Breaking Self-Obsession

Several people whom I love dearly struggle with mental illness. I have noticed one characteristic in each of them: an obsession with self, a life focused on themselves.

It is not a positive focus. Negative voices surround them, and they feel, for the most part, quite bad about themselves.

This obsession does not mean they are selfish. The people I know are tender, loving people. When not in crisis, they are often sympathetic, quick to express empathy and concern.

Yet their attention is focused relentlessly on their struggle to survive emotionally, on their fears for their future, on their inadequacies, on their unfulfilled desires, on their loneliness and alienation from others. They are number one in their day, number one on their agenda. Perhaps it is out of need, perhaps it comes out of the illness itself. But it is an obsession that leads them deeper into illness.

Mental illness has many components and is tremendously complex. The biochemical piece of it is unique to each one who suffers—exacerbated by diet, allergies, stress, genetic predisposition, and triggered by the body’s physical response to anxiety, fear, trauma.

But who can separate the physical from the emotional and spiritual? What fine line divides body from spirit, brain from soul, cognitive thinking from the heart? If the deep hunger for connection and for unconditional love is not met, who knows what unbearable and deadly stress it places on a weak and sensitive mind?

Often those who struggle with depression, multiple personalities, paranoia, schizo-affective disorder, and the like do not experience close and life-giving connections to family and to God. Yet their hunger for that is huge. Their self-obsession comes perhaps from their fear that no one else will satisfy their craving for attention and love, so they must give it to themselves. Self-absorption is part of their attempt to survive. But it has great destructive power (see Charles Williams’s Descent into Hell).

Loneliness—a sense of separation from others and from God—is painful and works great harm on the human spirit. A man named Heman the Ezrahite wrote this to God thousands of years ago, to express the pain:

You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest dungeon.
Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
my eyes are dim with grief.

If you have such friends or sisters or brothers, pray for them.

But also encourage them to volunteer. A close family member who is coming out of severe depression and multiple personality disorder volunteers to pray with anyone who comes to a prayer tent at the weekly community farmer’s market. He has found profound satisfaction in doing this, and it has engaged him in other needs besides his own. He writes with excitement about positive comments received, prayers that have been answered. I hear life in his voice again.

Your friends could volunteer in a soup kitchen, at a cancer organization such as Gilda’s Club, hospice care, a homeless shelter, a center for women and children—anywhere there are people who are suffering. It will draw out their compassion; they know the meaning of suffering. It will enable them to focus on someone else’s problems. It will let them know they are not alone in the struggle. It will give them a reason to get out of bed. It will bring satisfaction from being useful to others. It may create a life-giving connection to another human being, and eventually to God.

And, if it's so good for them, why not try it yourself?

Do not be afraid; it is I.

My dear husband fears financial ruin. (A bit melodramatically at times, but yes, he does fear it.) I am afraid that my lifelong habit of procrastination will sabotage my attempts to serve God. I fear that my writing is mediocre. I fear the power of darkness over friends I love. I am afraid of getting fat. I am in terror of sticking my foot in my mouth when trying to be well-meaning or friendly. And I fear other things as well, too numerous and deep-rooted to mention.

Well, this world is full of things that make us afraid. What I fear is peanuts to what some others face.

I am not normally a fearful person. Most days I am filled with confidence and hope. But at times I have been completely overtaken with fear, and I remember those times. Following is something I have written to work my way through it:

You are not alone. This is a big storm, but you are not alone. What is this fear? It is a block of wood in your chest that keeps you from breathing. It is your heart beating like a hammer. It is a wave that has risen suddenly over your little boat, a vicious wave, a wave that can drown you. Yes, there are things in this world that can drown you; they are evil. They intend evil for you. This wave is one of those. What if what you fear the most really happens? You look at the wave, and think that there is no way out. But listen, listen. Take your eyes off the wave for a moment. Take your mind away from it. Listen with all you are worth. Listen to save your life. There is a voice: "Do not be afraid." This is a command, spoken by someone you love. Who is it? "It is I." There is no need to ask who; you know this voice. It is the voice of the one who made you. Somehow, in this mess of fear, in this mess of your life, he stands. There, you can see him. The wind still buffets you, the wave still towers over you. But listen to what he is saying. "Yes, the worst can happen. The worst may happen. But I have dealt with the evil things. You are safe. Do not be afraid." Trust this voice. Remember his name. Emmanuel, God with us. You are not alone.

The things I fear the most are the things I have the least power over. Do I have power? No. Does Christ? Yes. I can make the decision to rest, to let go, to breathe. He allowed the powers of hell to do their worst to him, so that they would not be allowed to do their worst to me. It is the voice of that one who says, "Do not be afraid."

We only ever had six children

We only ever had six children, three of whom survived to childbirth, and live and thrive to this day. Three died untimely in the womb, and as a mother I am very much looking forward to meeting the other half of our progeny within the next forty years or so (speaking of time from a human vantage point).

Our youngest, in her mid-twenties, is at home yet, a student and artist. But our large old three-story, five-bedroom home lends itself to hospitality, and three years ago my husband found a way to bring more temporary “children” to join our breakfast and supper table. He volunteered us to host international graduate students enrolled in an English language program.

I remarked to my husband a while back, “It’s like having adult kids who are really polite, entertaining, educational, and respectful, who never talk back, and who always bring their dishes to the sink. And they pay all the groceries.” He nodded. It’s a thing only parents of grown children would understand, perhaps.

I suppose another nice thing about this is that we don’t feel responsible for them in ways that we would for our own children. If they don’t go to school, if they don’t study, if they don’t eat right or get enough sleep—well, we offer advice, but we don’t agonize or stress over it. They have real parents who do that.

Yet we become family for a while. The laughter and conversation around our mealtimes attests to that, as does the evident mutual affection, the hugs, the e-mails.

Our own children are ambivalent about this situation. How could we give up their bedrooms to strangers? How could we ask them to share mealtimes with someone who doesn’t speak English? It takes a certain amount of inner strength to say, “Well, it’s our home and our life, and we enjoy this.”

So through our home have come students from Mexico, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Turkey, Korea, Japan, Gabon, Brazil, and other far-flung countries. Some are as young as sixteen, some as old as mid-forties. Some stay for a month, some for over a year. Phil is the Papa, and I am Mrs. Edi. And, with few exceptions, we have enjoyed welcoming these young adventurers into our family.

Our current Arabic student has been with us for six months. The second son of a professor and his wife in Riyadh, he is a bit atypical of students from Saudi Arabia. He studies conscientiously, disciplines himself to work out daily at the gym, dresses conservatively (and sometimes wears his robe and headdress to class), converses with vivacity, and throws back his head and laughs with delight at all my husband’s jokes. Thoroughly Muslim, by culture and by faith, he helps us navigate the sometimes murky waters of politics and religion in Saudi Arabia.

Abdullah is as a son to my husband. Lizandro was as a brother. Chia Yi was as a daughter to me.

Yet for all the closeness, we know this is not a permanent family arrangement. They do not hold the same place in our hearts as do our own children. When they leave, we release them to the world and to the God who watches over all.

Reflecting on this, suddenly I am glad that God has decided on adoption, rather than on having temporary houseguests. I am his daughter, by birth, by legal standing. His is one house I will never have to leave.

I wish Celtic monasticism would have won out over Roman

And these excerpts from the early Irish and Welsh are why I wish this:

A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird's lay sings to me, praise I shall not conceal,
Above my lined book the trilling of the birds sings to me.
A clear-voiced cuckoo sings to me in a gray cloak from the tops of bushes,
May the Lord save me from Judgment; well do I write under the greenwood.

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The path I walk, Christ walks it. May the land in which I am be without sorrow.

May the Trinity protect me whereever I stay, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Bright angels walk with me--dear presence--in every dealing.

In every dealing I pray them that no one's poison may reach me.

The ninefold people of heaven of holy cloud, the tenth force of the stout earth.

Favorable company, they come with me, so that the Lord may not be angry with me.

May I arrive at every place, may I return home; may the way in which I spend be a way without loss.

May every path before me be smooth, man, woman, and child welcome me.

A truly good journey! Well does the fair Lord show us a course, a path.

**********

And this from the homily of John Scottus Eriugena on the prologue to the Gospel of John:

"What was made in him was life." Far removed from the power of all reason and intellect, the blessed Evangelist has revealed to us divine mysteries.... This sentence can be read in two ways. We can say either "What was made," adding "was life in him," or we can say "what was made in him," adding "was life." Thus by virtue of this ambiguity, we can discern two meanings here. The interpretation: What was made fragmented in space and time, distinct in kind, combined or separate, all this was life in him, is not the same as: What was made in him was nothing other than life. Let our meaning be the following therefore: All those things which were made through him are life in him and are one in him. For all things existed--or subsisted--in him as causes before they came into existence in themselves as effects. The mode of existence beneath him of those things which were made through him is not that of those things in him whch are his very self.

All things therefore that were made through him live immutably in him and are life. In him all things neither existed nor shall exist according to intervals of time and space, but all things in him are above time and space and are one. Visible and invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, endowed with reason and without reason, all subsist universally in him, heaven and earth, the abyss and whatever is in them, these things live in him and are life, and they subsist eternally. Even those things which seem to us to lack all power of movement have life in the Word. And if you wish to know how and in what way all things which were made through the Word subsist vitally, uniformly, and causally in him, then take the nature of creatures as an example and learn to see the Creator in those things which were made in him and through him: "For the invisible things of him," as the Apostle says, "are clearly understood by the intelligence, being understood from the things which are made."

See how the causes of all things which the sensible sphere of this world contains all subsist simply and uniformly in this sun which we call the great luminary of the world. From there the forms of all bodies proceed, the beauty and diversity of colors and all the other things which can be said of sensible nature. Consider the manifold and infinite power of seeds, and how a great number of plants, shrubs, and animals are all contained at once in individual seeds, how there rises from them a lovely multiplicity of forms beyond number. See with your inner eyes how the many rules of a science become one in the artistry of an expert, and how they have life in the spirit of the person who masters them. See how the infinite number of lines becomes as one in a single point, and take note of other examples from nature. Raised up by these beyond all things as if by the wings of the contemplation of nature, you can gaze into the secret places of the Word with the pinnacle of your mind, aided and illumined by divine grace, insofar as this is granted to human beings who seek their God by rational arguments, and see who all the things which are made through the Word live in him and are life in him. "In him," as the divine voice says, "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).

The Power to Create

One thing I like about writing is that it gives me the power to make something out of nothing. Like God, really. I can create a person who will become as real as my next-door neighbor. Bria, with her shock of white-gold hair. Sister Agnes, whose eyes don't quite line up and who moves like a round, black cannonball. Lean and rangy Pieter Oomsdorf, in the nursing home with Alzheimers.

Put any of these in a story, and they come alive.

The door handle turned, and Kindle pushed his way in. Bria followed, closing the door quickly.

The small apartment was dim, and still cool from the morning. Mama had opened the windows early, when she left for work. Bria had closed every window when the sun came up. It was almost as good as air conditioning, Mama said. She was right. The air was cool against Bria’s face, damp with sweat after running all the way home from the cathedral.

Bria took a deep breath of the cool, familiar air. Then she stiffened.

"Wait, Kindle." Her voice was barely a whisper, but Kindle stopped, just short of the door to the living room. He looked at her, his blue eyes wide.

"Someone is here." Again the faint whisper. "I smell something."

Among the everyday smells of the apartment—the bleach Mama used to scrub the sink that morning, the cheap detergent smell on the pile of neatly folded laundry on the kitchen table, the comforting smell of toast that somehow lingered after breakfast—there was another smell. It too was familiar. But it did not belong here.

Without breathing, Bria moved toward the living room, her sneakers silent on the floor. The scent of a man’s cologne, mixed with the faint odor of alcohol, let her know what she would see before she actually saw it. The form stretched out on the sofa, the hand hanging down toward the floor, the bottle tipped onto the carpet, a wet stain beneath—these she had seen before, in other places.

"He found us again, Kindle." The words were just breathed.

They turned back to the front door. Neither said a word, but they moved together, quietly, hoping to reach the door before it was too late. Bria was afraid that her heart, beating wildly in her chest, was loud enough to hear.

But Kindle’s foot caught on one of the legs of the kitchen chairs. It hit the table edge with a cracking noise. Bria’s hand groped to find Kindle’s, to pull him with her toward the door. She reached for the door knob.
And then they heard the silken voice: "Ah, Kindle! and Bria, little bird! I’ve been waiting for you."

They turned. Their father was standing in the doorway to the living room.

"Hello, children," he said.

My daughters are gifted artists with the paint brush and chalk; they make things come alive on canvas. My canvas is the blank computer screen. Or a yellow legal pad, if I can find a really good pen.

I feel healthier, more alive, after writing. I think it has something to do with bringing life into the world. This year, I am praying for the discipline to do more.

Early this morning I drove my husband to the airport, and as I write he is nodding his head and dozing as he sits, cramped, in a Continental Airlines seat, headed for San Francisco.

He needs a break. He is worn out with mounting bills, a full teaching schedule (with trumpet students whose playing makes him put cotton in his ears), late payments and upkeep of ten rental units, and constant movement of boarders and adult children through our home. Worry wears him out. Irritation at other people wears him out. And, sometimes, marriage wears him out.

But mostly, worries about money wear him out.

So he is flying to California on a free ticket, picking up an economy rental car (my Christmas gift to him, along with gas money), and staying for free with various family members along the California coast--Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica. He will float around for a week in balmy weather (please God), enjoy spectacular coastal scenery, play as much solitaire as he likes on his laptop, and try not to get irritated at all our relatives.

I am staying home, making meals for the students who board with us, cleaning toilets, sweeping floors, and meeting writing deadlines. We often vacation separately and shrug our shoulders at family and friends who look disapproving or suspicious. Yes, we like to get away together, but sometimes we just can't afford it. And the partings and reunitings are sweet.

However, when it's my husband's turn to vacation alone, I have to beg him not to worry. "What will it do for you? Can you name one benefit, one good thing your worrying will accomplish? All it will do is ruin your vacation, and not accomplish anything else. So let it go! Don't worry while you're out there!"

He will still worry, of course. He will sit overlooking the gentle Pacific, calm and blue and glistening in sunshine, stretching out to vast distance beyond eyesight and thought. He will look at this and worry about the cost of new furnaces and reroofing and plumbing repairs. And I will, in my weaker moments at home in the frozen Midwest, worry about his worrying. I worry that his worrying will rob him of well-earned pleasure and of being in the moment.

My Boss says simply, "Do not worry about your life. Period." Sometimes I think that I am better at listening to the Boss than my husband is. So I will give up, on the first day of this new year, worrying about my husband's tendency to worry. Instead, I will trust. I am being taken care of. He is being taken care of. I can see where worry and trust cannot go hand in hand. I choose trust. I pray that my husband will choose this also.

We can be together in that.