Klonopin and Melodrama

I’m sitting here at 8:40pm listening to First Aid Kit’s latest EP. I took my anxiety medicine. I just finished a book on Christianity and a Christian devotional. Today, I went to the gym and I’ve been having balanced meals for the first time in months. Yet here I am. With a tears staining my pillow and snot dripping down my nose. When the anxiety is lifted for a brief moment, only depression lies beneath. I’m doing it all right, yet I still feel like I’m being tortured from the inside out. I feel like im suffocating. “What would make it better?” my sweet boyfriend asks. I have no idea. I’ve tried it all. Save for ECT and TMS. Tomorrow I go to my psychiatrist. Please pray to the god above that he doesn’t hospitalize me. I just want to try this new-fangled Transcranial Magnetic Stimulaiton. With bipolar patients, the only fear is that I would enter into a manic episode. Who knows what will happen. Do I chose to trust Christ? I don’t know.

......

Next day: I had the long-awaited, fated appointment and you know what I got out of it? More Klonopin. Yup. That’s it. I’m not questioning my psychiatrist; I trust him, and deeply respect him, and, although he’s from UVA, he’s even grown on me a little ;) Today, I walked in, sat down, and promptly told him I’d like to try TMS. “Sure…but it doesn’t work.” He went on to explain his reasoning which I won’t delve into here, but I was a bit disheartened. One hopeful option shut down completely. I refuse to partake in ECT so the only option left is more intense psychotherapy. Which is fine, I just thought it’d be cool to have a “real” treatment for an illness that is so very real.

As you can tell, I was very melodramatic and emotional last night. That’s not from the bipolar, that’s just my natural temperament. Always the drama queen. I trust God with this but man it’s hard.

Fittingly, the lyrics to the first song on the newest First Aid Kit EP called “I’ve Wanted You” fit my emotions into lyric quite well:

Life doesn't give you hoops to jump through
It gives you tireless roads to cross
This sadness came over me
So in love, so at a loss
…

I've been feelin' so in-between things
Sad and stuck and alone
Even when I'm as high as I can get
I can't forget I'm on my own

Keep thinkin' I can escape it
But there are no red shoes to tap
Just endless haulin' through a desert
And babe, there never was a map

But today is just a normal day. I cried a little over an old friend’s death, I read a little. Listened to some music. And now I’m waiting patiently for my new book to arrive via the Great Empire of Amazon.

There really isn’t a great, big point or lesson to this post. Just a glimpse into the life of a normal girl who happens to have bipolar.

I think I’ll go check the mailbox now…

Side note: My psychiatrist made a poorly executed attempt at encouraging me via relating my life to John Nash’s in A Beautiful Mind, to which I say three things: 1) great movie, but a little cliché, bud. 2) young Russell Crowe was hawt. 3) one of the best movie lines of all times = “I cannot waste time memorizing the weak assumptions of lesser mortals!” shouted from the rooftop of a prestigious Princeton building.

Side note to the side note: yesterday I looked at my outgoing calls and there were SEVEN to my mom alone… in one day. So, middle school girls with attitudes, love your mommas cause you’re gonna realize how much you need them one day.

Death, Be Not Proud

“Cancer.” The word rung through me like a mighty church bell. I instantly went into a state of shock when the doctors told me, one silent tear rolling down my cheek. I think my mom was trying to contain her silent sobs in the corner of the room.

We went to ABP in Macarthur and got something to eat. My parents were put off by my cheery disposition. I was young and naïve but I loved God and believed he could truly get me through this.

We were leaving the mall and while passing Hot Topic (lol) I saw none other than Whitney Walsh. She was the very first person I told about the diagnosis and all she did was give me a great, big hug. For future reference, that’s a great way to respond to someone who’s just told you they have cancer; save your hallmark words for Valentine’s Day. It was funny because later that night we were supposed to go to the 1975 concert at the Norva. “I totally understand if you don’t want to go,” she said. “No, I think it would be good for me,” I said.

Fast-forward 3 hours, we meet at a local coffee shop to chat before the concert. “There’s a man from my church [Big House, for you locals]. I don’t know him very well but we’re going to get him to prophesy over you. Now, these were my pre-Pentecostal days so I was unsure what that meant, but I went along for the ride. I can’t ever recall what the man looked like or what his name was, only that he was probably in his mid-twenties. He prayed a generic prayer over me as we solemnly bowed our heads then he looked up and said, “Anna, I don’t think this is the end for you; I think it’s just the beginning.” ‘Whatever you say,’ I thought.  I thanked him and we left for the concert.

Days later I discovered a beautiful song by Gungor called “This Is Not The End” which I played as my personal prophetic anthem as I drove the back roads of Chesapeake sobbing and holding my abdomen with the little alien living inside. Here are the lyrics:

This is not the end
This is not the end of this
We will open our eyes wide, wider

This is not our last
This is not our last breath
We will open our mouths wide, wider

And you know you’ll be alright
Oh and you know you’ll be alright

This is not the end
This is not the end of us
We will shine like the stars bright, brighter

Today I was taking out cash at a local gas station to pay for an eyebrow wax. I scrolled far back into my iTunes and found this song. I was delighted for it always brings me back to a time of victory. However, this time I was pissed off.

Why did my cancer story end in such triumphant victory when so many end in deepest tragedy?

I thought of all the people who I specifically knew that have passed away since 2013. It’s not fair. Why do I get to celebrate while others lament?

I have no idea why, but I’ve been meditating on Death lately. Not in a morbid way, just in a sort of passive way. I found an Audrey Assad EP whose titular track is “Death, Be Not Proud.” And I’ve been listening to it on repeat. Here are the lyrics.

Death, be not proud, though the whole world fear you:
Mighty and dreadful you may seem,
But death, be not proud, for your pride has failed you
You will not kill me.
Though you may dwell in plague and poison,
You're a slave to fate and desperate men,
So death, if your sleep be the gates to Heaven,
Why your confidence?
When you will be no more,
You will be no more,
When you will be no more.
Even death will die.
Even death will die.

Death, be not proud.
Death, be not proud.
Death, be not proud,
Cause even death will die.

The final straw was hearing that a sweet woman I knew in passing (who probably doesn’t even know my name) was in hospice care for devastating cancer.

Why, O LORD, why? Why must she suffer? Why will she die yet I live?

Maybe it’s survivor’s guilt, but I think it’s more than that. We just weren’t built for death. Yes, I know the science that everything tends towards atrophy, but I think that’s a massive defect caused by the symbolic Fall of man and the introduction of original sin.

Satan’s pride brought about Adam and Eve’s sinning and subsequently our sinning and the atrophying of the entire known universe.

But I demand life. And life to the full. I demand the opposite of death. I demand resurrection. And what I demand today while sitting in my cozy little bed was wrought for me, for us, 2000 years ago on a hill called Calvary.

“The last enemy to be destroyed is Death” (1 Corinthians 15:26 NIV).

God says Death is the enemy and it shall be destroyed. And I believe we take part in that now. John said in his first epistle that, “The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the Devil” (1 John 2:8 NASB). Well, I am a daughter of God just like Jesus; He’s my big brother and growing up I always copied my big brothers, so why stop now? And the biggest work of the devil is Death: physical death, death of dreams, death of faith, death of hope, death of a will to live, etc.. I’m not talking about raising the dead; I’m talking about combatting the effects of Death on our planet. Here are some preliminary suggestions off the top of my head that might help you do this:

1) Worship God

Like Jehoshaphat’s story exemplified, praise is literally a weapon. Facing a daunting battle, God told the Israelite soldiers to worship and let him do the fighting. And as they worshipped, he set ambushes that caused chaos for the enemy and victory for the Israelites. Here’s an excerpt from my blog from June 24^th, 2013, from when I had just graduated high school and just days before my risky and uncertain surgery/biopsy:

Last night, about 15 people gathered and worshipped in the presence of the Holy Spirit. I didn’t know what it would look like, but I felt the need to fill up my living room for Him. By six o’clock, everybody who was supposed to be there, was, praising the Lord in truth and joy. It could have been awkward because I’ve never held anything like that before but two of our awesome Young Life leaders, Jess and Scott, lead it as a time of song and prayer and just being with our sweet Savior. People read scripture and talked about what was on their hearts and as a community, we shared life. It was beautiful, it was revolutionary, it was like the days of old. And that’s why I’ve beaten it. Why we are conquering something bigger than a mass in my body. We are conquering death.

2) Labor to protect, rehabilitate, and conserve the environment

This is admittedly a week point in my faith, but I know it is a very important topic to the Lord. In Genesis, man was given the task of cultivating the earth. We’ve made a mess of things but we are called to hope for change and then work to fight for that change. Just type in ‘international wildlife preservation’ on google and a whole host of websites such as WWF will pop up. That should get you started.

3) Recognize the inherent dignity of every human being

“Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). That’s ALL of us; not just the saved. That’s the coworker who annoys you and the homeless person on the street. That’s the Afghan girl mutilated by the Taliban and the Taliban members who did it. Jesus said to let this world know Him by our (believers’) love. The first part of that is dignifying every human with respected personhood.

4) Pray

I don’t pray for healing that often but I do pray for the glory of God to overshadow Death. I pray for people to die well. I pray for salvation out of the ashes and sackcloth of dying.

5) Do not be afraid of Death

Oh, little Lamb, you are the beloved of God. When you pass, you will see him and become like him because you will see him face to face (cf. 1 John 3:2). If you are a believer, to die truly is gain.

6) Die well

Ever since our birth, the biological clock has been ticking for our inevitable deaths. We are all dying all the time. So choose your life carefully and choose to die well. If that means to pray, pray. If that means to give, give. And if that means to go, go. We in the West live a cushy lifestyle but we could be filling up what is lacking Christ’s afflictions. We can suffer for Christ in serving him and thus use our time wisely. I’m still praying about what this means for me, personally, and I pray that you would, too.

“’Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it’” (Matthew 16:24-25 NASB)

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

Deitrich Bonhoeffer

I know that this is a heavy blog post. But I truly feel like death is something the Church needs to talk about more openly instead of treating it like some great big monster we keep stuffed in the closet with the ancient relics. There is a real curse over our land, our world, but God has the ability to reverse it: “…but our God turned the curse into a blessing” (Nehemiah 13:2 HCSB). So won’t you come along, dearly beloved; take his hand and come along into the fullness of life.

The Loneliest Night, Or, Collateral Beauty

I walked into my main anesthetist’s office after signing my advance directive will. I was 18 and strong. Up until this point I had virtually excelled at all that I had put my hand to: sports, school, writing, instruments. I was untouchable. “We’re going to insert a catheter bolus into your spine to provide a nerve block for the section of your abdomen that will be affected…but I do have to tell you: it doesn’t always work…it’s a bit of a crapshoot whether we get it in the right way at the right angle.” He then made a joke and told me to enjoy my weekend before the operation. ‘No problem,’ I thought, ‘they’re professionals; they do this all the time; they’ll get it in right.’ Not even considering the trauma that a puncture to your spine with a very large needle is in itself (shout out to all the moms out there who do it while giving birth; y’all are the real MVPs).

Four days later, I slowly wake up with the intuitive knowledge that the surgery was a success and the massive tumor inside my pancreas was gone. I felt a sensation of fullness in my abdomen. I had a tube coming out of my nose that didn’t bother me. The two nurses or interns or whoever they were in scrubs that had been waiting for me to wake up made a joke that it’s contents looked like… excrement. And, up until a few months ago while watching E.R., I believed them and told many the avid listener that they siphoned poop through my nose! (For reference, it was a tube to drain the contents of my stomach). Then I noticed the pain. There was pain. I tugged on whoever was around to ask for something to alleviate the pain.

My next memory was getting wheeled past a waiting room in which my darling younger sister, 13 at the time, timid as a mouse, was red-faced, quietly sobbing. If I wasn’t in so much debilitating pain and attached to so many tubes, I would have run up to her to hold her and tell her it was all alright. We’re like Katniss and Prim, us. Then, darkness.

It was sometime early in the morning when I woke up, the twilight streaming through one window and the dim hall lights streaming through the other. This passionate, fiery Italian woman from New Jersey came in as if she was waiting for me to regain consciousness. I forgot her name due to all the drugs, but I’ve always thought of her as Theresa, promising to name of my five daughters after her. She checked my vitals and bumped the hospital bed. I groaned and began crying, I believe, and said to NEVER do that again. My whole abdomen tensed up and caused the most excruciating pain I’d ever experienced up until that point. She said it shouldn’t have hurt that badly so she called my pain team who happened to be in surgery. We waited. Theresa had the years of knowledge to know that I didn’t want her to talk to me but that I did want her in the room.

Finally the pain team came and ran a ridiculously simple test to see if the catheter bolus had worked. They put a piece of ice on my side and asked if I could feel anything. “Yes,” I managed to get out. With urgency, one looked at the other and said, “She shouldn’t be able to feel that.” The rolled me over to both sides (for whatever dumb reason) to check the injection site and I think decided to just take it out. I would get my pain meds solely from my IV’s, whatever that meant for me and my pain. They left.

One, two, three, four, five. Five breathes per minute. That’s all I could manage due to the pain. Theresa came in and calmly but urgently said, “Anna, you’re down to five breathes a minute; I need you to breathe.” I thought that meant I was dying (thanks E.R. and Grey’s for teaching me about the wonders of intubation since) and I was more than okay with that if it meant the pain would stop. Theresa didn’t leave my side for a while after that and asked if she could play some music for me on her phone. The Lord giveth songs (Pandora) in the night (Job 35:10). I remember thinking that this vivacious, Italian woman was my guardian angel, fittingly since I’m obsessed with The Godfather. Darkness.

That night was the loneliest and most challenging and painful night of my life.

Throughout the rest of my hospital stay, I would allow NO ONE near my bed for fear that they would bump into it causing my abdomen to tense up and produce ungodly pain. I felt like a glass figurine in Laura Wingfield’s menagerie¹. And since that night five years ago, I haven’t stopped.

About a year after that fateful night, I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder (and ADHD).  I have been in and out of Virginia Tech for five years (managing straight A’s for all the classes I could manage to finish with my mental health intact). I had two short stints at Regent and TCC to see if being closer to home would help. It didn’t. I’ve held part time jobs that I’ve had to fairly quickly quit due to mania, depression, psychosis or a combination of the three. I have tried living with friends and living on my own. I spent a glorious (read horrifying) week in a psych ward but it’s all come to nothing as I have ended up living with my dad for the better part of these past five years.

I feel like an invalid trapped in my own body and mind. Having never before struggled with chronic anxiety, I am now struggling to leave the house. I study formal Arabic 2-4 hours a day and usually do so at a desk in my room. Now, I’m too nervous to leave my bed for more than a trip to the bathroom or to get a water bottle, so I’ve moved all my books to my bed.

I fear that my soul is slowly dying… that I am turning into Laura Wingfield herself. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. I wanted to be a missionary in Palestine for crying out loud. ‘Hello, God, not many foreign Christians want to be sent there and I am BEGGING you to, what’s up with all this death and illness?’ I’m reading a book about a man who suffered a stroke that resulted in locked-in syndrome, a process in which you can make only the slightest of movements, if you are lucky. This man communicated (and wrote the entire book²) by blinking his left eyelid. In one chapter, his wife calls on the phone, “’Are you there, Jean-Do?’ she asks anxiously over the air. And I have to admit that at times I do not know anymore” (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 1997).

As a recovering Pentecostal, I say this with severe restraint and hesitancy. But through it all, I’ve heard a still, small voice in my heart saying, “You will be okay. It’s gonna be okay.” That’s it. That’s my marvelous message from the Magnificent above.

But as I look around, I am reminded of a movie called Collateral Beauty. Here’s one of my favorite scenes as Love personified talks to roaming, embittered man who lost his young daughter to brain cancer. Here’s an excerpt from Her speech:

“No…I’m in all of it. I’m the darkness and the light. I’m the sunshine and the storm. Yes, you’re right, I was there is her laugh, but I’m also here now in your pain. I’m the reason for everything. I am the only Why? Don’t try and live without me, Howard” (Collateral Beauty 2016).

As I feel like my body hasn’t stopped breaking since the surgeon’s initial incision so many years ago, I muse at this idea of collateral beauty and love being the reason that makes all the pain, the suffering, the breaking, worth it.

I have been to the brink of death and back numerous times (via surgery and suicidal ideation) and I can confirm, or at least posit, that Love is the only reason it’s all worth it. “We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 John 4:16 NASB).

*One last thought, if you too feel like you are breaking, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, remember the words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:7-18. My memory verse right now is 1 John 2:8b: “…because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining” (NASB). After I recite, my spirit sometimes wells up within me and exclaims, “Oh, God, your Light is inside me; break me if you must that I may see your Light!”

**To those of you who feel as though you are breaking, read the passage I mentioned about and here me say, “It’s going to be okay.” To you who aren’t in a season of breaking, be the collateral beauty in the life of someone whose is. I mentioned a few ways to help people in pain in a recent post.

¹ The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

² The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby (read this with a box of tissues on hand

Spikenard and Tears

It's 5 in the morning and I’m sitting here with spikenard slowly rolling down my forehead. I remember when I was young the first time that I saw snow falling from the sky. It was in Atlanta at my grandma and grandpa’s house. It was just a touch past my bedtime and I was probably wearing my Esmeralda pj’s I so often donned in those days (if you haven’t seen the Disney movie The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, I highly recommend. Esmeralda was always my favorite Disney princess even though she was a gypsy). This memory is a new-every-morning mercy of God to me. Let me explain

After months of nightmares and sleep paralysis almost every single night, I am weary. After a night of fitful sleep, I awoke from what I can utterly verify as the worst nightmare and sleep paralysis that I’ve ever had. I don’t know if it’s a side-effect of all the medication I take or the illness of bipolarity itself, but every few months I will have a month or two with seemingly unremitting nightmares and sleep paralysis. As the end of the time of nightmares draws near my soul is always at a very low point.

As a recovering Pentecostal, I was on defcon 5 this morning: play the live Kim Walker-Smith, pray in tongues, get out the anointing oil. I always keep some essential and anointing oils by my bed. I sobbed as I worshiped god and walked to my bedside table. Spikenard. I love the smell because it takes me right back to my grandparents’ (aforementioned) beige Impala that smelled like cigarettes and perfume. It smelled like my grandmother and if you’ve ever met her you’d know why my memories are so fond. Well, that’s what spikenard smells like to me. I poured too much (as always) and rubbed it on my forehead and cheeks. I then sat down in my arm chair to worship some more. (Worship is our weapon in times of distress-simply proclaiming the worthiness and holiness of Jesus. I’ll preach that till the day I die.) I worshiped through my violent wailing. It wasn’t just about the dream and sleep paralysis, it was the culmination of months of them tormenting me. I couldn’t bear it any longer.

Then, I decided to do some research on spikenard. It comes from the Himalayas of Nepal, China, and India making it a very costly commodity in ancient Israel. It was used as perfume, incense, and herbal medicine and was considered luxurious in the ancient Near East and Rome. On a happy side-note, I found out that the flowers that produce spikenard are pink and bell-shaped; pink is my favorite color J It was offered on the altar of incense in the Tabernacle and the first and second temples. Dante mentions it in his classic Inferno: “He tastes, but tears of frankincense alone/And odorous amomum: swaths of nard and myrrh his funeral shroud.” As referenced in the gospels, one pound of spikenard was worth about 300 denarii with one denarius being the wage of one day’s work. One way to carry this unguent was in a sealed alabaster container. “Ancients considered alabaster to be the best materiel in which to store their ointments (BLB).” To get the oil, you had to break the seal, and, once broken, it could not be sealed again.

Enter a woman named Mary, she is described as a sinner and an immoral person. Some commentators postulate that she was a harlot, although that cannot be confirmed scripturally (but I do think it’s true). Jesus was reclining at the table in the house of a Pharisee named Simon (he truly did not discriminate). Verse 37 of Luke 7 reads, “…and when she [Mary] learned that he was reclining at the table in the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster vial of perfume.” This act alone was bold due to the classist nature of the contextual society. Verse 38 says, “and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and kept wiping them with the hair of her head, and kissing his feet and anointing them with the perfume.” What messy, unashamed worship. Normally, for dignities sake, a woman of this time and place would keep her hair up and bound. But our weeping Mary throws etiquette to the wind. One commentator even wrote that unbound hair was a sign of mourning; perhaps another unknowing prescient symbol of what was to come in a matter of days. The rest of Luke chapter 7 goes on to denote a little lesson that Jesus teaches his pharisaical host. He/she that is forgiven much, loves much.

When I am most angry at God for the trials in my life (most recently Bipolar I disorder and a struggle with alcohol use to numb my crippling anxiety) I want to worship him like this Mary of history: messy, unabashed, emotionally, physically, bravely. And this morning I got the opportunity to put my money where my mouth is. It wasn’t pretty-it took everything in me to sing, with a quivering voice between sobs, “Your name is glorious/we lift you up higher, higher/come see what God has done/and lift him up higher, higher¹”-but it was real and will be memorialized in my little Eternity Scrapbook forever.

Before I go on, I want to mention another weeping Mary. This time Mary Magdalene in the garden in which Jesus’ tomb rested. She had brought spices to ceremonially embalm the deceased Christ. Among those spices would likely have been our topical oil: spikenard. However, upon arriving at the tomb, she couldn’t find the body to embalm and was quite distraught. Weeping or wept in relation to her is mentioned four times in four verses. Mary’s worship was different. Both the spikenard Mary and Mary Magdalene’s weeping is described by the same Greek word klaio which denotes mourning, wailing sobbing, demonstrative emotion. We don’t know exactly why spikenard Mary was weeping, but a good guess would be the overwhelming feeling of being shown compassion and given forgiveness when you don’t deserve it. Mary Magdalene was weeping because 1) her savior/leader/compassionate friend was dead 2) because his body was missing and she couldn’t honor him with an important ceremonial rite. However, what was the same about both their weeping was that it was costly. The first Mary we discussed wasted 300 denarii of spikenard on Jesus to publicly worship him and unknowingly and prophetically pre-embalm him before his death. The second Mary’s devotion was costly in a deep psychical sense, taking the spikenard and other spices to do a job that she would probably rather not do in the midst of her severe grief.

A day has passed since I wrote this post but as I kneeled on the floor of my bedroom and worshipped Jesus through my tears with spikenard rolling down my face, I felt a deep connection with these two weeping Mary’s. Costly worship is treading in deep waters and I want to go deeper still.

To end this post, I’d like to point out something that has always captivated me. Supposing the risen Jesus to be the gardener in the garden, Mary asked Jesus if he knew where Jesus was. And then he said it; he said her name. “’Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Jewish-Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means teacher) (John 20:16 NASB).” Mary’s visceral mourning instantly ceased the moment her Friend said her name and I'm willing to bet she threw down her costly spikenard and other spices when she heard. I pray today that wherever you are at, whether you are mourning or joyful or somewhere in the mundane in-between, that you hear the Lord Jesus say your name and are arrested. And maybe use a little spikenard to remind yourself that true worship, the best kind of worship is extravagant.

Of Love and Grief

We all love love: storge, philia, eros, agape. It’s easy. It’s as if we were made to love. So the average person-save for the occasional misanthropic Ebenezer Scrooge and those too profoundly traumatized to love-find loving-in all its forms-as easy as breathing.

But what about the twin of love: grief. Well, we face it when we have to but we sure as HELL do not want to. I’m not suggesting we become masochists and become obsessed with this most profound of sufferings. I am just suggesting we take a look at its geminate bond with the nature of love.

Love and grief are intertwined, two sides of the same coin. I have yet to find another analogy that is suitable for their relationship, so these will have to do.

You can only love fully if you have fully opened yourself up to grief. Because no matter what happens during our earthly tenure, someone we love is going to pass away leaving us with all the love and all the grief, being somehow expected to go on.

I’d like to suggest that love AND grief are the two most profound emotions we can experience. They are the states in which we feel most fully alive because they are our closest touch of divinity. They are the deepest realities in which we can find ourselves on planet earth.

God is love. So that’s an easy one to reckon as a godlike because it literally is godlike to love with charity and self-sacrifice. We are literally being like God (whether we believe in a god or not-and, for reference, I am speaking of the Christian God by virtue of the fact that I am a Christian).

Now, on to grief. It’s quite scary to write about this topic. I don’t really know why. Grief is essential to human existence during our time on earth. In heaven, there will be no more tears, Rev. 21:4, (not to say no more grief necessarily) but grief would definitely look different in heaven. Here’s the etymology of grief: 1175-1225; Middle English greven, grieven < Old French grever < Latin gravare “to burden”, derivative of gravis  heavy, grave.

Most of us are convinced that we couldn’t bear to live without some type of love (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, people), but I’m convinced that during our time on earth, we must have grief, too. We must feel the immense loss of life to sin and the malevolence of death, because we wouldn’t know the value of love and even life without it. I am also convinced that we cannot know true love without the potential for loss of it, whether by severance or death. We wouldn’t value our loved ones were it not for the potential and reality that we will lose them (if only temporarily, for those who believe in heaven). You can ask my friends, I always say that, “to live is to suffer.” Well, I also think that to live is to grieve. Grieving is an experience that we only get earthside so we must pay attention. To grieve (at some point) is to be fully alive.

Henri Nouwen in his book Making All Things New: An Invitation to a Spiritual Life, writes:

“Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as clear-cut pure joy, but even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness… Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is a loneliness… And in all forms of light, there is knowledge of surrounding darkness… But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.”

Not only does grief apply to the death of a human, it applies to the death of hopes, dreams, and humanity/human dignity all over the world. We need to “feel the night” as Strahan writes in a song. We need to groan with the rest of creation at the state of the lonely, heartbroken, beaten, abused, etc., inhabitants of this planet. It is essential for us to grieve for us to then feel hope. As a good friend once said after I was crying because a brief encounter with a man hurt my feelings, “We’re going to listen to ‘Praying’ [by Kesha], you’re going to cry and then we’re going to move on.” And on a grander scale that moving on means acting to effect change, to bring heaven down to earth.

My favorite poem of all time is by a Syrian man named Nizar Qabbani. It’s called Madrasat Al’Hubb, or School of Love. Here are my favorite lines from it: “Your love taught me how to grieve, and for centuries I needed a woman to make me grieve, I needed a woman to make me cry on her shoulders like a bird, I needed a woman to collect my pieces like broken glass…I have never known that the human tear is humane, and that the human without tears is just a memory!”

Grieving makes us human. And it then gives us the capacity to hope and the agency to effect change in love.

Love is not possible without grief and grief is not possible without love.

On Healing

So these are just some thoughts on healing, or what it means to be in the midst of healing; mentally, physically, or spiritually. I am NOT a medical professional. And if you are in physical pain, I would implore you to see a physician. If you are in psychological pain, I would implore you to seek professional care (www.nami.org/ is a great place to start).

My stomach scar is aching this morning. Not bad, just a dull pain. And I’ve been nauseas and not eating. It’s making me think about my path to healing: physically from cancer/the Whipple, and psychologically from the bipolar and psychosis. Here are some thoughts, in no particular order:

a) It’s okay to throw a fit in Christ: I remember in the ICU when I had to do the breathing technique to make sure I didn’t get pneumonia. My abdominal nerves had been severed so huffing out a big breath hurt like the dickens. I remember having a major attitude with God, then feeling so much guilt for being a “bad Christian” and not taking my suffering with a hallmark smile. But in recent years I’ve realized that we HAVE to be able to be us in Christ-fits and all-or it’s not a real relationship. That doesn’t mean I disrespect him, but I can throw a fit when I don’t understand and the tears are streaming down my face and I don’t want to be in pain anymore. I doubt Christ threw fits during his earthly tenure, but he did plead for his cup of suffering to pass. “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting for God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered” Hebrews 2:10.

b) It’s okay to utterly depend on people; they are God’s grace to you. I remember in the ICU I hadn’t been bathed in days since the wound and tubes in my stomach covered a majority of the surface area of abdomen. A nurse brought in a bucket of soapy water and a washcloth and I thought, “oh HELL no.” I am too young for a sponge bath. But, lo and behold, my mom carefully cleaned around my wounds and made me feel 100x better to have been clean. I couldn’t do it myself; I needed her. God’s grace to me. I remember having nightmares and sleep paralysis and anxiety so bad recently that I needed my dad to sit next to my bed at 4am and talk to me until I fell asleep. He had work the next morning, No complaints. God’s grace to me. In both instances, shame had to fly out the window, because I needed to be carried; I couldn’t go on on my own. “Carry each other’s burdens, and in doing you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

c) It’s okay to not be fine. When we’ve experienced trauma (which we all have to an extent), we can’t pretend we’re okay when were not because then we won’t get the proper care and resources we need. And eventually we become numb to being in chronic pain as Diane Langberg writes, “It is very common for trauma victims to say, ‘I am fine’ when in fact they do not even know what ‘fine’ feels like.” Let a trusted someone know that you are not okay. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). There is hope that one day you will be “fine” whatever that means. There is hope. And maybe one day again you won’t be “fine.” There is still hope.

d) It’s okay to do nothing. I couldn’t move for days after surgery, I had to be rolled over for them to check the catheter in my back which caused excruciating pain. As I lay in my hospital bed, my only job was to endure until my body slowly healed itself. In later years, I remember spending days barely leaving my room because my depression and psychosis (hearing voices) got so bad that I couldn’t function in the outside world. So I lied down and waited for my mind to be healed. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God’ (Ephesians 2:8). Anna’s paraphrase: “For by grace your mind will be healed and whole in Christ through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Healing is a gift of God.

e) It’s okay to celebrate little victories! In fact, it’s what is going to get you though the valley. I have been in and out of school, jobs, and volunteer work since the cancer and the bipolar diagnosis. For a driven, independent woman, this is embarrassing and hard to bear to say the least. I love Arabic (well, all languages really) but I am actively learning Arabic. It makes my heart sing. But sometimes I get discouraged because the one thing I can do within the safe confines of my room also happens to be an attempt at acquiring one of the most difficult languages in the world. But this week I memorized most of Psalm 23 in Arabic and recited it for my tutor’s(friend’s) Lebanese family and his mom started crying. It was a special moment that I will never forget. And it was just what I needed to celebrate my progress and keep moving forward towards my goal of being a translator even with bipolar/psychosis. “Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life” (Psalm 23:6).

f) It’s okay to be mad at God, and it’s okay to question him. It’s healthy. It’s why he made us beings with free will instead of deterministic automatons. I promise the rub with God will take you deeper into reality than you ever thought possible. You have permission to wrestle with God. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter” (Proverbs 25:2). (And FYI 1 Peter 2:9 says your are a kingdom of priests).

g) It’s okay to let yourself feel the pain-to completely break down and cry and be overwhelmed by incredible sorrow and agony. I had an incision across most of my abdomen which made even breathing deeply almost too much bear. I also had three tubes (one feeding, two drainage) coming out of my stomach. One day I had some friends over when I suddenly felt a pit in my stomach. I knew that my nightmare was coming true. When you have no ab muscles/severed nerves, the last thing you want to do is throw up. I ran to the downstairs bathroom where everyone could hear me screaming in pain and blood came out of my tube holes. It was horrific and second only on the pain scale to the night right after my surgery. It got so uncomfortable and violent that my friends had to leave. But I remember in a moment I paused and thought about God. I let myself fully feel the pain with god. I will not lie and say he took away the pain; he didn’t. But I knew he was there. Later on, I remember when I was undiagnosed and unmedicated for bipolar/psychosis, I was having the most severe depressive episode of my life. It was Fourth of July in 2014 and all my friends were out celebrating, but I sat on the couch at the Portico (younglife community house) and stared straight forward for hours until my father called, awakening from my reverie. He drove straight over and I assured him I wasn’t suicidal. I finally thought that sleep would grant me a reprieve but I lay there for hours in the same state. I allowed myself to feel the agony of nothingness and though I would wish it on no one, I’m glad I did because I now know that when someone is depressed, you’re just supposed to sit next to them. That’s all you do. Don’t talk. Just sit. Then help them find a psychiatrist, some medication, and a therapist, if possible. Strahan has a song called “Feel the Night” with lyrics that read, “So I will feel the night/For the coming of the Lord/I’ll await the light/That I have seen before.” Feel the night, because others are feeling it, too. You might be the only one who knows what they’re suffering. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by god. For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also is our comfort is abundant through Christ’ (2 Corinthians 1:3-5).

h) It’s okay to belly laugh. I can genuinely say that I never belly-laughed until I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 18. I don’t know; it wasn’t that I was unhappy; I had a very happy upbringing (thanks to awesome parents and family). I just had never really experienced profound joy. Like life-or-death joy. That joy is different. Now, I could be in the middle of a depressive episode and hear someone say balls (yes, I am immature) and I will laugh like I’ve never heard a joke before. Recently a little 10 mos, old blew her nose into a tissue at thanksgiving and then proceeded to offer the tissue to every adult in the room requiring them to do the same (and you better believe we sure as heck did to hear her satisfied, little giggle). I lost it at how profoundly simple and happy the moment was. Now laughter pours out of my life like a vivacious fountain of delight. A few years earlier while at church, I asked God what “joy” is. I immediately remembered a scene from one of my long nights in the hospital. My stomach was in so much pain at around 2am but I had maxed out on my allotted pain meds. I tried to charm my nurse into giving me some more. He said no, but a sly smile crept on his face. He came back a few minutes late with a warm towel to lie across my stomach. It was perfect and I smiled. Joy is the smile on a hospital bed. When Nehemiah had returned to rebuild the wall, he had the Levitical priest read the Law to the congregated people. Upon hearing what they had missed out on for so many years, they wept and lamented. “Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Proverbs 31 speaks about a godly person smiling at the future (qtd. Proverbs 31:25). I never understood that until I actually suffered something. I have not suffered much in this life, but I can now bravely laugh at the times to come without fear of pain or sorrow.

If you read this far (or know me at all), you can tell that a huge part of my in-process healing journey has to do with God. I love him. That has taken many tears and nights face down on the floor to concede. But he really is the love of my life, my best friend and advocate, and my Savior. I’m no expert on God or suffering, but these are just a few thoughts from someone on the journey with you. Much love, y’all. Anna Jo

How To Help A Person In Pain, Or, Spray Paint and Sparkly Lights

“Let this world know Me by your love”

Zion & Babylon, Josh Garrels

I really don’t mean for this to be a cheesy, cliché Christian blog post. I just want to share something practical that I’ve learned (from recent experience).

Typically, when someone’s loved one passes away, or there’s a tragedy, we say (often with good intention), “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you.” We mean it. But here’s the thing: that well-meant phrase does little for people in mourning or excruciating pain. It’s nice to hear, but it doesn’t get them through the night (or day, for that matter).

For about a month I’ve been having deeply disturbing nightmares and sleep paralysis every night. I guess it’s just a side-effect of bipolar/psychosis? Anyways, it’s not been very fun. And this last week I’ve been in a depressive episode (no energy/will to do anything especially if it involves leaving my room). I’ve also been projectile vomiting fairly regularly, we think as a result of my whipple surgery in 2013. As those of us who have suffered anything(which is all of us), you know that when life kicks you in the shins, it doesn’t wait around or give you a sec to shake it off. Nope, the demands of life march forward seemingly interminably. My friends ask me with the sweetest hearts what they can do for me when my mental or physical health wavers. I never know what to say, or I don’t actually want to burden them. So I say, “Thank you so much; could you just pray for me?” Thoughts and prayers are nice, and I do believe prayers even work! But sometimes what the suffering heart needs is much more practical.

Due to some medication had to take a while ago, I recently gained a significant amount of wait. Having already loathed shopping, I dreaded seeing how many sizes I was going to have to go up in jeans for the winter. But my dear friend Hope said she’d come with me which made it less loathsome and even fun! She ran back and forth getting me the different sizes I needed and then suggested that we go to the doctor for the checkup I’d been meaning to get but never had the energy for. That girl spent her whole night off with me under the harsh fluorescent lights of Patient First! And when the doctor suggested I start on a probiotic, Hope decided we should just go right then to get it because, she said, “you won’t ever do it otherwise” lol true. I ended up buying beer instead but it’s the thought that counts ;).

I realized one of the things people who are in pain need is just help kick-starting their lives again. They need a little nudge and guidance as they trek the road to being a functional human again. No, I don’t mean co-dependency, just some exhortation to start and keep going. A little help goes a long way.

Another thing people in pain need is for you to stop asking what you can do for them and for you to just do something, anything for them. For example, I asked my friend Meagan to come over to my room and pray with me for the nighttime madness to end. She said, “Yes, for sure. I also have another idea… I’ll tell you later. But also you have to go along with it J” I had no idea what her other idea was, but she showed up that night with some spray paint and sparkly lights. She made me a chalk-board with the spray paint to write a sweet message on for me. Then she told me to go downstairs. Twenty minutes later, I get a text saying to come back up and to not be alarmed lol. She was in the process of cleaning my whole room! And, let me tell you, it takes the heart of a Warrior-Poet¹ to brave my room when I’ve been left to my own devices (in other words, it normally looks as if a tornado of clothes and books has recently swept through it). And the best part was, she had hung up sparkly lights! As we finished sorting through all the clothes, she played worship music on her phone and I could feel months of pain being lifted from my heart. Simply by being served without needing to (or being able to) give anything in return. The whole time we cleaned (well, tbh, I mostly just watched), I kept hearing one of my favorite Josh Garrels lyrics. He, speaking from the perspective of God, sings, “Let this world know Me by your love.” Simple, profound. The scripture it alludes to is John 13:35 in which Christ states, “’By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (NASB). I think we’re not wrong if we take if further, as Garrels did with his lyrics, and posit that our loving one another will prove the very existence of God himself.

1) help with the practical parts of day-to-day life. 2) help without being asked or asking what to do. There are loads of ways to do this, logistically; love looks different for everyone. But be brave and love. You could be the only proof of the existence of a good God in someone’s dark night of the soul. Be brave and love, y’all.

1. "In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen and they won their freedom. Forever!" William Wallace, Braveheart