originally posted January 5, 2016

Most of the medical community, and those of us who are trained in even the basics, know that the Hippocratic Oath begins with the phrase,

“First, do no harm.”

It’s the stepping stone of medicine, both ancient and modern. Our opening line is the simple instruction to do good, not evil.

I recently sat with a friend of mine who is far from God. She believes He probably exists, but openly states that He has no place in her life. During our conversation she said to me, “You cannot measure the good that religion has done. You can easily measure the harm: the wars, the gossip, the hypocrisy. But you cannot quantify the good.”

Certainly, I could argue this point. In that moment, with that friend, I did not. I simply let settle the clear perception from this modern woman that knowing God brings more harm than anything else.

This is our world. We speak to a generation of men and women who have been burned by church, embittered by politics, antagonized by moralism, disgusted with corruption. They’ve seen scandals and disappointments, watched prayer used as a bribe and Bible verses used as trinkets. Cheap grace has cheapened their experience of Christ and caused harm.

What then is our response?

Mine is very simple.

Live with faithfulness. Seek greater grace. Apologize for the wrongs you did not choose. Allow the incarnational Christ, who lived the life we could not live and died the death we could not die, to speak for Himself. Pursue the Gospel. Preach it to myself before I preach it to others. Love.

Even by accident, we harm others. Even with the best intentions, we experience and cause suffering. I was recently arrested by the clarity of this quote:

“What if in this new year we focused more on Jesus’ wounds and less on our own? They’re both real but only His can heal.”

-Luke MacDonald

The answer is and always will be Jesus.

Don’t look at the things done in His name. Look to Jesus. Don’t look at the ways our wounded world causes new wounds. Seek the ways He invites us to true healing. Don’t dwell on the discouragement and disappointment. Instead, “dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.” (Psalm 37:3)

The only generation we live with is our own. Our decisions can shape far beyond the one in which we live. May we be a generation who leaves behind a legacy of radical, faithful love for Jesus. Loving Him…does no harm.

This is part 3 of a 3 part series. You can find part 1 and part 2 here: Part 1 Part 2

(Originally published on March 7, 2016)

Practicing Priesthood

In the previous posts in this series, we looked at the need to set the culture in regards to depression, as well as provide training for the church. Now we come to the third aspect to consider, namely, we are a royal priesthood and are called to act as priests toward one another (1 Pet. 2:9). These are the trenches of one-anothering. Our maturing and training is lived out within a culture for the purpose of aiding one another in growth. A person struggling with depression feels isolated and alone. They scream out into the darkness, “Why?!” not, “How?!” He or she is not looking for steps but for meaning. We can easily err in this priestly role and try to be engineers—dealing symptomatically to restore normalcy. In walking with someone who suffers with depression, the priest seeks to help with the deeper struggle.

Recently Jennifer (not her real name), who battles depression, told me that, “It feels like I can’t live, but I can’t die either. My heart is continually ripped out over and over again.” Such words echo Bunyan’s Giant Despair in The Pilgrim’s Progress, “Why should you choose life, seeing it is accompanied by so much bitterness?” The Proverbs tell us that, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Pro. 13:12). Such hearts need voices of hope, to speak into their pain. In endeavoring to impart hope, we must ensure that the hope we impart is Gospel hope.

We can easily impart false or trite hopes in an effort to lighten spirits. Gospel hope, however, is the sustaining wind that carries us through the storm to our desired haven (Psalm 107:30).

Below are four different ways we can seek to unveil this hope:

Befriending

Just this week, I spoke with Edward (not his real name) whose neighbour committed suicide. Edward, oblivious to his neighbour’s depression, assumed his neighbour was simply avoiding relationship. While he may have been avoiding relationship, it was expressive of his isolation. But the greater our suffering, the greater will be our sense of feeling alone. Hope says, “You are not alone.” “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity” (Pro 17:17). Befriending one who suffers, brings Christ near to them through his Body. God said he would never leave us nor forsake us (Deut 31:6). He declares us His friends (John 15:15). We can model the hope of God’s presence in befriending those struggling with depression.

Remembering

Second, when we remember people, it tells them that, even though we are out of sight, they are still in mind. In Ed Welch’s book, Side by Side, he says, “If we are affected by someone’s suffering, we will remember it, which is one of the great gifts that we give to each other” (pg. 103). The Apostle Paul certainly communicated this in his prayers for the church, “I always remember you in my prayers” (I Tim 1:3, see also Eph 1:16; Phil 1:4). Remembering communicates,“You matter.” It is certainly true that we are created for a purpose, and we are meant to be shaped by one another (Pro 27:17). Remembering brings solidarity, and there is beauty in solidarity, “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them… since you also are in the body” (Heb 13:3).

Sufferers of depression often feel that they are incapable of expressing their anguish. Our remembering their anguish says that at some level, “I feel your pain.” Knowing another feels their pain helps unbolt the doors of solitude. This too is a reminder that we have a high priest who can, “Sympathize with our weaknesses” (Heb 4:15). The fact that weaknesses is plural means we cannot exclude a category of weakness (such as depression), from Christ’s sympathies.

Grace Hunting

Third, as we enter into their pain, we obtain a new vantage point. Our first response tends to be going on an idol hunt. We want to find the sin or the idol that is at the heart. Whilst there is a place for this, the depressed person is likely heavily engaged in morbid introspection and thus would be greatly helped seeing signs of God’s grace at work in them. Saying something like, “You are so courageous. God has given you grace this week to get out of bed and get the kids to school.” We want to commend manifested grace where we see it. For those who feel hopeless and alone, this is a reminder that God is near and working even in the mundane.

Jesus’ Suffering

Fourth, the suffering of Jesus is both our example and help. We may want to speak of the glories of heaven obtained by Jesus’ suffering. But there is also consolation in Christ’s suffering itself. Spurgeon, who suffered from depression, said, “It is an unspeakable consolation that our Lord Jesus knows this experience.” Zack Eswine, in his book Spurgeon’s Sorrows writes, “To feel in our being that the God to whom we cry has Himself suffered as we do enables us to feel that we are not alone and that God is not cruel.” Here we can begin to see our burden as belonging to him.

When Amy Carmichael struggled with an unbearable burden in India, she considered Christ and his burden bearing in the Garden, “Under one of those trees our Lord Jesus knelt, and He knelt alone. And I knew that this was His burden not mine. It was He who was asking me to share it with Him, not I who was asking Him to share it with me.” She found great comfort knowing that she was partaking in the sufferings of Christ. Jesus not only knows our pain, he endured it, and we kneel beside him in it.

Continuing Work

God is a redeeming God, who continually works his redemption into us. As we walk with depression sufferers, God is not only continuing to work in them, he is continuing to work in us. We mutually grow, building one another up in our most holy faith, as we await the day when all sin, sickness, and death gives way to the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom 8:21).

The phone rang at 2am again. I knew who it was before answering. In recent weeks, Anita (not her real name) often called in the middle of the night.

She claimed to feel the fires of hell all over her body with no desire to live.

My wife or I would drive to her home and sit down and pray with her. We would speak to Anita and rally the church to pray for her. After a couple suicide attempts through overdoses, she was hospitalized for several months. We rallied around Anita as best we could. We would encourage her and read her Scripture, but it felt like talking to a wall. It was a discouraging time, but also a time when my wife and I felt utterly helpless. We were frustrated with Anita for not listening, and yet, grieved for her inability to listen. We felt defeated as if we had let Anita down.

Anita is not a unique case.

Although her depression was severe, 1 in 5 people in the UK will suffer depression. This highlights the importance of the role of the local church in helping sufferers of depression. But how do we help? Should we feel as helpless as my wife and I felt with Anita several years ago? There are many ways the church can approach depression.

In this three-part series, I would like to briefly look at three things we can do as the church by: Promoting Culture, Providing Training, and Practicing Priesthood.

Promoting Culture

A culture is the way in which groups of people live and think.

Everyone brings their culture into the church, and as the church, we have developed an Evangelical culture that is more based on moral excellence and stoicism than on the realities of our humanity. On Sundays, it is not uncommon for a family to be falling to pieces, yelling at one another in the car, and then walking into the church building with smiles, hugs, and handshakes. Typical church culture relegates life’s hardships and sufferings to behind closed doors. The emperor’s new clothes are “I’m ok, you’re ok.”

Any sufferer in that context can scream on the inside, but fear being viewed as inferior for having a quivering upper lip. In many ways we have an anti-suffering (and anti-depression) theology within the church.

The purpose of suffering is often not considered, and so when suffering strikes (and it will), many find difficulty weathering the storm. Suffering seems an obscure stranger, and our legalistic bent suggests that intense suffering comes upon those who are not trusting God. David Murray is right when he says in his book Christians Get Depressed Too that, “There is still a stigma attached to mental illness and to depression in particular.” Sometimes that stigma is not just that a person does not seem to be coping well, but that he/she fails to trust God.

In promoting a biblical culture, the local church must promote a culture of progressive sanctification. In other words, we are all in process.

We put on a sanctified show for others to see whilst ignoring the fact that we are not as together as we portray. Truly, we make sure the scaffolds of sanctification are erected on the inside of the building rather than the observable outside. This is why D.A. Carson wrote his book on suffering, How Long, O Lord? Carson begins by saying, “This is a book of preventative medicine. One of the major causes of devastating grief and confusion among Christians is that our expectations are false.” Suffering is a human problem, and depression is a form of suffering. People suffer from depression because of others (abuse, expectations, etc.), Adam (the curse, physiological factors, misery in work, death, etc.), and Satan (conspiring with the curse, spinning lies, etc.). These contributors work along the grain of our sinful hearts.

There is no single cause for depression.

Every one of us finds him/herself living amongst the same brokenness vulnerable to its effects. When Paul speaks of overcoming temptations, he points out that they are common to all (1 Cor. 10:13). Thus we must promote a new culture in the church—a culture that recognizes our likeness to one another. Truly, our struggles and temptations are more alike than different. That means that we are not a church that loves to help people with problems, but a church of people with problems.

In other words, we need a church culture that locates ourselves in the community of sufferers, rather than the community of the perfected.

Practicing such a culture would help invite openness about struggles, including depression, so that the sufferer receives care. In many cases, it may provide a preventative dynamic as the community can help hear and carry one another’s burdens before they break an individual’s spirit! This allows us to see ourselves included as sufferers; thus, we can enter into the world of the depressed without excluding them from our world.

When we think about the effects of pornography, we generally stop once we’ve defined it as morally wrong. We rarely take time to think about how engaging with pornography changes us, and what kind of a person it makes us into. This is not just to say that pornography is bad for you; it is to say that engaging with pornography forms you, or more accurately, deforms you. Pornography is a dangerous liturgy.

Because we are designed as embodied beings, what we do with our bodies doesn’t just flow from what we think, it reinforces and even reconstructs what we believe. Our physical practices shape our desires, and our desires shape everything else. In the church, we have called these practices liturgies. We don’t just think our praises to God; we sing them loudly with our mouths. We don’t just remember what Christ has done on the cross; we eat, and we drink in communion. We don’t just feel love for the body of Christ; we embrace, we kiss, we wash one another’s feet. Again, this doesn’t just express what we believe. Instead, these practices are part of our becoming who God is calling us to be.

However, because this is part of what it means to be human, as James K.A. Smith argues in Desiring the Kingdom, all of life is liturgical, and all our practices are continually shaping us. As he says, “Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts through our bodies.”¹ This includes a habit of using pornography. This reality is especially heightened when it is tied to the fact that God has designed sex to be a liturgical act in marriage, not merely expressing the marriage covenant but expressing it bodily in a way that shapes the marriage. It says with our body what the marriage is supposed to express in total: I belong to you. Beyond the theological aspect, there is also a biological component that makes pornography especially impacting (and addictive). What this means is that using pornography changes the way we think about (and go about) sexual relationships, and it does so in a way that goes directly against the grain of God’s design.

Pornography trains our sexuality in the wrong direction in very significant ways.

First off, pornography wires us for novelty instead of intimacy. God’s design for sexuality is built into his design for marriage summed up in Genesis 2:24 as “the two shall become one flesh.” Sex is designed to be part of a relationship where two complementary partners devote their lives to becoming one. Sex then is exclusive to that relationship, and our sexual desires are informed by our spouse as they change and age. Pornography, however, presents us with an unending supply of different people available for our pleasure. The user goes from picture to picture, or video to video and is never satisfied with what has been seen in the past. Part of what makes pornography pleasurable is the adventurous process of more and different (and sometimes more extreme). It is easy to see how destructive that is to sex in its designed setting. What should be a lifelong wealth of satisfaction in growing intimacy becomes dissatisfying in its limits and familiarity. Porn use doesn’t just fail to meet God’s design; it moves us away from it.

Second, pornography trains us for selfishness instead of giving.

Pornography is a consumable product that exists solely for our pleasure. We take and give nothing in return. In fact, since God designed our sexuality to be embedded in marriage and coupled not just with the reciprocal act of giving our body, but giving our whole selves (think of the refrain in Song of Songs, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine”), pornography like all sexual immorality is exploitative. Let me be clear here; many outside the church would express concern that some pornography is exploitative: when it involves minors or those caught in sex trafficking, for example. But for us as Christians, there is no way to be a conscientious consumer of pornography. Unlike livestock, it doesn’t matter if those featured are free-range or if the product is cruelty-free. Porn takes and uses another for our pleasure without offering them ourselves. This is not merely about a lack of reciprocity. Sex within marriage isn’t about only taking as much as you give; it is fully and wholly about giving to the other person. Consider Paul’s advice to married couples in 1 Corinthians 7:3-4:

“The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

Notice that Paul sees sex in terms of what we owe our spouse, not what they owe us. This isn’t about demanding our rights but serving the other. Pornography forms us to focus on our needs and see our spouse as a means to gratification, or in the well-crafted phrase of Jonathan Grant, as a “happiness technology.” Again, we find that it’s not just that porn is selfish; it shapes our view of sex selfishly.

Finally, pornography pushes us towards isolation when sex was designed to draw us out of ourselves and into relationship with others.

When God said it was not good that Adam was alone in the garden, it was partly because he couldn’t be fruitful and multiply on his own, and it takes a whole society to display the image of God properly. Sexual desire is tied into this God-designed need for community. Pornography, however, doesn’t move toward community. Pornography thrives in privacy. This is not just because of the shame attached to it, but because it does not require the existence of others to meet our needs. This is only heightened when you include the imagination, as Jesus does, in sexual immorality (Matthew 5:28). C.S. Lewis hits the nail on the head in a letter he wrote to a young man about masturbation:

“For me, the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite which, in lawful use, leads the individual out of himself to complete (and correct) his own personality in that of another (and finally in children and even grandchildren) and turns it back: sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides. And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with a real woman. For the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman can rival. Among those shadowy brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover: no demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself.”²

All this means is that present, or even past use of pornography, leaves its mark on us and our relationships.

We see this increasingly in our society; there would be no #metoo movement if we weren’t so shaped as a culture by wrong practices of sex. We see it in the rampant loneliness of a world that has lost the art of family, friendship and community. We see it in countless marriages as our sexual desires dominate and distort God’s purpose in marriage. In a world awash in pornography, this can be tremendously discouraging. Many of us can look back on years of deforming habits and liturgies of sin and wonder if there is any road back. However, the hope we have as Christians is that, in the same way, we can be deformed by pornography, we can be transformed in Christ. This is not just about believing the right things about Jesus, but about practicing his ways. By cultivating proper habits of sexuality (what the church historically has called chastity), and proper relationships with humans that affirm God’s design and their image-bearing nature (think of Paul telling Timothy to treat younger women like sisters with all purity), we can put-off the old practices of sexuality, and through putting on the new ways of Christ, be transformed by the renewing of our mind (Ephesians 4:22-23).

_{Originally published on July 21, 2020}

Notes:

_{¹ Smith, James K.A. Desiring the Kingdom.
² Lewis, C. S. (2004–2007). The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. (W. Hooper, Ed.) (Vol. 3, p. 758). New York: HarperCollins e-books; HarperSanFrancisco.}

Have you ever been broken, in body or in soul, and prayed earnestly for healing and not received the answer you hoped for? This past year could have been named “the year of the scalpel” because God removed so much from my life that just needed to be removed for my own good. Halfway through the year, I was absolutely worn out from trying too hard with certain relationships and to manage my health, but to no avail. Brothers and sisters around the world and I prayed for healing for that wonderful instant healing that God can bring. The healing that is so quick and so complete that we can forget about the pain altogether. But rather, God responded with, “I have a better plan.”

If you are looking for a comprehensive study on healing, this is not that article. This is my story of how God brought deep, powerful healing during one of the most painful moments in my life. Having spoken with people afterward, I’ve come to realize that many people are going through the same thing.

This led me to write and shed some hope, that during those dark days, God is at work often in unexpected ways.

I’ve had multiple colon disorders for years now and had grown used to the special diets, the hospital stays, the pain and all that is associated with it, and so I was surprised when last July my doctor said that I needed surgery as soon as possible. I had grown used to living with disease, and now I was at a critical point where the only option was to “cut it out.” It all happened so quickly and so painfully slow as well. I had to wait months until I was well enough to handle surgery, and during that time, everyone I knew prayed for healing. Complete, immediate healing.

The day came, and I had to go through with surgery. I remember laying in the hospital bed after eight hours in surgical suite, surprised at the size of the incision that spread across my abdomen and wondered how things would go now. Alone, in this sterile environment, far from everyone who fills my busy life, I prayed, “Lord, what is going on? This is a waste of time. I have things to do!” And in reality, my soul was whispering in a dejected tone, “You could have healed me.” I’ll never forget when He spoke so gently to my heart, “This is the sacred place I chose to heal you. I want you to sit in this quiet place, unable to move for a little while.”

The problem with healing is the pain, right?

Pain associated with the healing is congruent with the pain of the wound. And your broken body or soul becomes unmistakably vulnerable.

It is humbling, even humiliating to go through, but God can do such a beautiful work in that time of healing.

I looked to the Word to see exactly what God has to say about healing. We know that Jesus heals; He spent so much of His time on earth healing, but what about me, right now? In my silent, sterile pain? When I looked it up, the Word was a comfort to my soul.

There are verses such as Luke 9:11, “But when the multitudes knew it, they followed Him; and He received them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who had need of healing.” The Greek words used in just this verse are Therapeia¹ and Iaomai. Therapeía: “attendance” (especially, medical, i.e. cure); figuratively and collectively, “domestics:—healing, household.” And iaomai is “to cure, heal to make whole to free from errors and sins, to bring about one’s salvation.” Which, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary and Strong’s Concordance, is where we get “therapeutics” and “therapy.” I needed both, and the Lord provided both; I’ll get into that later.

Then in verses such as Jeremiah 33:6, “Behold, I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth.” In Hebrew, ărûwkâh² means in the sense of “restoring to soundness; wholeness” (literally or figuratively):—”health, made up, perfected.” I also needed that divine touch that only our Maker can bring.

Therapeutics, therapy, soundness, wholeness, health… being revealed in the abundance of peace and truth. That is what we need when we are broken; this is what I desperately needed! A divine touch from our Savior.

As I laid in that hospital bed, I did a lot of meditating on the Lord and on the healing process, both on the emotional healing that had happened that summer, and what was currently happening in physical healing. Both require an incredible amount of trust in the Lord to reknit broken people back together.

Both need truth to be infused into a confusing situation. A good friend reminded me that the enemy is the author of confusion as God is the author of order (1 Corinthians 14:33). We need honest people to come around and remind us what the truth is about what our true condition is. We need honest, kind words, words from God’s own heart. To be around people, who are filled with the Holy Spirit, who truly love you. Sleep is also essential to let the body and mind heal.

As we listen to the people that God puts into our lives to carry us through this trauma, we heal a little bit every day.

God does this great work. But, we need to let God put people into our lives, the right people. When I was at my worst, God sent people from all across the world who had no idea what was going on, to minister to me. God did that. He sent in spiritual first responders to come in and bandage me up. But, I had to open the door and let them in. I had to listen to those first responders that He sent, and I had to put it into practice.

He reminds us to shed off that bitterness that would be so easy to give into because sometimes life is really hard, and we end up wounded. That is why we have to go through a healing process, right? But the pain of life doesn’t change the fact that you are loved by God. Beware, because those wounds of life cannot get infected by bitterness; they must be bandaged and then let alone. If we keep them tightly bound up in bitterness, they will never heal; and we will suffer because of it. The people or situation that caused this suffering will not be affected, but we will.

And I realized that as I let God send people in to help – there is this knitting of bonds that develops, that could not have developed otherwise; it is the Body of Christ in action. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to accept help until the time came, and it was an eye-opener. People stepped out of the woodwork to do kind things, and it brought tears to my eyes on many occasions. God used His children to speak love and good works into my family and the church’s life, when I couldn’t do what needed to be done.

So, as He walked me through incredible physical and broken-hearted pain, I started to see healing differently.

It is a God-given time that He ordains in order for us to be our best and to minister to us. During those moments, He gives us what we need to heal from the true wound. He has my back, and He has your back. Let the healing process begin, and embrace it, though it be painful; and it may take longer than we wish. God knows what we need to be fully restored, and who better to reknit each one of us than the one who knit you together in the first place.

Let’s be on our look out for the blessings that God has put in our lives to help us walk through these days, especially through the difficult days. He never tempts us beyond what we can handle, and when that scalpel is doing its work, know that those things are causing harm, and that is why God has to remove them. He loves you enough to remove the things from your life that aren’t good, and He will heal you after surgery. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile.

Notes:

¹ Blueletterbible.com

² Ibid.

My last article traced an introduction to my experience with panic attacks and this second part closes with further reflections on why I am (unexpectedly) thankful for them. In January of this past year, I took time for my first personal retreat weekend in Cornwall at a stately manor home, with a weekend set aside for reading and reflection in solitude. I have been discovering the richness and joy of the gift of solitude.

I thank God that these panic attacks were a catalyst to allow me to find new ways to listen to God’s voice.

During one of our teaching weeks at St. Mellitus, someone made the comment, “If you cannot hear the voice of God, be encouraged! You are learning to hear Him in new ways.” In the desert places, in the wilderness, in the seeking, in the doubt, I discover the new joy of a faith that has been part of all of my life, and specifically the comfort of the presence of Christ. This doesn’t mean that I have learned spectacular new tricks of hearing God’s voice, but rather that I am seeking God’s presence in ordinary ways, even in my places of pain. As one of the great fathers of the faith wrote, “God cannot guide you in any way that is not Christ-like. Jesus was supreme sanity…God is found most clearly and beneficially in the normal rather than in the abnormal. And Jesus is the Normal, for He is the Norm.”¹

Panic attacks became a plague to my sanity, but Jesus Christ, the great Healer, carried “healing in His wings” (Malachi 4:2) and walked with me, even when I needed to learn to trust Him in new and deeper ways than ever before. I have rediscovered, in the words of John Baillie, that, “…Our knowledge of God rests on the revelation of his personal presence…of such a presence it must be true that to those who have never been confronted with it an argument is useless, whilst to those who have, it is superfluous.”² Before my panic attacks, I was convinced of God’s ability to speak. After my panic attacks and learning to attune to His voice and presence in new ways, I am more convinced than ever of His care and authority in my life.

I thank God that living through my panic attacks has given me a deeper compassion for those struggling with mental health and a gentleness in approaching the conversations around the way our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual lives are interlinked. According to the BBC and the annual health survey for England, “One in four adults has been diagnosed with a mental illness at some stage during their lifetime.”³

Despite the prevalence of this struggle, the topic of mental health and mental illness still feels taboo in much of Christian culture.

I mentioned earlier that I posted about my panic attacks publicly on Facebook (which you can view below). That post, on World Mental Health Day, gathered 600+ responses, 300+ comments, 45 shares, and many responding with their own stories of panic, anxiety, PTSD, shame, fear and heartache. The opportunity to explore these questions publicly has given me the space to seek healing personally and learn with friends. As Brene Brown writes:

“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabilities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love and belonging and joy—the experiences that make us the most vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite power of light.”⁵

As in so many other spaces of my life, my companions on the journey of pain have spoken grace, truth and light over my struggles.

And finally, I thank God for my panic attacks because they give me an expectation, a confidence, a hope that my God is still the One who brings beauty from ashes (Isaiah 61:1).

My panic attacks drew me closer to the love and person of Jesus Christ.

These struggles enable me to say with clarity, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). Through our Spirituality module, we have explored a wide variety of Christian traditions and experience. One reading asked this question, “In short, does Jesus shed light on all aspects of human existence, or only those that have traditionally been associated with Christian spirituality?”⁵ It is a good and necessary question.

To ask it another way, does Jesus have something to say in and through my panic attacks? Is there space for this vocabulary within the breadth of Christian spirituality? Six months later, I can state with resounding confidence: Yes. Not only has Christ been present and brought help, healing and beauty to even the place of great pain and fear, but I have joined the companionship of the missionaries like Studd, the early desert mothers and fathers, the gentle St. Francis of Assisi, the modern Richard Foster to say, quite simply, that Jesus is my portion.

In light of these things, it is appropriate that I am in a continuing teaching and learning study at my home church, Tubestation, titled, Ancient and Awesome, drawing heavily from the classic book, Celebration of Discipline, by Richard Foster. Alongside my church family, I am rediscovering the joy of solitude, the depths of fasting, the intimacy of meditation, the freedom of submission. Like St. Francis, I am discovering that, “Christ wants you to go about in the world preaching, because God did not call you for yourself alone, but also for the salvation of others.”⁶ My journey of learning is far from finished, but my reflections have already proved valuable for the lives of many loved friends. I pray I continue to be brave enough to look at my own places of pain, darkness, panic, fear, distraction and mental health as spaces to invite a God who loves me to reveal more of Himself, even in my weaknesses.

¹ E. Stanley Jones, The Way (Nashville: Abingdon/Cokesbury, 1946), 283.
² John Baillie, Our Knowledge of God (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1959), 132.³ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-3…
⁴ Brene Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection (Center City: Hazelden, 2010), 6.
⁵ Marc Cortez, Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 22.
⁶ Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989), 223.

“I break everything,” I whimpered with tears streaming down my face. I stared down at the floor to see the bright, yellow, broken pieces of my brand new happy face mug. I was about eight years old, and I had received this glass mug as a gift only moments ago. My dad has detailed this story for me multiple times, as he remembers the defeat he could see in my face and as I looked up at him with the shattered pieces of my new present at my feet. I was a pretty clumsy kid, and while I didn’t break everything, I did break a lot of things. I wonder if you have ever felt like that.

A porcelain mug is easy to replace, but what about life altering decisions that you can’t change.

Sometimes we can be left feeling like we are just a failure at life. One of my daughters is just like me. She’s pretty clumsy, “Sorry baby girl, it’s all my fault!” Nobody is perfect, but beyond the everyday slips and trips, aren’t we all clumsy at times with our choices, actions and thoughts? We all have a propensity to do the wrong thing, when we should do the right thing.

Just like my Dad saw sorrow in my face over my butter fingers dropping a brand new present, I’ve seen the same defeat on my little girl’s face when she has disobeyed in the same way again and again. Without a word from her lips, I can read her sweet face that says, “I break everything.” My mother’s heart breaks when I see such sadness on my daughter’s face. Not only because of the visible defeat, but the disappointment in my own heart. I want my kids to love and honor God and be rewarded for making the right choices, and I’m so sad when they don’t.

How much more does our Father desire good things for us?

Not many of us wake up every morning wondering what sort of mischief we can get into. I would venture to say that most of us start out with plans to do good. Plans to be kind, and hopefully, plans to follow God with all our strength. Sometimes, it doesn’t take long for things to go bad though does it? Often, before our feet hit the floor, we’ve already taken a turn for the worst. It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that everyone has the exact same struggles.

There isn’t one of us that is more broken than the other.

We all have pieces that we are working hard to put back together. And every single one of us is completely helpless to do it on our own. We need Jesus. Psalm 34:18 reminds us that, “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in Spirit.” What a comfort these words are to weary and broken souls. To know that our Father is closer when we are sad and saves us when our soul is in despair, allows the heavy heart to beat again with new life.

So if you’re feeling like little girl Shannon staring at the broken pieces of your life, be encouraged. You are in good company. Life is a series of falling apart and being put back together. It is a beautiful thing to let the Creator of the entire universe come to restore the shattered shards that litter our life. There is no one who knows us better, and none is more eager to get started on the work of restoration. I encourage you today to give God your broken pieces, and allow Him to lovingly start putting things back into place. There is no better Healer than the one who created you, knows you and loves you.