The People I Love

I spent a couple of years in a serious depression.  I was in it long enough that I didn't really know the difference anymore.  I've tended towards depression for most of my adult life, but for most of that time I managed it, or at least thought I was managing it.  I'm what you call a high functioning depressive.  Even when it got really bad, I got work done.  I met my obligations.  I got out of bed every day.  I knew there was hope.  I just couldn't feel it.  I didn't feel much at all.

My ability to function probably kept me, for many months, from getting the help I needed.  Once I did, things started to change pretty dramatically.  Emotions came back that I'd not truly felt for years.  Bad news became easier to take.  I found myself able to forgive some people and situations I'd been trying to forgive for years.

I found hope.  I rediscovered the people I love.

I shared all this with my congregation.  It felt risky.  I felt exposed.  It's not that I thought anyone would look down on me.  This congregation is generally loving and accepting.  I was more concerned about how this information would be interpreted by my critics. 

When things go well in the church, ministers are often credited with that, even if they don't deserve it.  And when things go badly, ministers often absorb most of the blame.  For some people, the idea had already gained some traction that any problems we were having must have originated with me.  I feared that some would take my admission of a personal problem as cause to dismiss every reform I'd ever tried to initiate.  It would all be written off as a manifestation of my depression.

To be fair, the vast majority of people in our fellowship did not respond that way at all.  There were a couple of people who had that "Now everything will be perfect" notion, as if the only thing that has ever stood in the way of our fulfilling God's will was me - a convenient if unrealistic conceptualization.  But most people responded as I hoped they would.  As friends.  Friends who have often misunderstood me, but friends nonetheless.

It's been a number of months now, and what is changed is only as interesting as what has not changed.  I feel love for people - people I knew, intellectually, that I loved, but couldn't feel it.  I have more joy in my life, but I also get hurt more.  I don't feel angry all the time, but in place of the anger there is sometimes pain.  Problems and conflicts do not go away.  I just look at them differently.

The failures of the modern church did not vaporize.  They are still there.  The prophet Jeremiah was probably a depressive.  That didn't make him wrong about failures of his generation.  It made people regard him as a serious pain in the ass, but it didn't make him wrong.

I find myself here, working alongside, and sometimes against, people I love, trying to fix what is broken, as best as I know how.  With few exceptions, the Christians I've known are well meaning, loving, and moral people.  But there has been a system failure.  The church today is not formed or functioning in the way it was intended.  We can do better, only by aspiring to Scripture and the ways of Christ, and not by adopting the methodology of another human church or by holding dogmatically to our previous experiences. 

Like all families, we have our problems.  Some among us regard me as one of the family therapists.  Some regard me as one of the identified patients.  In either case, the truth will set us free.