Posts Tagged ‘“prayer warrior”’
Letting Not Normal Be Normal
Posted on: November 8, 2015
First, a word to all who read this blog. I started this blog mostly as a way to get all the words that kept tumbling ‘round and ‘round inside my head OUT of my head. I knew my mom would read my posts and probably share the blog with her friends, if only because her “baby” wrote it – moms are like that. I expected that some of my friends would read it because, well, they’re my friends, but I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect as to whether anyone ELSE would consider it worthwhile to read. It is validating, exhilarating, frightening and humbling to find that there are those who do. For each of you, I am grateful. If you like any post, the greatest compliment you can pay me is to share it with others, whether by FB, email, or print. (However you share it, please include the link to the blog site and my name as author.) A word of thanks also to all of you who have sent or said words of encouragement. I treasure them. If you particularly like some point, or especially if you particularly disagree with some point, or question a conclusion, please do comment. I would love for this to be more interactive and less of a monologue. Now on to the post….
A few months ago there was a letter to the editor in our local paper complaining about people in parking lots who take handicapped parking places. The writer wasn’t complaining about cars without a handicap license plate or without a placard hanging from the rearview mirror. No, she was complaining about those who HAVE those legal permissions but who “obviously” are healthy enough that they don’t NEED to use those parking places.
This isn’t a new accusation to those guilty of that “crime.” Although they are occasionally accosted directly in parking lots, more often they find themselves the recipients of dirty looks or nasty notes left on their windshield – or are the target of letters to the editor. The frustration is that heart conditions such as congestive heart failure, lung conditions such as cystic fibrosis, muscle conditions such as fibromyalgia, joint conditions such as arthritis, along with many other conditions, can result in a severe limitation on stamina qualifying a person to use handicapped parking, but none affect the physical appearance. Sometimes people end up not using the space they are legally entitled to use, no matter what it costs them physically, because they get tired of people accusing them. It’s just easier to pretend to be what people assume you are.
Recently, I have talked with both the middle school and high school youth groups at church about my journey with The Monster, from the depression that started in high school to my diagnosis with bipolar in 2010, what life has been like since and what the future likely holds. I did a FB post about having to up my bipolar meds and asking friends to please clue me in if they notice anything amiss. In all the cases, I received statements of commendation for speaking so candidly, for being “open” and “vulnerable”. I appreciate the intention of being supportive and encouraging. I do, truly.
Yet the fact that my speaking of these things is deemed to merit such note is … sad. It should not have to TAKE courage to speak up about being mentally ill. Taking head meds should require no more self-consciousness than does taking insulin. But the fact is that we mentally ill often feel that pressure to appear “normal” because we LOOK normal. We can be afraid to “confess” our not-normalness and be moved from the “us” category to the “them”.
I have a laundry list of physical problems – hypothyroid, fibromyalgia, migraines, to name just the ones readers are most likely to be familiar with. I have had 13 major surgeries, I lost count of the MRIs, CTs, X-rays and ER visits years ago. I have had a number of rare conditions pop up. If there’s a highly unlikely way to react to a drug … I’ll do it. (Do NOT tell me odds, please – my body takes it as a challenge!) I have to take a whole pile of pills a day to stay functional. I speak of these conditions without hesitation because they are my physical reality. I speak freely of my mental illness because it is just as much my physical reality.
In our society, though, this speaking of mental illness that casually is still uncommon enough that it gets noticed. Sadly, our churches are often no better than society when it comes to being places where mental illness can be disclosed and discussed with the same freedom and compassion that physical illnesses are. In some ways, churches can be even worse, because not only may mental illnesses be misunderstood, they are often misunderstood in a manner that blames the victim: to wit, if we just prayed properly, or trusted God better, or turned our troubles over to God more completely – if somehow we just did something “right”, if somehow we were better Christians, we wouldn’t be sick. It’s the ultimate betrayal of compassion.
The fact is that while mental illness PRESENTS behaviorally, it is in origin an actual physical problem. The brain is broken, wired wonky, chemically imbalanced so that certain areas of the brain are overactive while other areas are underactive. Some neurons are firing grapeshot, others blanks, while others are jammed. There are lapses in the synapses. Mental illness can no more be willed away than can diabetes. It can no more “faithed” away than ALS. One can no more reason a way out of it than one could reason a way out of anaphylactic shock. We mentally ill are generally the last to recognize what is going on with us – if we are even able to at all ; even if we are able to recognize it, we are still trapped by it. An epileptic doesn’t stop taking her medication when her seizures are under control because she is able to reason that without the medication’s influence, the seizures will return. We mentally ill may stop taking our meds once the symptoms are under control because our disease prevents us from grasping the fact that it is ONLY the medication that is keeping the disease at bay, not that WE are “better.” We are at the mercy of a disease for which there may be treatment, but for which there no cure. This is our frightening reality.
So how does a congregation foster an environment of openness where those with mental illness need not fear speaking freely about it? First, we can start with the way we deal generally with negative emotions – sadness, “the blues”, non-clinical depression, anxiety. If we are a safe place for expressing these, we will be – or can easily become – a safe place for being open about mental illness as well. We can listen without criticism and validate feelings – that is, let people feel what they feel and be honest about it. For example, say someone comes to church in a very blue phase, is asked, “Hey, how’s it going?”, and gives an honest answer. A cheery, “Oh, come on, things can’t be THAT bad!” or “Smile, Jesus loves you!” or “Just think about all the blessings God has given you!” or a recitation of the things the responder does to cheer themselves up, all these, while certainly intended for good, actually send the message “You are not allowed to be anything but happy at church” – the antithesis of openness. Responses such as, “I’m sorry to hear you’re feeling so sad”, or “That must be hard on you”, or “Then I’m extra glad you came today” sends a message that it’s ok to “come as you are.” We can go beyond assuring someone “I’m praying for you” to asking them if there is something specific we can pray about, making a very personal effort to connect. (And it certainly helps build that connection if we remember the next time we see the person to ask about that prayer item!)
Going farther, the pastor at my current church speaks frankly of his father who committed suicide twenty years ago. Pastor Brian also has had various congregation members share with the congregation their own stories of struggling with depression; as I mentioned, our youth pastor has done likewise. (I am only one of those who spoke.) THAT is fostering openness. At one church, we had a mentally ill homeless man who came regularly who sat in the front row and spent most of his time rocking rapidly into a deep bow back and forth. Sometimes he talked to himself. There were occasional complaints about him being “distracting”, and there’s no denying his activity was outside the sanctuary standard norm, but the majority of the congregation welcomed him anyway. Someone would always sit by him to calm him if his agitation reached extremes. Members would greet him by name after the service. THAT is fostering openness. One member there had a mental breakdown and spent 6 weeks hospitalized in the psych ward. When she came back, people didn’t avoid her in embarrassment, but simply welcomed her back as from any other hospitalization, with loving concern and care. THAT is fostering openness. Any time we educate ourselves so that we are prepared better for how to respond to or deal with people with mental illness, any time we acknowledge our lack of knowledge but express our desire to better understand, we are working to create an environment of openness.
When we acknowledge the reality of mental illness as matter-of-factly as we do that of physical illness we move one step closer to letting not normal be normal.
We can all be of One Mind – even if some of us are “out” of ours.
First, for the nitpickers, yes, I know that’s not quite a direct quote. Poetic license.
I have an extreme dislike of the unscriptural term “prayer warrior”. Unscriptural? Yep. Although there are some who are recorded as “wrestling in prayer” for others (see Epaphras), nowhere does the Bible distinguish some believers as “better” pray-ers than others. Certainly there were instances of someone who was willing to “stand in the breach” on behalf of others, but it was that person’s willingness to intercede, not some special ability to do so, that garnered God’s favor. Look at the lists of specific, special spiritual gifts and guess what you won’t find? Prayer. Soldiers fight wars; civilians don’t. If the Church has “prayer warriors”, then an impression may be given that prayer is something that should be left to the “professionals”. Non-“warriors” get the idea that “warriors” are somehow more “effective” pray-ers. Both ideas are mistaken. There are no prayer elites; ALL believers are commanded to pray. Just as there are those who have a great passion for study, for missions, for caring for the poor, for working with children, there are some within the Church who have a greater PASSION for prayer than others – but that does not make them a class apart, let alone somehow “above” the rest.
Given that every believer should pray, I decided I would share how I keep track of who and what I pray for. (This isn’t about my personal prayer – my own confession, praise, supplication, or time spent listening – though all are key parts of a believer’s prayer life. For these, I don’t have a schedule, and I don’t follow a formula. Those are meaningful to many, but I don’t happen to use them. Yea, freedom!) Although I do a lot of on-the-spot prayer for and with others, I floundered for years trying to figure out a way to be more consistent about praying for the people who are a more or less permanent part of my life. I finally ran across some descriptions by other folks that inspired me some years ago, and over time those suggestions jelled into my current practice. I don’t necessarily get this routine done every day. Weekends, and Sunday especially, I’m most likely to not get it done, since Saturday I’m totally out of my weekday routine, and Sunday I’m getting ready for church. Some days I blitz through, and some days I spend a half hour. I’m not as consistent as I’d like to be, but doing it this way at least keeps me MORE consistent than I otherwise would be. This is not intended as a “how to” for everyone – it’s just a “how I” that might give you ideas as others did for me.
I have a small 3-ring binder to keep my prayer stuff in, with three sections. The first has a month by month calendar in which I’ve noted birthdays and anniversaries, and to which I add things such as surgery dates, test dates or graduation dates for students I know, travel dates for mission trips – anything with a specific time frame.
Stuck in the current month, and moved along through the year, is a card with lists of people for whom I pray every time. I list moms-to-be and their due month, with baby’s name if known; these may be family or friends, or increasingly common, children of my friends as we all enter the enchanting land of grandparenthood; I pray that God would knit those babies safely in their mothers’ wombs and keep the mom in good health as she carries her precious burden. (If there are specific concerns, I mention those, too.) Having lost my own father 21 years ago when I was only 30, I have a heart for those who have lost parents, so there is a list of folks who have lost their parents within the last year, which parent, and the month of the loss; I pray that God would comfort them in any stray moments of grief that hit or any anniversaries of events such as birthdays or wedding anniversaries. We have several friends who have children who have turned from the Lord completely, and our own son who, while he has not turned from the Lord, is not living by His standards, either; these are all brought up with a prayer that He would draw them back to Himself, and give the parents wisdom on how to love them with God’s fatherheart. There is a list of soldiers deployed to dangerous places, for whom I pray safety, and that they would take no action for which they would feel shame confessing before God or man; and I pray for their wives and children, that they would be provided for and protected. I pray for our nephew, who is currently a missionary in Africa, that he would be kept safe and that his work would be fruitful. Finally, I have a list of specific family and friends who either don’t know the Lord or who have walked away from childhood training in Him; for these I pray that God would send folks into their path that would speak His word to them, that He would give us wisdom on what/if to say ourselves, and that He would bring them to know Him. Notice that none of these take more than a few sentences each. God listens to our heart, not the word count.
The next section to come up is my immediate family. I pray daily for my husband. I’ve used prayers modeled out of Stormy Omartian’s book The Power of a Praying Wife and others, but I focus a lot on his work, since he labors in a spiritually and emotionally toxic environment. After Rob, is the kids’ section. For them, as for the next section, each has his/her own page, with general and specific prayer items underneath. Since we have five kids, and there are conveniently five days in the week, each kid gets his/her own day for me to focus on in prayer. (If that child has a family now, then I do the whole family on that day.) Some years ago, I chose a theme verse for each of the kids/families, and have it written at the top of their page, so I first pray that verse over them. Then I pray the general things. For all the kids, I pray for their relationship with the Lord. For married kids, I pray such things as for the husbands to cherish the wives, for the wives to trust the husbands’ leading, for the wives to be good managers of their homes, for the husbands to find favor with their employers. I pray for wisdom for their parenting. I pray for my grandkids to grow in grace and the knowledge of the Truth. For my unmarried girls, I pray that if it is God’s intent that they should marry, that they would keep themselves in purity and that they would be preparing themselves to be fitting helpers for their husbands, and (as we have prayed for all the kids since they were little and have seen come to fruition with our oldest two) that God would likewise be preparing their future spouses. Then there are prayers for specific things such as jobs needed, school, housing, illness and such. Answers are noted, too, both here and in the next section.
The final section is by far the longest. It is similar to the kids’, except that it doesn’t have a verse for each one. In this section, I have a page for each extended family member/whole family (mom, siblings and siblings-in-love, aunts, uncles, cousins), close friends and their children, and my “otherkids” who I have known from infancy or toddlerhood here and am very close to. I also have some pages with lists of names that I don’t do as extensive prayers for, such as old homeschool friends who I am in little contact with now but who I still think of fondly or all the pastors I know. The key to doing this section is that I do not pray through all these pages every time, but just for a few, moving a marker along. Some days I may pray one or two pages, sometimes four or five, depending on time and how the Spirit moves. Sometimes someone is on my heart “out of turn”, or there are other things on my heart and I don’t get to that section at all. It generally takes me a couple of weeks to go all the way through the section – but at least no one gets forgotten!
There is no one “right” way to conduct our prayer life, no one “right” cause to pray for. I have a friend whose passion comes from the injunction to pray for government leaders. She begins every school day with a folder containing the names of every elected official for our county, for every state and federal legislator, for judges, for Cabinet members, and the President. She prays for them each by name. There are those whose passion is for missions, so they pray for many missionaries and mission organizations and for specific countries. There are those whose passion is the unborn, so they pray for the unborn, for their mothers, for agencies reaching out to them, for the holding back of agencies working against them, for government policy makers. And there are many, many Christians who don’t feel a particular burden for ANY special group, need, or cause! If you’ve asked God to lay something on your heart, and He hasn’t, then don’t worry. He obviously isn’t calling you to prayer as a passion, but has some other ministry for you to focus on.
Whether we have a passion for prayer, or a particular passion for which we pray, we are all TO pray; it is not optional. Like any spiritual discipline, the more we pray, the more familiar doing it becomes. If we ask God to teach us to pray, as Jesus’ disciples did, He will surely do so.
Prayer isn’t a matter of being a “warrior”. It is a matter of being aligned with God’s heart – and that is something open to ANY of His children.
the susie solution 