Less sick leave, more like convalescent leave

It feels very stange to be on sick leave now when in many ways I am better than I was in  the weeks leading up to Christmas when I was managing to work.  It is part of the feeling awkward about not working when there are things I would be up to doing.
(Covenant prayer line 'let me be employed for you or laid aside for you' comes to mind)

Afterall I am here blogging, I go out to the bank, I even went to sign up at the local gym – on doctor’s orders, not my own volition.  On sick leave and off to the gym everyday – people get spied on by benefits checks for such things.

But then Depression isn’t a physical thing as such –although it does have physical effects, and according to those who have been in touch  with me this physical exercise wil be a Good Thing.

But back to feelings about being on sick  now rather than at the start of my crash. As well as the reassaurance of others that I am doing the right thing, and knowing it in my sensible bit of brain, I find this image helpful -

Imagine you are cycling along (I have to imagine as I can’t stay up on 2 wheels) and you reach a downhill slope, on the way down you have momentum,  you are still on the bike, and steering like mad, although aware that gravity is in more control than you are. As it plateaus out at the bottom, you heave a sigh of relief that you made it in one piece. There is no hurry there although it’s a grim place to loiter. You think that the worst is over when out of the fog you see the  path ahead is an uphill climb, the quick route is far too steep, but the steadier climb might take a bit longer, and still need you to get off the bike and push for a while.

So just because momentum and gravity enabled me to stay on the ministry bike on the way down doesn’t take away the need to get off it in order to climb gently up.

See I understand the logic and need, just that when I read of others facing bigger challenges I feel guilty of making a fuss over something much less. 

Anyway I have a couple of weeks with permission to do nothing but climb up a bit, rest a bit and climb some more, rest some more, whilst others collect the bike and dust it off ready for me to get back on again.  And with the new meds and push to exercise maybe I may be better off at the end than before the downhill ride.

Analyse that.....

With Christmas still drifting in our ears, Iam reminded that 'Mary pondered these things in her heart'. Well I do more than ponder them, I analyse things, read into them, read out of them, all looking for the terrible worst case options.

With the therapy that came with my breakdown a number of years ago we discussed this level of paranoia, and the need to analyse for fear of something awful.  I thought I had it largely under control, but when I am low - up it pops with full force.

Today for example - it is the end of my official holiday leave, and I have had to face up to the fact that I am not ready to go back to work. If it were not for the holiday I would have faced this a couple of weeks ago. So I contacted some of the relevant people by email and since then it has all gone haywire.

Ok so the end result is that I will drag myself from my bed to go to the doctors for a note tomorrow and everyone is fine about me taking a couple of weeks off despite the hassle for others covering my sunday appointments at short notice.

But the way there was via some misunderstandings, and my huge emotional reaction to what I thought was being said. And it is scary to find how active some of those old buttons I thought we had disarmed can be. They have been triggered with such force that I couldn't see anything but those fears in what I read. I read not concern for me but a worry that I am not coping with the job as a whole. In college when the breakdown hit there was reason to think that 'they' would never let me be a minister, and suddenly I find that after a couple of years with no crises either in the job or in my depression, and objectively no reason to question my long term capability, the fear of being shut down is still so acute.

It is scary to find that in low times I am really as fragile as ever. Perhaps the point is that we are never made less fragile in our core - but when well we have more layers of bubble wrap to absorb the knocks of life. And the past few weeks burst my last few bubbles and I just have limp plastic around my weaknesses.

So right now I am dealing with the shock of how vulnerable I am at the moment, whilst tying myself in knots about how I reacted to emails and phone conversations today, where it all went wrong, and what people will think of me etc.

And I need to be more real about myself - I talk the talk of openness about my life with depression and fighting the stigma, but to need to actually take time off work, that feels like failure. But failure of what? Failure to be the superhero who can manage life and ministry with depression.  Hello reality!

Celebrating the changes...

Over the last few weeks I have been helping at the local village youth club - taking over from an Anglican colleague who has moved on to pastures new.

Let me state that again so you realise the significance -
I - me who was bullied and terrified of teens for years - am helping to run - by choice! - the local youth club - not the ordered school classes but ad hoc 'hanging out' teens - and learning to enjoy it

It was the bullying that set me on the road to depression and to be a suicidal teenager who avoided other teens then and for years after that. At the end of last term I faced a school year of 14/15 yr olds which was a huge hurdle and terrifying - and they had their teachers to keep them in order!

So coming home one day in August to a phone call asking if I would get involved in the youth club was a step further. I agreed to go on the committee, and of course needed to go along to know what we were dealing with - but I wasn't signing up to all Friday nights, no way, not for me.  Yet 3 sessions later and I am committed, the other leaders are weary and need fresh blood, the teens have potential, and through the advice of an expert friend who visited us last week I have ideas and am encouraged that even I could do something meaningful. 

I find my own way of relating - I took some craft along and chatted over the doing, it is not me to just 'hang with the gang' but over a bit of woodburning I get over the gap and fear and it is just sharing an interest together then without trying general chat happens.

This job brings me face to face with challenges that my instinct is to hide from and I find that either I am able to survive it, or do okay, or sometime to actually learn to enjoy what I previously feared. Only with an assurance of God with me do I dare to confront things, and sometimes survival is the highest goal available.

But I want to say that the cords that bind us can be broken, they do not need to define our whole life, even if they have shaped our past.

Does that mean I live a life of total victory and joy - no. Life is too complex for that, but I can celebrate the gains, rejoice in the upward shifts and pat my own back even as I thank God.

The power of the finish line

Tonight my mood has lifted - a project has crossed the finish line, one of my church halls has had new flooring fitted. The planning is over, the fundraising done, and debates about the details drift into history. Yet just a few days ago when the 'oops' episodes of the planning left me in a flap the same project pressed my insecurity buttons - I had messed up some bits therefore I was a failure at this and maybe life too. But tonight we crossed the finish line, the carpet fitters left and we moved the chairs back in, stand back, take a photo, admire the end product - and feel the pride of achievement.

When I was preparing to be trained as a minister I was advised to find a hobby that had a clear end result - a finish line - because this is a job that has fuzzy edges and not a lot of clear visible results. It was good advice - and not just for ministers. So much of life has no end point - from housework to parenting, from mowing the lawn or weeding to the never ending flow of paperwork - and so we never reach that moment of stepping back to mark an achievement.

I am coming to believe in the vital importance of the finish line, the crossing off of an item on the To Do List, the milestone markers...   Pyschologically we need the opportunity to celebrate what we have done, or how far we have travelled in life. When all the attention is on the things yet to be done we can be overwhelmed, we feel small and weak compared to the demands that are being made and the challenges ahead.  That can apply to normal life, and can be felt acutely in depression.

We are climbing great mountians and are so busy struggling along or daunted by the path ahead that we don't pause to look behind and see all we have already achieved to get to here, the obstacles we have survived.  The finish line may be a way off but there are staging posts, like the Tour de France - a single race and yet also a series of daily races.

What can you celebrate at the end of a day, week, month, year? It might be something with a fancy, glossy edge to it, or it might be the power and strength of surviving. (I nearly said 'merely surviving' but the truth is there is no 'merely' about it in the tough times, it is a huge achievement).

So I will smile at the nice shiny new church hall floor and for now, for tonight, set aside the list of the unfinished. Celebrating this finish line will give me new hope and strength to face the next, believing that I can.

Back to teen angst.

Being a minister is a strange job - every day is different, this week I will be talking to a large group of yr 10 pupils of one of the local schools. It is part of their RE class and I am to talk about the spiritual life.  I could do a profound presentation on the christian spiritual tradition, but instead I am going to talk about the spiritual life of the Weeble!

Basically I have very few positive memories of being their age, I was a misfit, bullied through primary and comp. As a teenager I tried to rush into being an adult, and I am grateful for the coping strategies I developed in sealing me off. The alternative route - trying anything to be accepted - could have led me into some seriously damaging paths.

Not that my own survival plan didn't leave scars - I left the barriers up for so many years that I failed to learn how to be me or to be with others. It is only during counselling following a full depressive breakdown a few years ago that I had to dig myself out from behind the then collapsed walls.

Since then I have been a woman with a mission - to let people know it is ok to be one of the wobbly ones. We all are in some way or another at some stage in life, but because society and stigma discourage us from talking about problems that are emotional or relational we often carry things alone when we could be helping each other along.

So back to the 14/15 yr olds - my spiritual life has been shaped like the rest of me by the tough stuff in life, my faith had its ups and downs in that but at the depths I found God was there too. So that's what I want to tell them about spiritual journeys.