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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
Juanita called it "The Crash." Her counselor labeled it "a major depressive episode." Others called it a nervous breakdown. On the spiritual front, it was a dark night of the soul. This experience landed Juanita, a busy pastor, mother, and community leader, in bed. When everything in her life finally came to a stop, she found that she had to learn to be—with herself and with God—all over again. If you are longing for a trustworthy companion through your dark days, this book is here for you. Each chapter includes life-giving spiritual practices to help you discover your own new ways of being.
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Learning to
Finding Your Center After the Bottom Falls Out
Foreword by
To my family unnamed and named, some through blood, some through choice, all in love.
Leonard
Florence
Elischa
Rudy
Mildred
Rudolph (posthumously)
Morgan
Ryan
Hamilton
Mary
Henry
Jaden
Baby Harris
I Love You.
And to you dear reader!
Contents
Foreword
Tina Knowles Lawson
To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:79 speaks of God’s mercy shining on us in times of great darkness, a light strong enough and bright enough to guide our feet toward peace.
I’ve experienced this light in my faith walk and with powerful, resilient people like Juanita Campbell Rasmus, a woman I met in 1986 when I opened my first salon, and she became a faithful client. She set an example for the power of prayer and worship, and I later became one of the first members of St. John’s Church.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed Juanita navigate the highs and lows of marriage, motherhood, ministry, and womanhood. I’ve seen her journey from the self-professed “good girl” to a leader who wholeheartedly seeks God with a level of authenticity, transparency, and grace that is unmatched. And in this book, she inspires us to do the same.
In Learning to Be, Juanita invites us into one of the most intimate and revealing spaces of her life, which was her battle with depression—“the crash.”
Juanita doesn’t close the door or sugarcoat her episode. Instead, it’s an eye-opening and entertaining read that encourages us to navigate from our own version of “the crash” and discover what an authentic relationship with ourselves and God looks like as we shed the pretenses and walk in God’s infinite light.
We aren’t meant to dwell in the dark. But darkness can be an indicator helping us to ask the tough questions and take one faithful step at a time toward being all God created us to be. I can’t imagine another person I’d want to usher me through such an intimate and raw journey. I’m thankful that a book like this exists. Whatever brings you to this book, I pray that it will bless you on your journey.
1
The Stress of Living in a Do-Do-Do World
It felt as though every nerve in my body was popping. Imagine large, strong hands slowly applying pressure to a family-sized package of uncooked spaghetti noodles. I was the spaghetti. Breaking down one piece at a time.
It was a morning like any other. On August 27, I got up and cooked breakfast for my husband, Rudy, and our daughters, Morgan and Ryan. The school year had just started, and the girls were excited. I called them to the table, and as they sat down, I rushed to the bathroom to put on my makeup before I took them to school.
“Hey, I’ll take the girls this morning,” Rudy volunteered.
“Great!” I told him. “That’ll give me a few more minutes to get ready so I can finish my makeup in the restroom instead of the rearview mirror.” We laughed.
Rudy and the girls finished breakfast, and we all said goodbye with our usual hugs and I love yous. I finished putting on my makeup and then opened the bathroom door to leave. Without warning, a horrible wave of nausea swept over me like a bad flu. I felt so sick I could hardly walk or think straight. I’d never felt anything like it before, but I knew I couldn’t go anywhere that morning. I called the office of St. John’s Church and asked our secretary to reschedule my early appointments.
“If I lay down for a couple of hours, I’m sure I’ll feel better and be in this afternoon,” I told her.
Minutes later, however, I had an uneasy feeling that something was happening to me. I watched my hand pick up the phone as if I lacked control over it and hit the redial button. When my secretary answered, I mumbled almost incoherently, “I’m not feeling well, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m taking a leave of absence or medical leave or a sabbatical or something.” And I hung up the phone. I struggled back to bed and lay there feeling like every nerve in me was short-circuiting.
Days passed with me in bed, overwhelmed by a sensation of falling, spiraling, and spinning into a pitch-black tunnel day after bleak day. I felt sheer panic as I tried reaching out to grab something—anything!—to stop my fall, but my hands found nothing to hold on to. The feeling was so intense, all I could do was hope that I would finally hit bottom.
I Never Saw It Coming
Around our house that awful day is called “the crash.” Now that I have had time to reflect, I realize that it had a catalyst. A complex mix of stress, disappointment, grief, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and discouragement had been building up for weeks, months, and years, but I discounted the warning signs.
Most summers, Morgan and Ryan were involved in all kinds of activities. For some reason the summer of the crash was different. Normally, my summer workday ended at 3 p.m., which allowed me to pick up the girls from camp or wherever they were. That summer, however, the girls came to church with my husband and me every day.
I served as copastor with Rudy. We basically split the responsibilities down the middle along our lines of interest and giftedness. I was teaching two Bible studies a week and preaching every other Sunday, and I was responsible for women’s ministry, spiritual formation, and pastoral conversations with the women. Additionally, I served as the head of public relations for the Bread of Life, our nonprofit organization that provided a daily meal to the homeless community we served in the church.
The girls had learned to pack their books and toys when they accompanied us to work. That summer they made beaded bracelets and necklaces that they sold to the business people who attended the Wednesday noon Bible study. In addition to their coloring and crafts, the girls learned basic office tasks like helping to fold bulletins and found creative ways to occupy themselves. Instead of leaving in the afternoon to spend time at home with them, I thought, This is the best of both worlds. The girls are with us, and we can stay at church and get more work done. It was the perfect arrangement for a performance-addicted perfectionist!
Many times our family would run out for a quick dinner and then return to the church to work. When we finally returned home each night, Rudy and I often would talk about issues at the church. Then we would get up the next morning and put in another ten- or twelve-hour day.
Our church was growing at a rate of about five hundred people per year. (We had started the church with nine members.) Rudy and I had served this three-thousand-member congregation for years. We had no idea how understaffed we were or the toll it took on us individually and as a young family. We had a handful of committee volunteers who helped us to keep the wheels on the bus, so to speak.
I often felt exhausted not just from the work but also from the emotional trauma that I experienced vicariously through meeting with parishioners and hearing their stories. Vicarious trauma is like secondhand smoke—it can be deadly to those exposed to it. Two years before the crash, two very dear friends had died. Both times I rose to the occasion with my self-proclaimed vow: I have to be strong for them, and then I can fall apart. To this day I have no idea what gave me that notion, but I didn’t take the time to process the pain. In fact, I had never allowed myself to grieve any of the losses I’d experienced, whether deaths, business setbacks, failures, broken relationships, or other disappointments. My way of coping with pain was to stuff it and keep moving.
Clearly, we were not caring for ourselves in life-giving ways. We were sleep deprived, ate too many fast-food meals, and depended on caffeinated drinks to give us a boost to keep going. All of these factors, I later learned, were “lifestyle deficiencies” that would catch up to us sooner or later. Still, I loved what I was doing. What was the problem with doing a little extra work for the Lord? I loved God and I loved the ministry. God calls us to sacrifice, right?
Meet the Good Girl
Up to that point, my life had been rooted in the biblical model of the virtuous woman found in Proverbs 31 and the belief that I needed to be picture perfect. I had to be the flawless wife, the impeccable mother, and the textbook pastor. My whole identity was to be a “good girl” who always did the right thing and pleased the people around me. Nothing less was acceptable to me. Doing the right thing meant living by rules. If I couldn’t figure out what the rules were in a situation, I created my own rules to live by that would keep me on the perfect path of righteousness.
My personality is type A, high performing. Yet the price of my drivenness was my physical and emotional health. Forty years of buried feelings and pent-up stress caused everything to come crashing down that morning. It was as though I had built my life on a foundation of toothpicks. I lacked the tools to deal with the inevitable bumps and bruises of life, and I allowed the pressure to escalate until damage was inevitable.
I related to Martha when she said to Jesus, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” (Luke 10:40). The mantra “Good girls don’t get mad” played incessantly in my head. I had set such a high bar of accomplishment and perfection for myself that I often swallowed my anger at my own imperfection and the imperfection of those around me. I was angry that I was working so hard and it didn’t seem to matter, no one seemed to notice, and there was no one to celebrate my good and hard work. My anger was undercover, or so I thought. And even though I wouldn’t admit to the anger, my body knew. The anger showed up as pounding headaches, stomach problems, and backaches that the doctor called sciatica. I called it a pain in the assets. It all seemed to come out of nowhere.
My emotions were like beach balls in a swimming pool. I would push them under the water, but if I let go, all that pressure and energy sent the balls to the surface and flying out of the pool with rocketlike force. I was holding down a lot of balls.
Friends and family reflected on how wound up I was. Relationships suffered—I didn’t have time to “waste” talking to friends about getting together. I had things to do and places to go. Though I valued my friendships, my to-do list took priority over my to-be list. I was running on empty. And since I was meeting my deadlines, for the most part, I never noticed the growing problem.
A Journey Together
In the 1500s Saint John of the Cross wrote a mystical poem describing the “dark night of the soul,” and this season was my version of that dark night. The dark night is an invitation to enter into the mystery of our unknowing, both the unknowing of ourselves and the unknowing of God. It invites us to know and be fully known to ourselves and to know God in ways that perhaps we had never imagined. The dark night was for me the beginning of freedom.
In the chapters to come I invite you to enter into my journey. I’ll explore how I arrived at this place, how things grew worse, and the spiritual practices that brought me to the other side. In each chapter I have included questions to help you reflect on your own journey or tips to help you assess where you are.
I chose to share my story because all too often in Western culture, and especially in the church, we are reticent to discuss mental health along with the related spiritual implications. It is my hope that telling my story will shed light on the resources available to someone in the aftermath of a mental health diagnosis (or any devastation that affects one’s well-being) and provide courage to wait in the darkness, because often that’s where the real treasures are stored.
Even with such a diagnosis, we can learn to live into new realities that bring freedom and may even make learning to live with the disaster or diagnosis worth the descent into hell. Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, we too can rise as we discover ways of being in a world driven by doing.
Pause to Reflect
St. Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, also experienced a life-altering illness and its accompanying revelations. During his year of conversion Ignatius began to write insights that later would be called the Spiritual Exercises. Ignatius believed that the chief need in the busy world of Rome was a daily tool to observe or to pay attention to one’s life, and his Exercises teach the practice of examen. I offer the “Pause to Reflect” at the end of each chapter as a means of inviting you to stop briefly and reflect on what may be roused as you move through my story. As Socrates noted, “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
I encourage you to practice the examen as you read this book by reflecting each day in a journal or perhaps on your phone by asking yourself, What gave me life, awakened me, or moved me in this reading or during the day? or How did I experience love? Jot it down. Next ask, What challenged me, left me puzzled, or stirred me? Where did I feel the absence of love? Jot it down. Then, after reflecting on both, give thanks for the awareness that each offered. One of the gifts of reflection is the invitation to do more of what gives you life and less of the things that are not life-giving.
Have you or someone you loved experienced depression or a mental health diagnosis?
What beliefs did you have about yourself or the person with the diagnosis?
As you journal and experience your awareness, notice any stigmas or preconceived ideas you may have about mental health illnesses. Stay open to new ways of seeing as you move through this journey of learning to be.
2
Who Am I?
Over the next months, as I lay flat on my back in the midst of the darkness and the silence, the Holy Spirit gently asked me, Who are you? I would have laughed had I been in my normal mind, yet the question was so poignant it pierced through me like a hot knife cutting through butter.
I almost said, “Well if you don’t know who I am, and I don’t know who I am, then Houston, we have a problem!” I wanted to say, “I am Rudy’s wife; I am Morgan and Ryan’s mother,” and run down a list of the roles I play in other relationships, but at that moment I knew that it might be wise to toss the question back to God to gain some real clarity.
God was present in the question; I was sure of that. Who am I? There is the story I had been telling myself of my identity, the story my parents had told me, the story my grandparents had told me, the story I learned of myself while I was in elementary school, and the story the neighborhood kids and my cousins told me. It was amazing that I hadn’t combusted before then from all the internal contradictions. I had way too many accounts of the Juanita story, so it’s no wonder why I was clueless as to how to answer the question.
Searching for Identity
Do we ever really know who we are? Wouldn’t it be great to be asked while growing up, “Who are you, really?” This question could be followed by having God reveal the answer to that question in a thunderous announcement so that by the time we hit thirty we would have some practice being ourselves and could be a little more self-assured.
There is something extremely disorienting in discovering that you don’t know yourself. During this period, I was having conversations with God that went something like this: If knowing myself is supposed to be a divine revelation, okay, I’m good with that. But c’mon, God. If you could go to all the trouble of having a placenta delivered after a baby’s birth, then why not attach a little note: This is Juanita, she is my beloved and she is . . . ! This revelation I longed for from God would feel like the surprise you get when you or a friend are told the gender of a long-awaited baby. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. For me, the crash provided an opportunity to reveal my identity.
Pastor Myles Monroe said, “If you want to know the purpose of a thing, never ask the thing, ask the manufacturer.” That phrase stuck with me. He further said that when we don’t know the purpose of a thing, abuse is inevitable. I can see that in my life, especially now. I see it in my failure to recognize the necessity of rest, proper nutrition, and exercise. I see it in the many ways that I abused my body, mind, and spirit. I had no idea that I could destroy my life by pure ignorance.
Lying flat on my back for days on end gave me plenty of time to reflect on the choices that seemed expedient at the time but had long-term negative effects. It’s downright ignorance, like ignoring the warning lights flashing on my car dashboard while I keep driving. How much of this could have been avoided? Who really cared if I burned the candle on both ends? The spoken and unspoken demands on my time and energy were unyielding, so it seemed. Everywhere I turned, somebody wanted something from me.
Every person or organization I was associated with wanted something from me. Our congregation had grown so rapidly that I was receiving more “opportunities” to serve and speak, and the requests seemed endless. Teachers wanted my kids at school on time, homework in hand, and I seemed to have a flexible schedule, so “Mrs. Rasmus, could you go on the field trip tomorrow?” or “Could you volunteer to help us with the science fair this year?” Directors of after-school activity programs wanted me to turn in the money from the candy sale that supported their work. My church wanted me, and I thought that I needed to be available to the church—no limits, no holds barred. So I gave my life over to my job because, after all, I work for God.
It isn’t that any one of these expectations and requests were unreasonable or unpleasurable; the problem was that all too often I had been finding my identity in doing all this stuff, and so I felt obligated to say yes to everything. I had not developed the ability to set boundaries or have realistic expectations for myself.
HALT
My friend Regina Hassan has made a career of coaching folks in sobriety. She likes to use the acronym HALT to help people gauge when they are putting themselves at risk of relapse. According to Regina, when we find ourselves too hungry, too angry, too lonely, or too tired, we need to halt! In my case, paying attention to these could have helped me see I was in danger of having my life spin out of control.
But anger is sneaky, at least for me, because good girls never want to admit that they are angry in the first place. And, of course, we would never be resentful. So, I tried to be cool, calm, and collected though I resented the infrequent suggestions of friends, family, or even a coworker or two that my life was out of whack. But it was. It may have looked good on the outside, high functioning and all, but I had begun to fall apart on the inside.
Regina taught me another acronym for the word denial: Don’t Even Know I Am Lying. When we look at our lives, it is so easy to find fault and want to point fingers. Too often I have heard kids blame their parents while denying that they (the kids) had made choices that created the problems they were now having to live with. I see this frequently in my role as a pastor as I listen to people tell their stories. In many cases there is some level of denial going on unless the person has started to deconstruct their childhood story with a healthy dose of grace and truth.
I, too, slipped into the river of denial and blamed my parents for certain things about my childhood rather than acknowledging I had created a false narrative about it. In all honesty, my parents, like so many others, only did what they knew to do, and I totally get it, because that’s what I’m doing now as a parent. We work with the tools we have, no matter how our kids perceive the tools.
Many times I had preached that when we point the finger of blame, there are always three fingers pointing back at us. While that was a great preaching point, it didn’t feel nearly as clever when it applied to my own life. At its core, blaming is a sign that there is brokenness that needs to be healed. I am clear that my crash and its results were not about my parents but about finding out who I was down deep beneath the story that I had constructed about my life—a story of denial and blame, a story that only I could edit and transform.
God has the most incredible ways of revealing our brokenness. But God wasn’t done yet.
No, Not the Prodigal, I’m the Other One
Just a couple of months before the crash, I read the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) as I prepared for a sermon. I meditated on the text for a week; there was so much in it that unnerved me. I had always understood the parable as the story of a son who had taken his share of the family wealth. Over time and due to his immaturity, he had carelessly spent what should have been his inheritance.
I didn’t identify with this guy at all. I was furious—how dare he make unnecessary demands on his parents and fly the coop, leaving his brother to take care of the parents and the payments on the indebted estate and abandoning his brother to run the family business alone.
In contrast, I identified with the brother who stayed home. He was the responsible one. In school growing up, my identity was tied to being the responsible one. When my grandmother needed a chore done, I did it. So I related to the brother who was stuck at home.
What I hadn’t noticed before but see now is that the older brother had been so busy working and being responsible that he had not allowed himself to really live, to find his identity, apart from his ability to perform. No doubt he saw himself as the successful one—dependable, wise, mature. Perhaps in his own head he was the favored one, the perfect child, anxious to be esteemed and praised.
According to psychiatrist Murray Bowen’s family systems theory, each person in a family plays a role. Someone is the hero, while other family members may be a scapegoat, a lost child, or a mascot. Based on this theory, the guy in the parable who stayed home would probably identify himself as a hero—strong, superior, busy, conservative, and trustworthy. For the first time I became aware of the attitude that had been building in this brother. The resemblance was unnervingly close to home.
As my revelation continued, I realized that the parable wasn’t about one prodigal son but rather two, the younger one who left home to discover himself and the older one who played it safe, too focused on doing the “good” thing at the cost of discovering himself. The older brother and I had more in common than I cared to admit.
Pause to Reflect
The crash became an opportunity for self-discovery, an invitation to uncover my identity beyond the ideas formed in my childhood, which was so rooted in doing. What story have you been telling yourself? In the story of the prodigal son, which brother do you most identify with? Or is there a historical story that you find sheds light on your childhood sense of identity? Perhaps it would interest you to look into Bowen’s family systems theory for insight about the role you played in your family system.
The crash has caused me to question my story about my identity. Byron Katie has developed a process called “The Work” that uses four questions to invite inquiry into the myths we have been living with and projecting onto ourselves and others: (1) Is it true? (2) Is it really true? (3) How do you respond? (4) Who would you be without that thought?
Allow yourself permission to sit in this story and to breathe it in: live into it, try it on for size. What do you notice as you cast yourself in the lineup of characters? What insights are made available to you? What shift or insight occurs for you?
Interlude
An Ode to the Prodigal Brother
While I lay in bed I gave myself permission to imagine being the older brother in the ancient story of the prodigal son and what that might feel and sound like. How would it feel to move beyond anger, resentment, and denial to a place of compassion for the younger brother who left home? What would it feel like to honor the younger brother’s courage and his response to the call to discover his truest self? I gave myself permission to sit in this story and to breathe it in and to live into it. “Ode to the Prodigal Brother” is the result of my musings.
Little brother, please forgive me.
I just didn’t understand.
I didn’t understand that the call to find yourself
caused you to create havoc back at the house.
I didn’t understand that the call to become
