Update.

Consider this blog re-opened, though perhaps with a different tone as before. My bipolar disorder has changed my outlook on a number of things, especially with regard to all of the depression, anger and bitterness seen throughout my earlier posts. And yes, I have type two bipolar disorder with obsessive-compulsive features. Read back over this blog; it explains a lot.

An update on how I’ve been… well, I was in a mental hospital for the new year, and I also spent some time in a mental hospital in mid-November. In periods of my darkest depressions, the idea came to me to start hurting myself in various ways, and the urges to commit suicide were too intense to endure — hence, stays in the hospital. And unfortunately, after being relatively stable for the past few months, things are getting bad again, and I can see another hospital stay in the future.

I fully realize there is a spiritual component here. I am on a LOT of medications, but I cannot find spiritual healing through doctors, hospitals and pills. That’s where the other hospital, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, comes in. There is nothing mortal men can do for me that will provide the healing and the protection I need. I fully believe God works through the doctors and nurses and medicines to help me, but if I do not also remember God, it is all for naught.

Clearly, things are quite rocky for me at the moment. There has even been some talk of pursuing disability benefits — imagine!! But, the urges to hurt myself, or worse, are plaguing me again — almost as if there were someone in my head telling me things, but that someone isn’t me. I suppose it would be more accurate to blame chemicals in my head not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but either way, may God help me get stable again, hopefully for good. I have high hopes of being an oncological or psychiatric nurse one day, and I hope to help people like me who have had a rough cross given to them.

I just try to remember, God does not give people crosses that are more than they can bear, and these crosses are for our salvation. May God preserve us all that we might give glory to Him, amin.

Maybe…

I may re-open this blog. Exciting!

Stay tuned.

The End.

I will be discontinuing this blog. I will leave it as is and will read comments, but there will be no more posts made. I believe I have made my point, and life will go on.

Thank you all,
Seraphim

An observation

I have been reading over my own blog, and now I see “illness” written all over it. The kind of depression, despondency and anger I was describing is not normal.

A brief update

I have been too busy lately to post to this blog, but I’ll give the world a little insight as to where I’ve been.

I am seeing a licensed therapist and a psychiatrist right now. Both believe that I probably have type II bipolar disorder, and I was hospitalized for it briefly last week. I am currently taking a cocktail of Lexapro and lithium, together with B-12, B-100 and Omega 3 supplements, and I’m still trying to find something that will keep me asleep at night. Insomnia has plagued me the past few months, and it turns out it’s a symptom of the depressive episodes. Thankfully the depression is letting up and my mood is stabilizing, but I still have a hard time sleeping.

What I’ve discovered is that I have an illness. I did nothing to cause bipolar II, and nothing I can do can make it go away. It’s a medical problem, and I’m treating it medically. It happens to be working. I go to therapy to learn how to cope with it in everday life. The hospital stay was scary, but it was a valuable experience and I do not regret it.

For the first time, I have hope that I’m going to get better and get this under control. The medication, despite my admitted cynicism, is working. I still have a long way to go.

Some context.

Allow me to get a bit more intimate and even more honest.

I’ve been thinking about things I’ve said on this blog in the short time of its existence, and at this point, it is no longer in the proper context. My understanding of myself has advanced a lot, as I alluded to in my previous post, but I did not let on to just what that meant. I have angrily told my priest a number of times that I have no idea what this joy is that he keeps talking about.

The proper context of this struggle has revealed itself recently in talks with him. The world needn’t know all that’s behind it, but my spiritual father at this point believes that it would be beneficial for me to see a psychologist.

The reason I am posting this publicly is because I am struggling so hard now with this new task. My spiritual father gave me the phone number of a psychologist he has worked with a number of times over the years — he gave it to me almost a week ago, and I still haven’t called. I have had serious episodes of anger and depression, laced with thoughts that I don’t care to share with the world, and the realization has finally come about that this stuff is not normal. Yet, the idea of seeing this psychologist about it fills me with dread.

I should mention the trichotillomania (TTM). I view it as a somewhat strange form of obsessive-compulsive self-mutilation, though somehow neither seem to quite qualify. If you look it up, it will probably sound stupid, but I’ve fought it for the past ten years at least. And it’s getting worse. And it never once occurred to me until recently that I probably ought to be wondering where it came from and why, let alone how to stop it. And I’ve never, ever talked about it with anyone until recently, either — a part of me is wondering why in the world I’m posting this at all!

Well, I share all of this because a lot of people have found this blog and expressed a certain level of empathy with what I’m saying. The whole point of this blog is to express to the world just how much of a struggle Christianity can be, and any posts I make from now on that discuss my struggles without addressing what I’ve revealed above would be somewhat fraudulent, as far as I’m concerned. Because all of this is a part of my struggle — even forcing myself to admit that I struggle with TTM, and that it probably does have something to do with why I am the way I am, and that I need to obey my spiritual father and see a psychologist.

I don’t want to admit this stuff. Most of me refuses to accept that the person I’m describing is me at all — that’s called dissociation, apparently. But I have to. Anyone who calls himself a Christian must face the man in the mirror at some point and recognize himself for who he is. As far as I can understand it, at least in my own life, I would make little progress in the Way until I can do that. How can one destroy corruption that he won’t even admit is there?

Know thyself.

Allow me to get intimate and honest.

If I were to candidly sum things up concerning my inner life since entering the Church, I might be tempted to say some pretty horrible sounding things. I might be tempted to say, for instance, that I am worse now than I have ever been. Depression, anxiety, anger — my poor wife is having one hell of a time dealing with me at times, and I do not mean that in the vulgar sense. I find myself feeling as though I’m at wits’ end all too often these days.

However, despite my tendency to dwell only on that half of the story, that’s not all there is to it. With my time in the Church, things are getting clearer, far clearer than my eyes care to see. Bl. Fr. Seraphim Rose said that the Christian should expect nothing less than to be crucified, and God help me, it’s one of the most insightful things I’ve ever read about the Faith apart from Scripture. I look in the mirror, and I don’t like what I see. I’m not talking about sins here and there that I fall into anymore. I’m talking about the fundamentals of what have made me who I am, roots that only now are being exposed; and while the faithless man might despair to learn such things about himself, I am finally learning from them about how to fight this fight.

I’ve never understood until entering into the Church just how deeply sin — or, perhaps better put, death — is rooted in me. I can’t hide from it. There were months where I confessed the same exact sins to my spiritual father over and over again, and it was only when I grew so despairing and despondent that I began to give up on the Faith that the Lord again showed His face, which revealed in me darkness I have always hidden from. How often it is that we only notice God’s presence when we can no longer bear to notice anything else, and how humbling it is!

This is why theosis takes longer than our lifetimes. I am rapidly finding that theosis is more than just beating a few habitual sins and establishing a decent prayerlife — no, most of us are so tangled up in the passions that we can barely even move our eyes around to see how bad it is, and indeed, perhaps we can’t because without God’s grace, we can’t find it in ourselves to try. Thankfully, it is not solely up to us to escape, for Christ gave us Himself and His Church for the defeat of the passions and the healing of the soul.

Those who suffered and knew themselves to be “lowlives,” so to speak, were often the ones most receptive to Christ while He walked in the flesh on this earth. Why? I think they were the most self-aware. They couldn’t free themselves, but they recognized the Lord Who could. Those who rejected Him — Pharisees, temple authorities, and the like — could not recognize Him, because they did not even recognize themselves for what they were, sinners. A broken heart and a contrite spirit; these, O God, Thou wilt not despise.

I am often tempted to look at myself and say that since entering the Church, I’ve gotten worse. Perhaps by worldly standards, that’s so, but I’m not blind to myself anymore. The Church with Her grace has exposed corruption in me that I couldn’t see before, and though it hurts worse than anything I’ve experienced to date (remembering what Fr. Seraphim said about crucifixion), the Lord Almighty has the power to raise us from corruption.

This line, from one of the Paschal hymns, comes to mind: I desire My creation to shine with joy, and all sorrow will pass away.

Bearing the cross

A friend of mine recently started up a new blog, which is the inspiration for writing this post. As I finish this sentence, I still have little idea of what I’m going to say. Stream of consciousness, here we go…

I’ll start by saying that the fight continues, in a big way. Times are tough, and I’m not just talking about the United States’ rapidly declining economy. Everywhere one looks, there are distractions, often enticing ones, beckoning the Christian toward unbelief, hedonism, materialism, triumphalism, ecumenism, nihilism, agnosticism, even atheism and antitheism — the exhaustive list would likely encompass most of that which the world holds dear.

Perhaps I’d do better to use first person pronouns instead of third person impersonal pronouns, because I see these traps everywhere and, often enough, find myself ensnared in them. The old demons of nihilism and agnosticism are not ones easily defeated, and they will exploit any small weakness. Fortunately for me, these have been longtime struggles for me. And I say fortunately because God gave me those crosses to bear for a reason.

That terminology is thrown around a lot in the various Christian circles out there — one’s cross to bear. However, almost nobody is really willing to dive in and explain just what it means to bear a cross. More often than not, people say they have whatever cross to bear as if they’re resigned to it; oh, they’ll carry it, but it was dropped on their shoulders, and they’d rather it would just disappear. But in the true Christian faith, as I have been learning in a very real way, that’s not acceptable.

Jesus said, “Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow Me.” What does that mean? The cross is entirely voluntary — we are free to accept it, and we are free to deny it. However, that’s not it; we are free to pick it up on ourselves and carry it without complaining, and we are also free to let it fall on our shoulders harshly and to complain the whole way. Which sounds the most edifying and beneficial for one’s soul? Part of denying oneself is to take up that cross, on our own, and to quit complaining about it!

That’s part of self-denial — not only accepting that we are not self-sufficient as the modern world would have us believe, but also putting aside our complaints and carrying our crosses as did the Lord Himself. The Lord never once complained about His holy suffering. Not only that, but the Lord accepted His Cross willingly, freely, and as the Gospel of St. John clearly illustrates, He clearly had the power to stop any of it from happening. He didn’t, because it was the will of the Father that He should endure crucifixion on that Cross.

It seems to me that many of us refuse to believe that God wills that we should ever suffer — a clear problem of theodicy. Or is it? Does a loving God will His creatures to suffer? The default answer given by most is a hearty no, God does not will any such thing for His creation. So then why do His creatures suffer? I think the problem with such logic is that, because we are fallen, God does will us to suffer — not to punish us, but to bring us to theosis. So when we pick up our deny ourselves, pick up crosses, and follow Christ, you had better believe it’s going to hurt. Jesus submitted to the Father, even unto death on a Cross; what makes us any more deserving than Him to be spared?

It’s a simple fact of life that every one of us is going to endure suffering in some form, maybe physical, maybe emotional, maybe mental, but it’s going to happen, if it hasn’t already. Too many of us, myself included, are entirely too quick to judge and curse God for allowing it, instead of accepting that that is what has been given us, and we need to just deal with it. God could stop all suffering, but He doesn’t — because He told us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses and follow Him. Crosses hurt. Life hurts. It’s a matter of accepting it, embracing it and moving along, knowing full well that God helps. Divine Love hurts as much as genuine love for anyone else does, and we can sure be stupid to expect otherwise.

Christ emptied Himself in His crucifixion; we are expected to do the same. And so the fight continues.

Award nomination thingy

Not only did I get nominated for one of these award things, but it came from two people: Kyriaki and Rosko. I guess that means people actually do regularly read this blog.

The rules of the award are:
1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of those you’ve nominated.

Anyway, here are my nominees in no particular order…:

Codex Justinianus

Dust and Ashes

God is love.

Christ is in our midst!

Desert Calling (I’m a writer for this blog, admittedly, but I’m nominating it for the other writers)

Ramblings of a Single Dad

Under the Theodosian Walls

…and that’s pretty much my entire list of links. Zing.

Sheer stupidity

I realized something during confession the other night that even now strikes me — just how stupid my sins sounded as they came out of my mouth. I don’t mean stupid as in, “Why am I even bothering to confess these things?” I mean stupid as in, “What in the world drove me to do these things in the first place?”

Why indeed? During my everyday life, the things I struggle with seem insurmountable, overpowering, like a lead blanket smothering my faith. But then, I stand before the icon of Christ in confession — in front of my very Creator — and all of it seems stupid and petty, harmless if only I’d kick it aside. And the question remains, why?

I can think of a million reasons why, all relating to things of the past, but they are mere excuses. My sins are stupid, because try as I might, there is no good reason to willingly cast aside my God for some fleeting pleasure. After all, when do those sinful fleeting pleasures not result in agonizing suffering, anyway? Agonizing suffering, brought about precisely because I rejected God, and I ashamed to say that it usually is quite conscious.

So often, the holy fathers talk about rejecting sinful thoughts as soon as they enter the mind. For someone as full of passions as I am, that’s far easier said than done! One must be constantly vigilant, because at least in my case, I often find myself toying with thoughts of sin before I even realize what’s happening. And once I do realize it… well, more often than not, the damage is already done. I know God sends help in those situations — hymns of the Church have a strange way of popping into my head when I’m about to sin — but I ignore that help so I can do what I, in my sinful state, have already purposed to do.

Sounds stupid, doesn’t it?

The realization of the stupidity of my sins is something I’d like to remember. I have come to know how the passions war against me all too well, and I pray to God that I’d be granted the grace to wage war right back. And like the desert fathers talked about, it’s not the demons I’m fighting at this point — I am fighting to kill the old man, me.