INTRODUCTION
The Adventures of MT & Sunshine
A Picture Memoir of a Bipolar Pastor & His Faithful Wife
0 to 60 in under 6 seconds. It has been said that a picture is worth 1,000 words. Well, in a manic state I can say enough to take you through a small picture album in less than 5 minutes. Riding the waves of energy, enthusiasm and grandiosity my most vital outlet tends to be writing, my most volatile tends to be talking. Sitting as the Executive Pastor of a large church only months ago I was supposed to be the strong and stable leader people looked to in our time of transition. However, the tumultuous tide of my racing thoughts were turning into a tsunami of cognitive discord within and I unintentionally hurt some unknown and unnamed people in my path.
The storm surge raging within my heart and mind ended in my third enigmatic dismissal in 5 years. Not only did I lose my seat of leadership at these churches, I lost my place of fellowship, entirely. With the evidence of confusing behavior in my wake, and the fear of future fallouts in their minds, I was removed from my post as Executive Pastor of “Third” Baptist Church on November 22nd, 2024.
This thrust my mind into a full blown mixed manic episode, without psychosis. I tethered myself to reality using the coping techniques learned over the last 5 years, and clinging to God’s faithfulness. Until 2 weeks ago I identified my behavior as panicked, not manic. I reasoned with my counselor that if I act frantic because I just encountered a bear around the corner then that is proper panic. If I act the same way because a feather fell on my face moments prior, that is manic.
In my mind I I had just encountered the bear of betrayal and a no-cause job loss for the third time in 5 years and I was frantically searching for vindication. Once I surrendered to the stream of thought that my job was gone for good I turned my dogged pursuit to, “What do I do next?” I know I am gifted with a passion for people, a gift of communication and a desire to share the Gospel. “Am I an evangelist? Am I writer? Am I trainer? Am I a coach? Where do I belong, God? Where is all this taking me, God?“
Re-enter MT & Sunshine. The two fictitious characters I had first conjured up in 2020, brought to pages in 2022, and turned digital with my son’s help only 2 weeks after my firing.
MT was named after my initials and after the word “empty.” He was a mountainous giraffe that loved to laugh, and saw all things in living colors. Sunshine was a beachy zebra who loved to teach, and saw things in black and white. Together they were going to scour the globe and teach children about seeing beauty in the ashes and the architecture, in the gardens and the graves.
MT would guide them into places like LaAmistad Behavioral Center (where I was voluntarily staying when these characters moved from my mind to the blank page in 2022) and Sunshine would show MT & their readers that seemingly scary places like medical hospitals and mental hospitals aren’t to be feared, but rather, appreciated. This tag team duo would set the world on fire and pave the way for me to get the message of hope and happiness into the hands of children all around the world.
Sitting with no job led me to grasp at straws and grow in my grandiose plans. At the height of my thought ascension MT and Sunshine were going to be the next Mickey and Minnie Mouse and I was going to pitch them to Disney. If I was going to do something so great I was going to need time, and I was going to need a team of support.
So I launched a GoFundMe page… and told people my plan.
My goal? $200,000.
You read that right. I was going to raise $200,000 to write my first kids’ book. God was going to spread my story around the world and that GoFundMe was going to be the channel I surfed into my purpose in life.
I messaged everyone I knew on Facebook and within 2 weeks I had raised… $135. Within 2 months I was coming off my mania mountaintop and I had changed my aim to raising $2,000 for a self-publishing effort. GoFundMe.
Disney was off the table.
This was one of a handful of plans that I devised in my heart between November 22nd and January 31st to find my place in the world, and to provide for my family of 5 growing boys and a wife that had walked by my side so faithfully.
In February I shifted focus from what am I going to do to consider why does this continue to happen? It has been through much introspection over the last six weeks that I am coming to grips with the makeup of my mind, both its thorns and its gifting. And in my post Bipolar Pastor I came out to all the world with a message of concession. I now turn my attention to the self-assessing and marriage-mending efforts of this book, The Adventures of MT & Sunshine.
It is not being written for kids, but it is being written for my kids, and it is being written for “you.” That “YOU” is me talking to myself and my hope to process my finally accepted diagnosis of bipolar. That “YOU” is me talking to anyone beyond myself that would take the time to read this, reminding those “YOU’s” that “You are not alone.” Lastly, the You is the Great You who once said, “Come to Me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give YOU rest.”
Hopeful for Rest,
Pastor MT
BIPOLAR PROCESSING: Bipolar disorder comes in a spectrum of ways and finds its most devastating holds upon those that attempt to do it alone. I have never shunned medical help. From the age of 11 I have been in and out of hospitals due to a hole in my heart, the need to have open heart surgery, and the need to monitor my health. My level of anxiety toward medical hospitals was extremely high until 2020, when my fears moved from medical facilities to mental facilities. This is why, when I served as a kids’ pastor from 2014-2020 I sought to integrate the stories of the Bible into the schoolhouses and the streets where they lived. I walked alongside children and their families as they faced the effects of suicide, cancer, and the heart-wrenching effects of divorce. Until 2020 Lisa and I had never really faced marital discord. We were each other’s biggest supporters and fans. Also, up to 2020 I had only been inside a mental facility as a loving brother to a schizoaffective sufferer, a concerned pastor visiting those in moments of mental anguish and distress. I had never been there as a patient until my first and only full mental breakdown in June of 2020. I had been leery of mental diagnoses in my past, and it took me 5 years to finally believe the initial diagnosis of bipolar. In my own stigmatizing of the illness I thought since I was harmless, since I was hurting inside for people, I wasn’t hurting myself, and I surely wasn’t hurting them, then I didn’t have bipolar. I was a pastor and I was called to walk a road of isolation and intentional leadership. I was a good pastor. I had always been promoted at every place I served when my gifts were realized… Until 2 weeks prior to my breakdown I didn’t have a problem, I was the product of other people’s problems. I moved off my medications after things returned to normal and I was sure my friend Tesha’s diagnosis was the truest explanation of my mental health anomaly when she told Lisa that she thought I was having a PTSD episode in 2022. I did and do have trauma in my life, and over the course of this memoir you will see how this trauma has been used to help me minister to others, and you will see how this trauma has triggered movements into mania and depression alike. I write from the vantage point that all of humanity is broken and there is a real God that seeks to restore us physically, emotionally, spiritually and relationally. Someone having bipolar doesn’t relegate them to their disorder. I have heard countless testimonies of how loved ones will give no credence to their frustrations and minor outbursts of emotion, writing their genuine and appropriate showing of emotion off as, “it’s okay, that’s not them, that’s their bipolar.” This is crazy dangerous not only in the fact that it marginalizes those with bipolar, but it also gives them the license to hurt people and claim innocence by flashing their “bipolar badge.” Over the last 5 years I don’t feel I was fighting AGAINST my diagnosis, but I was fighting WITH it. In this season I was looking out for others, but in the sweeping stress of these last 3-seasons-punctuated-by-pink-slips I am able to see that somewhere along the way I moved from being a passionate man of God, into a problematic manic of God. I allowed the proverbial panic buttons of problems-seen to become my purpose and pursuit. I saw people’s problems as mine to solve and I gave into the grandiose and distorted views of my personhood. I fell victim to a bipolar’s greatest danger: PRIDE. Looking back over the photos of my life I recognize this unwanted character quality in my life can be spotted in both the manic and the depressive moments. In the moments when I overstepped my place as a father, husband and pastor I ashamedly took my seat alongside the Savior and acted as a sovereign in other people’s situations displaying pride. God needed my help. In the moments when I sunk into the solace of self-pity, shame and mental anguish I did so also because of pride. Pride in myself and the betraying belief that God couldn’t help me. In the throes of these seasons of highs and lows I see now that I hurt so many people along the way. Why? Because I am bipolar? Sure. A more complete answer is explored below as I look back at these times and thoughts through the lens of the Bible.
BIBLE PROCESSING: Two of my heroes of the faith, John Newton (author of Amazing Grace) and Charles Spurgeon (a preacher mightily used by God) spoke to the need to not only spend time reading the Bible, but also, the newspaper. It was their belief that through a purposed perusing of the newspapers one was able to identify where the world was lacking most readily and they were able to apply the grace-laced words of the Gospel more aptly. Well, it is my hope that as I continue in writing this memoir about my journey with Bipolar alongside my wife and 5 sons that I will allow the “Processing” portions of my posts to invite readers to understand my interpretation of the events of my life, the musings of my mind, and the medicinal nature of Truth believed. Ever since my first major adult battle with anxiety and depression in 2004 Lisa, my Sunshine, has been by my side bombarding me with the truths of Scripture and the promises of God. It was in the early throes of depression that she first started buying wallet-sized Scripture memory verse cards from the Toccoa Fall College bookstore. These miniaturized corny depictions of a cat sprawled out on the beach and paired with a passage of Scripture in small print were vital. I found myself often pulling them out of my wallet and reading words like, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.” If you aren’t familiar with the words of Philippians 4:6-7, and yet you are familiar with the ravaging effects of anxiety and fear, then I bet something happened within your soul as you just read those words for the first time. Make no mistake, I believe that what just happened was the truth of God was read over your weary heart and for a brief moment your sorrows were suspended by the soul-freeing, life-giving waters that a dry, dusty, and desperate soul craves at its core…God’s Word. You see, this memoir is far more a testimony of God’s faithfulness in my life and a confession to my own wandering heart that God can be trusted, than it is a mere biographical concession of having a disorder that is diagnosed by doctors. I believe that all of humanity was designed by God to know Him and to find our greatest purpose in glorifying His Son, Jesus Christ. I believe since the Fall described in Genesis 3 we have all been born with defective hearts and minds, but with a remnant of the divine image stamped on us all. We are beautifully broken, and God is in the business of taking broken pieces, and turning them into Masterpieces. In these posts I set my sights backwards with the hopes of also looking “inward” (Bipolar Processing) at the movements of my mind, and “upward” (Bible processing) at the worship of my Creator. My hopes is that I won’t dwell in the past, but that I will draw from it a deeper courage in my journey and a greater resolve to trust God moving forward. The site of most of my Bible Processing paragraphs will likely be Psalm 119, a ravine of respite for my often wandering heart that I often run to in moments of despair and dreaming. I will speak more on this passage in the coming chapters of my memoir but for now let me once again remind us both of Philippians 4:6-7 words of encouragement. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God, and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and mind in Christ Jesus.” Well, here’s to finding peace!
BOOK PRODUCING: If you have taken the time to read all three sections above then let me start by saying, Thank You! It is my intent to invite you along the journey with me as I post each 1,000 word chapter of my memoir onto my website, coachmtworx.com. Each new post will eventually have 1,000 words on the dot in the main picture processing portion of the post. These 1,000 words will be followed by 2 sections of run-on-ramblings. If you are looking to just know my story then reading the first 1,000 words is sufficient to keep you up to speed. If you are interested in knowing my bipolar workings then reading the Bipolar Processing section will help you see more details of the lessons I am learning today and seeing take shape through the memories and moments of my past. If you are looking for a source of respite and strength in your personal battle with mental health issues (p.s. I believe we all have mental health problems because our minds are prone to wander from our Creator into worlds of fear, pride, narcissism, depression, anxiety, mania, anger, etc. and repentance, the changing of our mind, is the daily task of every Christ follower) then I encourage you to read the Bible Processing section at the end. If you have time to write a response in the comments section I promise you that every time you do so they breathe a breath of fresh air that fuels my future writings. Thanks for reading this far, I’ll see you at the first stop on our Adventure, inviting you back to the year 1982 where Family Trees, Traumas and Truths.
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