Perfectionism, I Hate You

I've thought about resurrecting this blog for a while.   I get an idea, make a mental note to write something, once in a while starting writing, and then...nothing comes of it.   This endless procrastination is partly due to a very busy schedule, but if I'm honest with myself there's another force at work.    Perfectionism. 

I used to dismiss the idea that I have any perfectionist tendencies because, Duh, its pretty obvious that I'm not perfect.    But with time and an array of humbling experiences, I have learned that perfectionism is far more subtle a creature than one might think.   Oh its there, lurking behind many of the things I say and do.  

The tricky part is spotting it.   

"Don't let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy" from the Eagles' Take it Easy is one of my favorite song lines.   As anxieties pile up throughout the day to create a sense of pressure and urgency that comes from a hundred different places, it can feel like trying to go up a downward escalator - always moving but never getting anywhere.   Enter mental exhaustion.

Some stress is unavoidable as we try to meet our daily obligations and responsibilities.   But really, I find myself asking, does God expect my inward state to be frazzled and frustrated all the time?   No.   Striving to be a good parent, wife, employee, daughter, friend, etc. and accepting the fact that I will fail in each of these areas is liberating.   Enter freedom and grace.   

But I can't do it alone.  Jesus beckons us to give up our quest for self-sufficiency.    "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).   The word for "rest" in the Greek is to give oneself a chance to stop all activity in order to recover one's strength.    My selfish nature will forever be prone to get things right on my own strength, but since I know that I cannot possibly meet this standard, I can be at peace and replenish my spirit with the "living water" that Jesus encouraged the woman at the well to drink (John 4:10).  

The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”   John 4:9-14

Part-Time Love (Is Not)

I recently read about a new type of dating website that aims to give busy singles just what they want: intimacy with only a bit of commitment required.  The website states: "...thousands of single people who expressed a desire to fall in love, but daunted by the demands of the typical relationship: Commitment demands that you share a bed, merge your holidays, spend every Sunday together.  No wonder so many relationships fail with such a job-description." 

In the accompanying book by Helen Croyden, Screw the Fairytale: A Modern Girl's Guide to Sex and Love, she describes the "shackles of commitment" as "terrifying" and "boring alternative models of relationships".   

To be fair, I haven't read the book.  But it's presumptions are pretty clear from the description. 

Is commitment boring?   Are there any great movies or books depicting true love or real friendship that do not require commitment, sacrifice, and faithfulness?   No, because there wouldn't be much of a story to tell.   Sadly, a person who lives life this way wouldn't have much of a story to tell either.  There would be interesting moments but nothing special if a person is preoccupied with self-interest his or her whole life.    

I wonder what would happen to the world if the majority of us chose to live this way?  The real tragedy here is that this type of perspective utterly underestimates people.  It sells us short by dismissing our most noble qualities: faithfulness, loyalty, fidelity, and a willingness to sacrifice for one another.    And, yes, marital love can be terrifying when your spouse is sick or dies and you're helpless to change anything.  

 Relationships fail not because people have to share beds, holidays, and Sundays.   They fail because people enter into the commitment from a self-seeking perspective.   Their expectations, if they've bought into the world's version of romance and love, are probably close to the fairy tale that Helen Croyden rightly dismisses as unrealistic.   

Romance is not love, only a part of it.   The foundation of love is sacrifice because real love is self-less.   A passage in 1 Corinthians is heard frequently at weddings.   Consider for a moment how radically different this description of love is compared to the "modern" concept of love:

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;  does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails...(13:4-8a)

Real love is wonderful, terrifying, painful, glorious.    It is how our Creator loves us and reflecting that love in marriage is one of humanity's highest callings.   

Thoughts on Depression Part II

The brain, to me, is the most fascinating and unique part of the human body.    Like any other organ, things can go wrong in the brain.   Unlike other body parts, however, imbalances in the brain are complex and difficult to sort out because of this uniqueness.   What other body part can be so directly affected by our own attitudes and experiences?   (Maybe the digestive system but we don't think with it so that's another matter).   Genetic factors aside, an individual's perception of the world and consequent behaviors can affect the state of the brain.  

I will never be a brain expert, but Dr. Greg Knopf, who I mentioned in a previous post (Thoughts on Depression Part I) is just that.   He also views the brain and all its quirks from a biblical worldview, and rightly so, for the human mind is surely one of God's most amazing creations.   

 Hormones called neurotransmitters are the key to understanding brain imbalances.    A deficiency in an essential neurotransmitter is not the same as a depressed mood, which is experienced by everyone at times.   Dr. Knopf puts it this way, "If the brain does not have an adequate amount of these hormones, the body’s nerve-messages don’t get delivered, and the body begins to malfunction. Some people inherit a tendency to have low hormone levels because their nerve cells either break down more of the hormones than other people’s do, or their body simply does not make enough of them."

A traumatic experience, such as divorce or death of a family member, can deplete the brain of neurotransmitters because it basically gets stuck in overdrive, or a high alert state.   For some people, this can lead to a prolonged depletion of neurotransmitters and the brain needs help "bouncing back".  Fortunately, time, rest, and wise counsel can often heal the brain.   God can heal anything in any way, but He also heals through medicine and this is  the case for the brain at times.   

There is a lot of misinformation about antidepressants and how they work.   The name "antidepressant" itself is a little misleading because people associate it with achieving an unnatural high, similar to what addictive drugs, such as narcotics, do.    Antidepressants don't do this and they are not addictive; they actually bring depleted levels of serotonin and other neurotransmitters back to normal levels.   

As Dr. Knopf's explains in the video below, "Antidepressants helps the body conserve what you've already made."  Conserve what we've already made for normal functioning.   Therein lies the difference between so-called recreational drugs and antidepressants.     The video also shows what happens when the brain is overstimulated by too much of a neurotransmitter and the unpleasant consequences of this.   
 

Sources:  http://depressionoutreach.com/
http://www.sermoncentral.com/articlec.asp?article=gregory-knopf-understanding-depression-medication&Page=1&ac=&csplit=9060

Downton Abbey: Facing Evil Alone

 I'm not much of a TV watcher but I was captured by Downton Abbey from the first ring of a servant's bell.   The events of this past week's show (Season 4, episode 2) were a little traumatizing.   Anna, arguably the kindest character in the series, is sexually assaulted by a visiting servant while her husband, and everyone else, is upstairs listening to a guest's opera performance.     The characters have endured heartbreaking losses and behaved badly at times but this event is the most depraved of all.    Anna is found afterward by Mrs. Hughes, the housekeeper, and makes her promise to tell no one, not even her husband Bates, what happened.   Her reaction to the attack initially seems counter-intuitive.    Not even her husband?!  

The show closed with Anna appearing very traumatized but determined to be silent.  Why?  Why not let her husband Bates go after her attacker immediately while he's still around?  For one thing, Anna knows Bates would be so angry he might kill him.  Good reasoning since she doesn't want to lose her husband to prison or the death penalty.  The more complex reason may be the social stigma she would have to endure in an era that was not kind to women of any class.   In other words, her entire future would be in jeopardy.   In our era, women are encouraged to seek help immediately in such a situation and generally have immediate resources to rely upon.   But not Anna.

The most disturbing aspect of this storyline is that it was a reality faced by some women during that time.   Although innocent, the victim could pay an even higher price by seeking justice.   Short of funeral scenes, the Downton Abbey producers rarely include anything about spirituality so this deeper aspect of the characters' lives is never developed.   We will probably see signs of depression in the normally cheerful Anna as she carries this awful secret alone (except for the housekeeper).   However she deals with it, internalizing trauma will have a profoundly negative impact on her.   

Of course, the storyline has to develop so I'm guessing eventually other characters will know about it.  In the meantime, what could Anna (or anyone who's ever been in a similar situation) do?    There is One who she can go to for help.   God views rape as a grave offense.   Deut. 22:25-27 states:

But if in the open country a man meets a young woman who is betrothed, and the man seizes her and lies with her, then only the man who lay with her shall die. But you shall do nothing to the young woman; she has committed no offense punishable by death.  For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.

Society in that era might try to lay some of the blame on Anna (e.g. "She must've provoked him") but God makes it clear that she is to be viewed as an innocent victim.   No excuses!   Supposing justice never comes for Anna and the man is never held accountable to anyone, there is still comfort in the knowledge that God will not let it go.   Although God is love (1 John 4:8), he is also a warrior (Exo 15:3), a and defender of the weak and helpless (Ps 68:5).   Someday those who commit such crimes and never repent will stand before God and it will be absolutely terrifying, for Hebrews 10:31 states,  "It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."

Thoughts on Depression Part I

Sometimes you have to learn stuff the hard way.   The positive thing about learning the hard way is that, despite the pain of it, the lesson usually sticks.    Seven years ago, I learned a lot about the title of this post the hard way.   When I was pregnant with my first child, I had heard of postpartum depression but I had only a passing interest, if that.   I'm a naturally cheerful person so what was about to happen to me was so unexpected that I was in complete denial until my daughter was two years old.   

The nutshell version is that before I left the hospital with my baby, I was fighting against a state of despair and extreme exhaustion but unable to sleep.   Some part of me knew this wasn't normal but for some reason I just couldn't recognize it.   Looking back, I struggle to understand how I couldn't see what is now so obvious.   This was a whole new world and I made sure I hid this from everyone.  I just kept smiling and saying everything was fine - even to my husband.  

Dr. Greg Knopf is an expert on depression and he's done much to shed light on this issue in the Christian community.   He writes that people often struggle to recognize depression because depressive symptoms, "... often suggest to those who experience them that they may have some kind of low grade virus or some other illness that is dragging them down. That’s why many eventually end up at the office of their primary care physician, looking for a diagnosis that would provide a solution."    

One of the most profound lessons I took away from my experience is learning the difference between sad, depressed feelings due to an external circumstance and a physiological depletion of essential neurotransmitters (e.g. serotonin).    The word depletion seems to characterize it well.   I think of a sad mood as a mental state in which there's an addition of sad feelings.   Clinical depression is an absence of essential neurotransmitters that create a sense of well-being and normal energy levels; its a negative state. 

The origin of depression is complex and many factors, such as genetics, can play a role.   It can also be brought on by our own choices, especially when drug abuse is involved because of its effect on brain chemistry.   There is no shortage of  opinions on depression and certainly so within the church.   Our natural instinct is to base our beliefs about depression   on our own personal experiences.  In other words, we tend to think subjectively about it instead of objectively.    Thinking objectively about an emotional topic is difficult, but this becomes less challenging as we learn more about it.  

It is not easy to write about this topic in such a personal way and I've postponed it for a long time.  Even so,  I can honestly say that I've gained more than lost from the experience. 




Dr. Greg Knopf, http://depressionoutreach.com/