Silas was coming and I needed to get our house in order. There were several things we were facing within the school system and with the boys that made this season a little rocky. However, what seemed to be the greatest provoker of my emotional distress was learning the story of my father’s final hours. See Chapter on Family Trees. Until this point in time I had never heard about Pastor Jim and the paranoia that the police were out to kill him. It was through my oldest brother that I began to learn these things and I began to feel a great deal of shame and guilt over ostracizing him my entire life.

So real was this guilt that I took it upon myself to seek out a Biblical counselor at Bellevue Baptist Church. Because of COVID I began meeting with him over Zoom. At this same time my wife was teaching AP Psych and had come across a section on Bipolar Disorder. When she read the symptoms she was convinced that this explained a lot of things happening in my life and she sought to share this with me on the corner of our bed one afternoon. I read the symptoms but reasoned in my mind, this also sounds like someone who is walking intimately with God and is experiencing revival in his life. I was sleeping, I just wasn’t sleeping 8 hours. I was sleeping 4-5 hours at night, sneaking out of bed to make my way into my prayer closet. The energy that was pulsating through my veins was enabling me to pray for those in my family, my ministry and in my community. I was seeing everything in vibrant color, but my wife’s concerns grew as my behavior was not always rational.

I dismissed her concerns because walking by faith isn’t always rational, and I assured her I was fine. Over the course of the next few weeks her concerns were not relieved so she reached out to my counselor and shared her theory on bipolar and sought his advice. He initially responded in an affirming email that he had wondered if this were the case and assured her that she would have the best vantage point to speak from. When she got that email she immediately asked him for psychiatrist recommendations and told him how Dr. Stephen Rice had passed away since I had first gone to him. She heard nothing back from him for the next month.

The silence of his response put her at ease a bit thinking, “I guess it is not that big of a deal.” The fact is, it was a big deal to my counselor and he took it upon himself to share my wife’s concerns in a conversation with one of his old friends from Bellevue, Daniel. Daniel just so happened to be my boss at church and over the next several weeks Daniel began working behind the scenes to get our family help. I believe it was in this time that Daniel called me into his office for a second time and shared that concerns had been voiced about how I was acting. When I asked who was sharing these concerns I was told that information couldn’t be shared with me.

I was lost in that moment not knowing how to fix something that wasn’t wrong, but just “off.” I had no clue who had concerns about me and I was frustrated that no one was willing to confront me with actual things I had done. The first week of June I was called to the church and when I turned the corner I saw 5 or 6 cars and I immediately called Lisa. “Daniel is trying to run me out of the church. What is happening, Lisa?” She quieted my worries and I went into the church only to find a group of 8 men gathered around our conference table.

At the head of the table was an open chair. I took my seat in front of these men and the next 20 minutes seemed to last an eternity as I was handed a sheet of paper officially placing me on a “Leave of Absence.” The leave said I would receive my full salary as long as I sought medical help from a specific psychiatrist, I focused on fixing my family, and the final clause said I couldn’t come to church for work or for worship.” Despite my efforts to express my confusion in what was happening I was told that if I didn’t sign the paper I would be fired and given no financial compensation.

I signed the paper, got in my car, and fell into the deepest pit of despair I had ever known. What was going on? When I say I had no clue what was happening I mean, I had no clue. I had sensed Daniel growing uneasy around me, but I didn’t understand where the uneasiness was coming from.

When I got home to Lisa and the boys we cried together. We counseled together. We tried our best to make sense of what was happening, but nothing made sense. I believe it was while I was talking with Stoney Wisley that I grew indignant toward what was happening and realized that this Leave of Absence was on the level of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5 where he told the church to excommunicate a man who had been sleeping with his mother-in-law and the church was boasting about their tolerance.

I wasn’t just being told I couldn’t come to work, I was being told I was disqualified from worshipping with my church family. I remember telling Stoney, something isn’t right. You have to call this council of men together and they have to make sense of all of this.

That night they did just that. With the men that could gather on one end of the phone, and my wife and I on the other end of the phone, we started talking about the severity of these wishes. These men, for the first time, listened as my wife was speaking out against their actions towards me and I was answering their accusations against me. Somewhere around 20 minutes into the call my wife was saying something to one of the men there and he said something that clicked with Lisa.

I remember like it was yesterday her response, “She pressed mute on the phone, looked at me and said, “Mike, this is all my fault.” What do you mean? “Mike, if I talked to your counselor, he couldn’t talk to Daniel, could he?” I don’t know, Lisa. Why?

It was there in that closet that I first learned about the email my wife sent to my counselor expressing her concerns about me having bipolar. It was there in that closet that my mind moved from the hypomanic state that it was in to full-throttle ahead. Over the course of the next 9 days I may have managed 6-10 hours of sleep. I was determined to uncover the truth and I was certain that I would be restored to my position as the Kids Pastor at my church.

Needless to say, averaging less than 1 hour a sleep for over a week is not good for anyone, and in the next chapter I will share with you the horror story of my mental breakdown. A breakdown that saw me being taking involuntarily to the psych unit of a local hospital and then transferred to a private mental health facility. The total length of my stay would be 11 days and the parting gift I would be given was an official bipolar diagnosis and a pink slip that removed all chances of returning to work at my church.