanted him to or not. I don't usually hound him about his face-stuffing habits because I think he's still making up for the weight he lost as an infant due to his acid reflux disease, but, well his behavior during prayers is something else.
J is always the first one at the table. In fact, he follows me around while I cook and questions me. "Food?" he asks. "Snacks?" "Cheese?" "Juice?" "Cracker?" "Food!" From the moment his plate is on the table he is shoving fistfuls down his gullet. I know it's a meal he really likes when his utensils hit the floor and he's asking for more before he's done with the first helping.
There is no stopping his quest for satiation, not even asking him to pray breaks his stride. He's only a toddler so at best his prayers are guttural approximations of the words I tell him to repeat. At his worst (read: normal) his prayers are unabashed shows of what he has already eaten through sprays of chewed up sustenance and drool. This, of course, makes the rest of us giggle quite a lot. The best part is that J doesn't seem to notice how bizarre or ridiculous his behavior is. That's the gift of childhood: the oblivious ability to meet your needs regardless of how inappropriate your behavior is.
I was watching him pray tonight and was quite surprised by the emotions that filled me. I was so touched by his messy, chimpanzee-like behavior. It's the only really babyish thing left about him and it charms me. As I watched him trying to say "Jesus" around an impossibly big mouthful, and felt a smile spread across my face, I wondered if that is how I look to my Father in Heaven. I wondered how many of my spiritual efforts are akin to praying with my mouth full.
I mean, think about it. How often do we read our scriptures while simultaneously tucking ourselves in bed? How often do we fast with most of our hearts and minds while planning our big dinner with the rest? How often do we bear testimony with our logical, socially acceptable phrases instead of the words the Spirit is trying to get us to articulate? For me, I think that the demands of my temporal existence infringe on my spiritual efforts more often than I realize.
The other part of this realization is that, just like I can't help but smile when J prays with his mouthful, I think Heavenly Father smiles when we do the same thing. After all, no matter how old we are we are still spiritual children. Compared to the greatness and the glory of our Father in Heaven, we basically are spiritual toddlers. And maybe the blissful ignorance of our inconsistencies is the gift of that spiritual childhood too. J's ignorance leads him to keep trying even when he's inconsistent because that's how he'll learn; he's not afraid of failing or doing it wrong. What matters is that he's doing it, figuring it out.
So often I get discouraged because of the distance between me and perfection. But maybe it isn't distance that keeps me from my eternal goals, it's time. I just need to grow up and that's something that really only happens day by day, food-filled prayer by food-filled prayer. J is going to grow up and he will eventually stop praying with his mouth full and we too will grow up and be able to give our hearts more fully to God. Life--existence!--is like that. We learn and progress sometimes imperceptibly but we are learning and progressing all the same. And that's why God can smile when we are praying with our mouths full: it's a temporary phase and He knows our potential and He knows we will grow out of it and He can enjoy the small successes we have. That's what makes Him our Father in Heaven, as opposed to some impersonal god, He knows us that intimately and loves us that deeply.
Maybe learning to bask in that love is as much a step on the path to perfection as learning to wait until after the prayer to eat.
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