To Survive Depression

It has been a few months since my last post, something significant has happened since then: for some reason or another I found my way out of severe depression that has crippled me for the last 5 years. How it happened is another story, but what I wanted to talk about is what it feels like to be a survivor of something I felt would go on to the end of my life. I feel strangely cautious, protective of my self as I face life with an open heart. I am grateful and silently amazed, I feel guilty to make it through and know that many do not. The strange thing is I felt safe in my depressed state, miserable but safe. It was a cocoon. Now  that I am out I feel the possibilities and joy that a normal existence offers would change me into something different. I felt I found my true core when I was depressed, at least when i was unravelling the bonds and close to freedom. Amazing times indeed, The weight is finally off my shoulders, the bitterness has left. 

Painful

I have struggled with an event in my life that has brought me a lot inner pain for about five years now and it has come to a head this past week. It has to do with a situation where I was in a position to give and accomplish much and it lead to some friends and acquaintances scrambling to take away any benefit gained from my efforts. I gave away the rights to my work and another person gained all the benefits from my accomplishments. At first this person was grateful and I willingly gave my support and then, once my help was no longer needed, this person removed me from my place and slowly started persecuting me.

My father warned me about my pride and he was on target, the thing that hurts most is an insult to my pride, my accomplishment, my sense of self worth. I know people who have no ego and would have been able to take my experience in stride and not feel much pain. But it has caused me to age prematurely and my health to progressively get worse.  

I don't quite know how will resolve and close this post because the hurt keeps going, I only hope and pray that I make it through and refrain from taking any form of vengeance or retribution, I hope I can continue to let this pain shape me to be a better person.

Biblish

Biblish is a word that means the type of English you find in literal Bible translations. When it comes to translating the Bible there are two different philosophies or approaches used: formal equivalence or dynamic equivalence (also called functional equivalence). Formal equivalence translates as close to the original Greek or Hebrew as possible, preserving the word order found in the source text. Dynamic equivalence is aimed at translating the thoughts of the original, included in this is clearing up idioms that are foreign to the modern reader. Most conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists prefer the formal equivalence approach because of the doctrine of verbal plenary inspiration, this claims that every word of the original autographs is inspired by God. Because of this we should never tamper with the text handed to us. It sounds good but there is a simple flaw found at the heart of this line of reasoning: the original Biblical languages are not English and therefore do not have the same word order as English. If we really respect the Scriptures then we would translate it in the best possible manner so that the people who read and hear it can understand and relate to its message. 

Treasure

One of my favorite verses on the Christian life is Matthew 6:19-21:

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust[g] consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust[h] consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

This is one of the hard sayings of Jesus, and I have lately found it to be a comfort instead of a burden. It is easy to be enamored with material things: clothes, electronics, automobiles, houses etc. They gave me as sense of being someone, a sense of wholeness. I have found lately that the lack of these things has only sharpened me, leading me to the real pleasures in life. the lack of these things has also made my walk with Christ somewhat easier because I had nothing to lose in following him, I was light and had no baggage slowing me down, it was easy for me to be nimble in things of faith.

But there is another side to self denial, and that is something I sense in me especially because I have ocd. That is I am afraid of taking care of myself and I see myself as lower than most people. I feel unworthy of the simplest things. I do not think Jesus was this way with himself, he allowed a jar of very, very expensive perfume be broken for him, saying that it was for his burial. He was worthy of expensive things because he was a person whose value was much more than any expensive thing in this world (of course Jesus was the Son of God so it is even infinitely higher than this!). So we are also to value ourselves, take care of ourselves, nourish ourselves as he implied in another parable. And we are worthy of expensive, great things because we are precious. Once in a while that is..

Seeing the Same Thing Part 6

The previous post on my spiritual journey was about philosophy and thinking deeper about God. I became a serious evangelical at this period of my life, I returned to my roots and filled my life with reading C.S. Lewis and listening to evangelical teachers. At this point in my life my obsessive compulsive disorder hit me full swing, I was working at nights and my disorder kept me from working effectively. At this point I could only produce so much and I knew I was practically useless at work. I was driving with a friend one weekend and had an accident, I totaled my car and took a week vacation just to sort things out with insurance and figure out what I was going to do at this point. It just happened to be Holy Week. I was totally devastated by the car wreck, and pretty much stuck at home. They were showing the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth directed by Franco Zeffirelli the whole week, an hour each night for the whole week. I watched segments, and I found myself drawn to the series. It was not that the show was religious, it was that Jesus was so alien to me. I had spent so much time reading the Bible and learning Theology but the Jesus I watched was a stranger. There is a scene in the series where Jesus was eating a fruit (a pomegranate or something else) and reclining while teaching His parables, this was so strange and refreshing to me. I could let down my guard and just relax, like He did. I was drawn to the character of Jesus, He was mesmerizing! I found myself in this story I was watching and I was a pharisee, I was one of His enemies! Something changed deep inside me in this week, I saw the deficiency in my faith and I was determined to change it at all costs. I resolved to "unlearn" the theology I learned from books, I resolved to only read the Gospels for as long as it took to get a better picture of Jesus. I had learned so much from philosophy and Lewis but here was something greater than all that, I would not rest until I was part of this!

So this is probably the last chapter of my spiritual journey, everything else that followed were just footnotes to these events in my life. I slowly overcame my obsessive compulsive 

disorder to the point that I could function normally and actually do a good job. I encountered other writers: Frederick Buechner, G.K. Chesterton, Brennan Manning. The next few years after this period were the best in my life, I did not have much but I had friends who loved me and I was free to be myself. I still live from the steam generated by those days.

Seeing the Same Things Part 5: philosophy

I last left off with my discovery of C.S. Lewis, this was back in the late 1980's and Lewis was not popular. In the current time, Lewis is immensely popular among Evangelical Christians, back then I thought I was the only one reading him. Lewis taught me that it was okay, even holy, to open up my imagination. It was okay to love science fiction, to think and ponder, to dream and know that God is greater than my biggest dreams and pleasures (these dreams and pleasures could actually be God speaking to me). I learned to love literature and argument, at this time I took more Philosophy classes and we were studying the early Greek philosophers, I excelled because I saw hints of what I read from Lewis in their ideas. This was another class where a very tough teacher saw potential in me, I remember her returning my essay saying wistfully that I wrote so well. I was grinning from ear-to-ear, this was probably the greatest compliment I ever received in my life! I felt then that there was hope for me to do something good in the world, that I had found my calling. I was actually good for something!

So a new world opened up before me, the title of these posts say that life for me is a matter of seeing. Lewis reconnected me to the wonder I had as a child, that there could be something more going on behind the scenes of the reality we live through each day. He taught me to look deeper and gave me hope. For this I am eternally grateful.

Seeing the Same Things Part 4

So we left off with my dare to God, which in essence said that I would give God one last chance to convince me that He is or I would abandon my faith once again. I borrowed "Out of the Silent Planet" from the corner library as the last chance. I loved the book, the genre of pulp science fiction was always a favorite of mine so I was at home in this kind of story. What got to me was how Lewis turned every sci-fi cliche on its heels. Instead of space being an dark empty void, it was golden and gorgeous, "the heavens". Instead of bad aliens the aliens were noble and good and innocent. Instead of brave space explorers, it was corrupt humans unable to comprehend the truth in front of them. I never saw it that way before. I saw how foolish our modern assumptions were. The novel ended with a hint that this story may be more than fictional, of course it is all just a story but it rang true to me.

To say the least God won the dare.

Seeing the Same Things Part3

My last post was about my return to faith after a period of atheism, this continues that story. Thinking about it now I gave up my faith not because I doubted, I gave up because I could no longer live that way. It was more of a rejection than an honest doubt. So after this period, I started to consider believing again because of fears, I was alone and could not handle my life by myself. Well, all it took was a slight change in me and good things started to come my way, things that reinforced a different outlook in life, custom-tailored for me. At this junction I quit working and went to college full time. This opened up a new world for me, I was a bad student in my high school years and did not put much effort to my studies. In college I could choose my classes and I savored learning, it was stimulating and I was starting to hone in on what my talents and gifts were. I took a debate class because it was part of my required courses. I realized that I was naturally inclined towards Logic and argument. Part of this class was staging debates with fellow students, I took part in one debate and used my old fundamentalist preacher style talent of public speaking. I really impressed my teacher, I remember he asked me to join the debate team, it was amazing! So debate involves defending ideas, part of this is defending both sides of an issue. During this time I was starting to stray from God again, things were going well and I thought that I should apply the principles of logic to evaluating my faith. After all, fear was what caused me to return to faith. I came to a point where I said to myself that I would give God one last chance to convince me about Him, I was ready to abandon it all again for intellectual reasons this time (as opposed to emotional ones when I first rejected faith) and I gave Him a chance to "convince" me. I remembered seeing something odd in a Christian bookstore many years ago, science fiction novels. In the moral majority influenced Christian culture of the 80's science fiction and Christianity did not mix so seeing this book intrigued me. I went to our corner public library and found one of those books, it was "Out of the Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis. Little did I know that God was answering my challenge, and that He would answer it in a big way..

Seeing the Same Things Part2

So let's continue with my journey, in my atheist/agnostic days I prayed to God out of fear. I was funny enough afraid of demons, evil things. I had my own apartment when I was 18-19 years old, I worked nights  and I dreaded being alone when I got home. I had very little human companionship, I remember staying close to my wall because I heard noises from the apartment next door, it helped me feel I was with someone.  

I did not change much after that night that I prayed, I tried to keep in mind that I needed to follow God again but would never return to my fundamentalist past. I would be cautious this time, I would give him little parts of me, only as much that I could bear to let go of. He reached out for me though. During this time I came across the graphic novel "The Dark Knight Returns". I remember browsing it and reading it straight through in one sitting, I was so engrossed by the story, it showed an old Bruce Wayne having his last hurrah, this man had courage, honor, and a sense of right but was shrewd and unorthodox. In fact his super power is his drive to put things right, to make right the wrong done to his parents. God speaks to us in our vernacular, at that time comics and action movies spoke to me and showed me what Good was like and that it is not, by any means, lame. Another good influence to me was I discovered U2, this was when they were still young and post-punk, right before they hit it big with the Joshua Tree. They were also intense and uncompromising.

These little things set my life on a different course, I tasted good apart from the church or religious setting. I received courage to face my lonely world and yearn for better things.

Seeing the Same Things Part 1

I read something last week that stuck to my mind, the gist of the comment or post (I forget what it was) was that it is no wonder that people who read the Bible can come up with totally different ideas as to what it is really saying.

I came from a fundamentalist Christian background and was taught to see the Bible as "God's Word" - this meant that it was God's only way of speaking to me at this day and age. If I could support my idea or action by a verse or passage then I was on solid ground, I was correct. As a person with OCD it was so easy for me to be confused about religion, about the demands that God is placing on me. This idea was good for me because it placed authority outside of me, meaning I could bypass all emotions and inner voices and look at a written book and say "Aha! This is the ultimate guide". But it had it's downside, it was only a short time before my view of God was colored by this idea of Him being holy, so holy that He could not tolerate me as I was, I had to be a certain person to be safe with Him. This person was someone always "winning souls", always reading theology, living for the church 24/7. In this mindset, I feared God and really wanted to be away from Him, I just behaved like this because it was the only way I could be safe. I remember it was a praiseworthy thing, in those days, to shout in the middle of your sermon because it showed passion for the Bible.

It is predictable enough that I did not last in this environment, I was in my teens and moved to the USA during this part of my life. The pressure of being 17 was so intense: my desire was to be accepted by my peers. I was also adjusting to a new country that was so different from my own, a dangerous place where I was practically lost. I gave up on it all eventually, the God I learned about was impossible to please in my situation and I said I no longer believed. I gave up on faith.

Funny enough, my life took off after this. My departure from religion brought about a new sense of freedom and this included freedom from the voices of my OCD. I became good at my job, confident, eager to overturn all ideas that people had of me. I was awesome! Except I was afraid when I was alone, correction, I was afraid that I was alone. It was probably an existential fear, if there is no God then I could only only rely on myself and my machinations to make it in this universe. And that was not really much to hold on to.

My fears eventually led me to a place where I asked God to help me. I somehow came to the end of myself and had to have something more, had to believe in something more, simply had to.

Dreams

We are often admonished to dream, to hope and work for something we really want that seems improbable at the current time. In my experience there is little mental energy and optimism to even conceive of a dream, the closest I can get to this is hoping and trusting that good things will come my way. It seems, in my life, that when I aggressively took action to achieve an outcome that I wanted I ended up in places where I did not belong and only caused me more pain. It sounds pathetic but maybe my way in life is to be passive, to trust the inner and outer guidance from above to lead me. Good thing just happen to me, when I plan and act to achieve what I want only harm comes my way.

First Post

This is my first post and I guess the first thing I should write about is to explain the name of my blog. I have lived with obsessive compulsive disorder for most of my life, it started in my teens and has been coming and going in my life for more than 30 years now. Since I had this disease, I can count with my fingers the times when I was clear and free from the hold of this disease. In those times I experienced what it was to really live, to have peace, to be whole. Sadly these times do not last long, sometimes they go for a few hours only. I wonder if my experience is the norm for most people, if I am missing out on what everyone is enjoying. My guess is that other things afflict us all and, like me, most if not all people have few moments of clarity and peace.