As I look back over the landscape of my life I can now see two truths traversing the terrain of my journey. I have a calling and I have a condition. It was Jeremiah who declared that God set him apart from his mother’s womb. The Divine had a clear plan for the prophet and as he traced the fingerprints of God on his life he realized that they were on Him even before his first baby photo in the hospital. The beauty of this declaration allowed Jeremiah to make sense of his calling in light of the condition of his humanity and his calling from God.
I am not sure how the Spirit of God settled this Divine discovery in the heart of Jeremiah but I can share with you how He has made it known to me. Over the last five years I have wrestled with a medical diagnosis called Bipolar. I first received it after having a mental breakdown in the middle of the COVID shutdown and I first came to openly disclose it after losing my third job in five years due to mental health concerns. Nearly two months of traveling a road of vengeance, vindication mixed with depression, anxiety and feelings of abandonment left me in a place where I was forced to take a long look back at my life. As the dust was settling for me occupationally, the anxiety of repeating the same mistakes for a third time became too much for me to handle.
“I have bipolar.” It was the first time in 5 years that I had admitted to the condition that I could now trace back to my childhood days. My father was manic the night he was hit by a car, having just left the pastor’s house telling them the cops were going to kill him that night. He and my mom had been in and out of mental hospitals over the last five years of his life. That night would end my father’s earthly battle with mental health and usher him into the presence of Jesus.
When Jeremiah said “from my mother’s womb” he was chosen, he wasn’t merely speaking to the Divine Nature of his call, but he was intertwining it with the DNA and family setting of his formative years. Well, if that is the case then God’s plan for me wasn’t thwarted by the traumatic experiences I faced in childhood, it was fostered and founded in those places. And that is where I have traveled to in numerous counseling and therapy sessions over the last 5 years, and in countless journaling sessions that have found me using the bifurcated lenses of my Bible and my bipolar to scour the rocky and romantic roads of my journey.
What I was unaware that I would discover is the freedom that coupled my concession to having bipolar. Until having this lens to look at the internal wrestlings of my heart I had a duplicitous journey in my heart with Jesus. One year I would want nothing more than to see Him working in and through me, the next month or two I could find no comfort in the darkness and despair of my depression. I would cry out for help from everyone I knew, pastors, friends, and most often, my immediate family. I would weigh down my wife with the sorrows of my soul far too often with no ill-will, only a deep longing for relief. In my personal wrestlings with the Lord I would find myself fighting against the thinking, “I’m so afraid, I don’t have faith, I’m a fraud.” These thoughts would cause me to throw myself on the mercy of God in the quiet moments of my life, the moments of solitude that sometimes turned into moments of seclusion. I would find peace in the fact that Jesus is and always has been my only plea for salvation and I would leave clinging to the thought, “I am afraid, but I am not a fraud, I am a friend of God.”
When I spoke into the airways of my own soul, and then trumpeted the truth to the circles in my life that I have bipolar and I am getting help I experienced a wave of victory over my anxiety and worry. Victory that I have known in small doses all along my journey with Jesus. Victory that comes when truth sets you free from another “captivating” thought that is “taken captive to the obedience of Christ.” Looking into my past through the lenses of the Bible and my bipolar has allowed me to discover that this disorder has always been with me, but so too has my God. The condition has appeared under various given titles like “General Anxiety Disorder,” “Separation Anxiety Disorder,” “PTSD,” and now most recently… “Bipolar.” My calling also has appeared under various given titles like “Recreation Pastor,” “College Pastor,” “Kids Pastor,” “Senior Pastor,” “Discipleship Pastor,” and “Executive Pastor.” In the end when the dust settles I am able to see that when I have handed my bipolar mind over to the Lord it has led to creativity, conviction, and passion that has changed many people’s lives for the better. When I have found myself being swept away in the emotions, anxieties and fears of my bipolar it has caused great hurt and heartache to those I love.
To say that I wish I would have listened to my wife’s concerns back in 2020 before my mental breakdown is to only look at my life from one angle. Had I not traveled this road of misery and majesty, hurt and healing, betrayal and restoration, I am not sure I would be who I am today. I am a person like all of you woefully broken by the Fall, but bountifully loved by the Father. The condition that most describes both my thorn and my gift is Bipolar. The calling that most describes God’s plan to use my thorn and my gift is Pastor. Having fought ignorantly with this disease for 43 years and found victory in meditation, mediation and medication makes me hopeful that moving forward I can continue to follow Christ boasting all the more in my weakness.
God is surely in the business of taking broken pieces and turning them into Masterpieces. It is my hope to take the time to tackle texts through the lens of a Bipolar Pastor who wants to help others find strength and solace in the texts of Scripture. As an Athlete I still remember being given FCA Bibles for Athletes that presented devotional guides that spoke specifically to the place where athletes lived and operated on a day-to-day basis. These Bibles embraced the fact that athletics was such a large part of people’s lives and they looked to build a bridge into their worlds. I hope to do the same with any and every post tagged as Bipolar Bible Breakthroughs. Often bipolars are stigmatized for having mental health breakdowns, however, there are many Bipolar Bible Breakthroughs that I believe God can use to speak hope and health into the spaces that He might not fully heal. I am a pastor that is praying for God to do mighty things amongst a people that is fully aware of my mental health condition. Their trust in me to vote me in as their next pastor after hearing of my battle with bipolar over the last 5 years has helped me find greater peace in sharing My Condition and My Call.