Red Vine Spirituality

Taylor K. Arthur tackles Bipolar 1 Disorder, surviving stillbirth, and raising a heart warrior with a nitty-gritty faith inspiring a twisted, blissful life.

Category: Bipolar Mama (page 1 of 4)

They will be called oaks of

Lenten Cup: Bring on the Joy

9 March, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,
because the Lord has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,[a](the blind)
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God,
to comfort all who mourn ,
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the Lord
for the display of his splendor.
Isaiah 61:1-3

Budding trees stand still, naked and unashamed, against the robins’ egg blue sky day after day in this March gallop into spring. To live Seattle’s grey so many months of the year births deeper miracle every spring when our faces feel the sun again.

I lift my face to heaven, out in the rose garden, as I break from tearing out overgrown grass and weeds of an entire year’s neglect. I cut their spindly branches who have reached upward to feel the sun, through the weeds and the muck, to only produce a bud at the very sunshiny top. I want more for them: I envision bushes filled with blooms, not just one spindly, naked branch producing measly pretty. I rip out the weeds and pull the grass, pull out squirt guns and bad mitten rackets hidden underneath. Yard waste bin overflows, and I start thinking about how this garden always reminds me so much of myself.

I remember digging the rose garden out: clump after clump of clay sod. It was seven springs ago: my baby-less maternity leave, a summer drowned in grief. I wanted a rose garden, on the sunny side of the house, right under the dining room window. It took most of the summer to dig it out the way I wanted. We planted the first rose given to us by our dear friends Mr. and Mrs. Vance, in in the corner of the garden. And right in front of the rose, we planted their other gift, a cherub, to remember Caleb.

Last summer, I was sick. My garden survived unattended, doing its best to keep producing roses through the weeds. I think I’ve been doing that, ya know, for a long time: stretching, trying, for just a bloom or two. There has been so much to wade through to reach bloom. And I’ve read these words in Isaiah so many times believing, believing .

What I didn’t understand is that all these years, He hasn’t been neglecting. He’s been cleaning up the mess. He’s been weeding this garden of mine out so that I can bloom bush-fulls of beauty, and not just one, spindly bloom. He wants:

freedom from captivity
release from darkness
comfort in mourning
provision in grief

FOR ME.

He wants me to wear:

a crown of beauty
the oil of joy
and a garment of praise .

He envisions me as an oak tree in His garden of life: long-lasting, disease- and insect-resistant, strong, beautiful, and useful. Oak has been the lumber of choice for centuries, used to build ships, erect buildings, and–wait for it!–age wine and spirits. Oak provides both the structure and the celebration for our lives.

After seven years of grieving, after seven years of grey skies, I can feel the sun again. Friend, He is coming for you. He has not forgotten you in your stretching and struggle for that one bloom you’re raising up to Him. He is working it out, weeding out the shame and the poverty of your spirit, all to make you thrive strong and lasting for His glory.

Lord, we’re ready. Bring on the crowns, bring on the oil and the the garments of beautiful praise. We want to dance before you and sing of your goodness. We want to grown strong and beautiful, displaying Your splendor.

Bring on the joy!

Dancing this Monday,

Taylor

Twitt
Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I

He never lets go . . .

27 February, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the LORD will be my light.
Micah 7:8

Dear Red Vine Family,

Oh. Wow. I should not be surprised at how big God is, how willing He is to dive into the mess of my life with me. But I still am. And I shouldn’t be surprised that when He decides it’s time for me to–let’s say–finish the most difficult, heart-wrenching project of my life, that He makes sure I move seats TWICE to be in the only section in the very front row sandwiched between my girlies at Living Proof Live this weekend to be–yes–standing up with Beth Moore in front of 6,000 Christian women promising her I will finish my book by June. .

No, I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m still just a little slack-jawed. Finding the strength and the will to finish a project that feels like a willing drown has been difficult in a life that has been–well–something a lot like an unwilling drown. And I’ve wondered why He gave me this burning desire for such a difficult task when my life has not afforded one moment of stillness or wholeness or TIME? Why not give this book to someone stronger, more consistent, healthier than me? Why not give it to someone whose children are all alive and whole, not to Taylor who grieves and struggles and drives her kids to school in her pajamas and sees a therapist on a regular basis?

I do know, with all certainty, that God likes to show off. He pulls deep from the pit the prizes He champions. He likes to show off the crazies and the prostitutes and the drug addicts and the absolutely, completely trashed after He’s done His great work of restoration in them. His power shows up best in weak people. And, like Beth said to me, He brings us to a place of restoration before He allows us to tell our story.

So, here I am, Lord. And I’m just going to relax the reins and allow You to show off. I don’t know what the next few months are going to look like. I’m going to give You my all, and I’m going to live in the URG , and I’m going to trust Your strength. I am going to honor the body you’ve given me, and care for it daily. I’m going to sleep and eat well and rest and be whole. I’m certainly going to prioritize this work, but not pretend I’m something other than what you’ve made me. You said I am very good (Genesis 1:31), so I’m going to trust you on that one.

Here goes, y’all: time to finish. Time to just stinking obey this God who never lets go of me. He’s my life raft in the drown, my light in the darkness. And I’m going to trust Him. I’m going to trust Him with Red Vine, my family, my energy levels, and my prayer life. I’m going to trust that living in His unforced rhythms of grace, obeying His call, will be enough.

Here’s the video from the conference if you haven’t seen it:

Resolute in my weakness,

Taylor

Twitt
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Best of 2014: Saying goodbye to Sylvia

28 January, 2015 / / 2 Comments

As I have wrestled with suicidal thoughts over the years, I have learned to remind myself again and again that there is no romance in ending my own life. Every chance I get, I want to reaffirm to the suicidal that this life is worth living for. It will get better! God bless all of you, my friends, who wrestle with this vicious demon of depression.

Please be advised: this is an unusually graphic post including a crime scene photograph, and other gory details of suicide.

Virginia Wolfe by the Indigo Girls .

They published your diary
And that’s how I got to know you
The key to the room of your own
And a mind without end

And here’s a young girl
On a kind of a telephone line through time
And the voice at the other end
Comes like a long lost friend

Read more: Indigo Girls – Virginia Woolf Lyrics | MetroLyrics

I met her in the fall of my senior year in college, a forest of trees ablaze in my manic brain. I didn’t know I was manic, and I didn’t know she was either. But I knew she was a friend to me like I had never known before.

But wait: there was another: senior year in high school. I fell in love with a young woman going mad over wall paper, inventing a world with no men. If she were alive, I would have hunted her down. Jack thought a world without men sounded nuts. Crazy talk. I thought she was genius.

After I was diagnosed, I became obsessed with them all. I felt close to them in a way I could only feel to someone who shared the bests and worsts of my illness. They were mad, and bright, and genius, and beautiful. They were misunderstood and shocked and psychotherapized and abandoned and written off. Still, they were a special class of genius.

I was hunting down the full set of Virginia’s diaries one day in a mega book store. I already possessed every word Sylvia had written, absorbed it, worshiped it. I was standing in the book store musing about just how fantastic my literary friends were: Sylvia, Charlotte, Virginia, Hemmingway, Sexton . . . How much I felt a part of a secret club, this puffed up lithium girl trying to find a reason.

And then, like an arrow shooting through fog, Truth stopped me in my tracks. I stood dead still and shot through as one, single sentence changed my trajectory,

BUT THEY’RE ALL DEAD .

Gasp.

Virginia filled her pockets with rocks and walked into the River Ouse near her home. He body was found days later.

Sylvia prepared breakfast for her children, sealed their bedroom off as they slept, and stuck her head in the oven.

Charlotte overdosed on chloroform, choosing “chloroform over cancer.”

Hemingway shot himself with his favorite shot gun.

Sexton drank a glass of vodka and started her car in the garage.

The list of creative geniuses who died by their own hands is astoundingly long. 94 artists pop up when you enter “ Artists who committed suicide ” in Wikipedia. 310 names appear when you enter “ Writers who committed suicide ” on Wikipedia. Three hundred and ten.

I discovered something else truly horrifying while researching for this piece:

CRIME SCENE PHOTOGRAPHS .

sylvia head in oven

Yes, that is Sylvia dead with her head in the oven. Suicides notes and details are initially controlled by the sheriff or medical examiner, since all unnatural deaths must be investigated. Under the Freedom of Information Act–except in Washington and Ohio–these notes and details may very well end up in the hands of the press. For more information about this, see Slate.com .

As the details about Sylvia’s death were made public,

[Her ex-husband Ted] Hughes wrote to A. Alvarez [who wrote the first account of Plath’s death in The Savage God ] of his frustration of the outlining the details of Plath’s death, which he didn’t want their children to know: “now you have defined the whole thing, and handed it to the public. In a real way, you have robbed them of her death, of any natural way of dealing with her death. This will add up through every year they live.” – See more at: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/03/sylvia-plaths-s.html#sthash.YSfAs8HI.dpuf. Also see the article Ted, Sylvia, and Me at www.theguardian.com.

And, it did add up through every year they lived. Her son Nicholas, just one year old at his mother’s death, hanged himself 46 years later. To read more on this, see Nicholas Hughes, Sylvia Plath’s Son, Commits Suicide . Below is a picture of Sylvia holding baby Nicholas.

nicholas plath w sylvia plath

Children or teens who lose a parent are three times more likely to die of suicide, according to the May 2010 Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatyr (reported on by Hopkin’s Children’s Hospital. “Losing a parent to suicide at an early age emerges as a catalyst for suicide and psychiatric disorders,” says lead investigator Holly C. Wilcox, Ph.D., a psychiatric epidemiologist at Hopkins Children’s ( www.hopkinschildrens.org ).

All of the beautiful pictures of Sylvia’s life, all of the creative genius is undeniably tainted by these gory and tragic remembrances.

And please do not misunderstand me as I write this: I do not judge Sylvia and the others. They lived in eras in which psychology, psychiatry, and pharmacology were at best experimental nightmares for the mentally ill. They were shocked, poisoned, wrongly prescribed, and written off. They, in many ways, served as the guinea pigs for modern psychiatry.

They believed what they were doing was right and fair for those around them. Virginia wrote to her husband in her suicide note:

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.

But this is what I had to ask myself that day in the book store:

ARE YOU GOING TO CONTINUE TO ROMANTICIZE YOUR DEAD FRIENDS, OR SEE THEM IN CONTEXT?

ARE YOU GOING TO REALIZE THAT FILLING YOUR HEAD AND SPIRIT WITH THEIR IDEAS WILL LEAD TO THE SAME PLACES THEY ENDED UP: as bloated corpse floating in the river, as skull blown to bloody bits about the living room, as corpse in heels with head in the oven, as corpse in a car enveloped by poison gas, as corpse hanging from the rafters, bowels given way, rotting . . . with pictures smacked across the internet? Are you willing to leave your children, spouse, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews and cousins haunted by a legacy of death?

That’s what mental illness did to these friends of mine in an age where there was little to save them. Mental illness ravaged their own lives, haunts their legacies, and clings to their families. But we can stop it. At least, we can try our damndest.

So, that day in the bookstore, I said goodbye to Sylvia. I walked out without Virginia’s diaries with a new purpose: to find those who are fighting these demons, who persist at surviving. Their names include Kay Redfield Jamison , Marya Hornbacher , Terri Cheney , and John Nash , among many others.

Since that fateful day in the bookstore twelve years ago, I persist on living. And I am still here .

So, goodbye, Sylvia. I will honor you by living every breath God gives me as sanely as possible.

Taylor

Twitt
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Best of 2014: Hold on to your deepest dream

21 January, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Yes, you can be bipolar and a mama. You just have to want it with everything you’ve got. And, you need a lot of rebar in place to hold you up! Here’s another of your favorites posts from 2014 . . .

Alright, so let’s talk rebar . We know concrete cracks under too much tension, moisture, or pressure, but bridges and freeways and interstates are not just made of concrete. They are reinforced with rebar, and rebar is awesome.

Wikepedia says,
Rebars have been used in construction since at least the 18th Century; for example, rebars were used to form the carcass of the Leaning Tower of Nevyansk in Russia , built on the orders of the industrialist Akinfiy Demidov. The cast iron used for the rebars was of high quality, and there is no corrosion in them to this day ( Wikipedia ).

Wikipedia continues to report that the heavier the load the structure will bear, the more rebar is required. Primary reinforcement supports the structure as a whole; secondary reinforcement supports the aesthetics. i would say most of us need both primary and secondary reinforcement . . .

Just like rebar reinforces concrete, I have a certain reinforcement that’s been built into me, that I continue to work on, that I am even currently installing. So, what is it inside of you that holds the structure and the aesthetics of who you are together? Do you know?

Unfortunately, and fortunately, having Bipolar 1 Disorder as severely as I do, I didn’t have a choice but to install rebar, or watch my whole self come crashing down. I would love to say that my first piece of rebar was my faith, but it wasn’t. I was angry at God for years, so angry I couldn’t even talk to Him, so angry I spent a lot of time looking at the ground because just seeing his glory in the sky made me sick.

Everything–at 21–was ruined, and I was a wreck. I inhabited the same body as the girl I had known before my illness, but I wasn’t smart or good or pretty or sweet anymore. I was tolerated, derived from pity. I wasn’t what anyone would have looked up to or admired. I chain smoked and ate sugar from the bowl. I slept every hour I wasn’t working. I threw enormous fits in public, ruined almost every get together my family invited me to. I couldn’t count, and customers would literally ask me, “Are you stupid?” I remember thinking, I didn’t used to be. But maybe I am now. Is this all I’m ever going to be?

I’ve been reading Kay Jamison’s Night Falls Fast . I have to mete out my readings, because they are so close to me and mirror back to me so many painful truths that it is impossible to absorb it all at once. I stopped short when I read this passage: Patients who do well socially and academically when they are young and who then are hit by devastating illnesses such as schizophrenia or manic-depression seem particularly vulnerable to the spectre of their own mental disintegration and the terror of becoming a mental patient. For them and many others there is a terrible loss of dreams, and inescapable damage to friends, family, and self . . . (pg. 84).

For myself, this was the case. I wrote one piece depicting myself as a harbor filled with sunken ships, upon them every one I had loved and every dream I had believed I would live into. Reconstruction seemed ludicrously impossible. I was a shadow, a ghost of the person I had been. But, if I were to live instead of kill myself, grow instead of rot, I had to dream a new dream.

My first therapist, Phyllis, who saved my life in a hundred different ways, sponsored my attendance to a workshop she was leading during this time. My memories are foggy–as was my reality–but there was one exercise I still ponder almost daily. We were told to rip pictures from magazines of whatever image spoke to us. We weren’t supposed to stop and question why each image was attractive. Instead, we were advised to ignore our inner critics and just keep ripping. Afterwards, we were asked to build a mural out of those images.

As I assembled that collage, I began to understand the deepest yearnings of my heart. I had made peace with the idea that I may never be an intellectual giant; I couldn’t read. I may not be a senator or even a high school religion teacher. But I had to be a mother. If I did one thing in this entire world, it would be to love a gaggle of my own. If I were to die and they were to sum me up in one word, “Mama” had to be it.

I carted my collage home, and Jack hung it on the wall in our bedroom like it was a Picasso. And I decided that every day, every cross roads, my criteria for doing or not doing, living or rotting, would be, “Is this preparing me for motherhood?” I started by making myself put my coat in the closet every day when I came home. That was all I could do before I went to bed. But it was something. And I grew in hope, as I decided to empty the dishwasher in the mornings as the coffee brewed. I started to believe when I could go to work on time and make it through a shift without having a panic attack. I started to believe.

So, my dream became the first piece of rebar in the new-fashioned Taylor. A dream that won’t die can sustain all of us through the darkest of days. And the funny thing about a dream like mine is that in the chasing, other dreams were born. I was a chaplain. I earned my degree, graduating with honors. I was a Religion teacher and a graduate student. I’m writing.

One piece of rebar is all you need to build a brand new life. And between you and me? This Taylor is so much better and happier and grounded and full than the one I mourned all those years ago. I like her. She’s fought like hell to be her.

So, I don’t expect that everybody out there wants to be a mama like I did. But you have a core, and it’s screaming to be reinvented and rediscovered. Find it. Claim it. And rebuild one hell of a fantastic life.

Fr. Pedro Arrupe, SJ (1907–1991) , wrote:

Nothing is more practical than
finding God, than
falling in Love
in a quite absolute, final way.
What you are in love with,
what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.
It will decide
what will get you out of bed in the morning,
what you do with your evenings,
how you spend your weekends,
what you read, whom you know,
what breaks your heart,
and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.
Fall in Love, stay in love,
and it will decide everything.

I fell in love, and it decided everything. Choose to fall, and you, too, will have an everything.
Life is not over.

Fully,
Taylor

Twitt
twinkle isaiah

Bipolar Mama: Christmas Twinkle Confessions (5 steps to avoiding mania during Advent)

10 December, 2014 / / 4 Comments

Alright. It’s the second week of advent and I am writing from my usual spot at Starbucks. I’m kind of excited that I accidentally forgot my power cord at home this morning and my laptop only has 12 percent left in the battery. Why? Because I’m dying to go hunting for some more 50% off Christmas garland to make homemade topiaries with tomato plant supports. See the pin on my Christmas board on Pinterest). is this mama’s best friend and worst curse.) Christmas lights and bliss and frosted dogwood branches fill my head with gingerbread dreams, and it is hard– very hard –for me to be disciplined in pretty much any area of my life this time of year.

Okay, so I tend to get a little manic at Christmas time. That’s the clinical viewpoint, anyways. I tend to take on projects that require more hours than there are days in Advent. I tend to think I am suddenly a skilled seamstress and carpenter and . . . and I’m not . My friend, Kate, who ends up usually baling me out of all of my sewing projects gone terribly awry, would attest to the fact that I am not as skilled at crafting as the Christmas Taylor ever believes I am.

I used to feel ashamed of this manic Christmas frenzy I whip into, like it was my fault that Christmas lights brighten up my brain, that my children marching around the house with buckets on their heads singing Frosty the Snowman shouldn’t set my heart on fire.
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I used to feel guilty for working on joyful tidbits until late in the night, like somehow I was breaking the bipolar rules. I spend so much time on the depressive side of this illness that the minute I tilt toward joy, I get very nervous.

Nervous? because tilting toward joy means a crash will eventually follow. Take down the Christmas, put Taylor in bed for a week. I hate the crash. My family hates the crash.

So my real Yuletide quandary is how to keep the twinkle while maintaining mental discipline. How do I sparkle, but not fly off into a mistletoe flurry of madness through this season of eggnog? Well, I am figuring that out. Here are my work-in-progress fly-joyfully-through-Christmas-without-crashing rules:

  1. Save a little bit, every time you get paid, into a bank account that you can only access at the holidays. It’s amazing how even a tiny bit of money, saved over the course of the year, can add up to enough come November. Then, the manic tendency to charge a credit card through the roof is tempered by the knowledge that you have cold, hard cash to spend.
  2. November? you ask. Christmas is in December! Oh, yes, I know that! But I also know that even the most sane of my loved ones get a little nuts trying to pack all of the gift-buying and gift-wrapping, entertaining, charities, school concerts, parties, and decorating into 24 days. So start early. Our Christmas money gets deposited into our checking account on November 1st. This year, my presents were bought and stowed away, along with gift boxes and wrapping paper, before Thanksgiving. KAZAM. Now, I have a month to wrap presents when I feel up to it, when I can escape up to my room in my comfies and watch a Hallmark Christmas movie. Did you see how I just made wrapping presents an escape instead of a stressful, last minute to-do? do I have to say KAZAM again???

  3. Get your tree early, and enjoy it. We cut our tree down Thanksgiving, and it took us over a week to decorate it. When there’s time, and when I feel up to it, I know we’ll have a great time decorating our evergreen.

  4. Give yourself a week to have a Turkey-meets-Mistletoe explosion all over your house while you put away the cornucopias and string up the Christmas lights. It can’t be done in one day! Why try? And, after a week, put it all away and enjoy what you were able to decorate. ( Okay, do take your time to put up the deco, BUT PUT THE HAY AWAY IMMEDIATELY! I packaged all of the harvest hay into ziplock bags, and guess who found them? Guess who thought it would be really fun to jump on them and watch them explode all over the living room, the Christmas tree, the dining room? That would be my children. Mama took a few days to get over that. Not good for stoking the Magic. )

  5. Remember that Magic trumps a clean house, a Martha Stewart tree, or expensive presents. My kids jump out of bed every morning, so excited to dig their tiny “candy cans” out of their Advent stockings. They won’t remember every present they receive during their childhood, and they won’t remember how hard you worked on that dining room centerpiece. They’ll remember rolling out Christmas cookie dough with their Mama; they’ll cherish the memories of bundling up and drinking hot cocoa in the car while you search for the best Christmas light display in your hometown. (Ann Voskamp provides a fun “scavenger hunt” list for your light hunt here: The Greatest Gift Scavenger Hunt ).

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They’ll remember the twinkles, and the crackling quiet in front of a Christmas fire. They will remember that you let them decorate the the tree, even if all the ornaments are clumped together on the bottom third of the tree, and they so apologetically inform you that they knocked your handmade garland off in the process.

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In those still moments, in the breaths of joy inhaled and lightness exhaled, they’ll feel the magic, they’ll feel the stirring of the Christmas secret you know deep in Your heart:

In returning and rest you shall be saved;
in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.
Isaiah 30:15

So, when I feel like flying off into a snowflake wonderland this Advent season, I’m grabbing my babies and snuggling with them in front of the fire. I’m heading upstairs in my comfies and wrapping up a few presents at a time with ribbons of love and rest and quietness. I’m reading Ann Voskamps’ The Greatest Gift and Brennan Mannings’ The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and, Burnt Out : two books that compliment each other like Prosecco and Brie. You will drink the words from these books and gobble up grace until you’re full to the brim.

I’m resting into the quietness, loving my to-do list slowly into done (or undone).

Fill to the brim, my friend. Open yourself up to a little twinkle.

God bless you. Even if your tree only gets half-decorated and the Christmas cookies burn, you’ve got all the magic you need.

rest in the peace of Christmas, swim in love.

Taylor

Twitt
make me an instrument-rvs

Bipolar Mama: Anyone Can Serve

14 November, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
― Martin Luther King Jr.

I remember I worried if their mothers would agree to it. I had been out of the hospital for a year or so, and the Piglet movie was showing in theatres. I desperately wanted to see Piglet’s Big Movie, and I knew exactly who I wanted to take with me to see it. They were a bundle of pigtails and blankies at the time: a handful of sweet little cousin-girls to take with me. They’re all in junior high and high school now–beautiful young women–but they were scrumptious then. They were giggly and precocious, and perfect, each of them in their own way. They were the perfect dates to a Piglet movie.

I called my aunts one at a time, holding my breath, to ask if they could come. And, one at a time, they each agreed to hand their perfects over to an ex-mental patient for lunch and a movie.

I will never forget that day: their little bodies all buckled tightly in the back seat, how they ordered their french fries and milk shakes with tiny, cartoon voices and consumed their junk food with delight, how the little one climbed over her sister and into my lap half-way through the movie. We didn’t expect Piglet’s movie to be scary, but it kinda was.

Tears trickled all afternoon, my heart flooding with joy and gratitude for those moments so generously bestowed upon me. I tried to hide it from them because they didn’t understand. How would they, ever? How could they see past their little picture-framed worlds to see the broken woman in front of them? I wasn’t a mental patient or a schizo or a failure to them. For one afternoon, I was “Cousin Tay” to a sweet garden of girlies. What a privilege!

What a privilege now, on every sweet afternoon spent since with my own children, my own nieces and nephew. Will anyone understand how this GIVE is my greatest and deepest joy? How this giving, this usefulness is life-giving? How simply being trusted to feed and cherish another life is richness beyond compare?

There was a time when I wondered if there was any give left in me. I wondered if I would be a forever suck, a big black hole of cigarette smoke and insanity. I wondered if there would ever be enough of me to give anything, to even give enough breath to life. I wondered if anyone loved me for what I gave now to the world, or if all that was left for me was the left-overs from a time before mania and lithium and scandal. I wondered if I would ever look at my reflection the way my little girl cousins could.

The funny thing about giving is that as we practice it, we stop looking in the mirror and start looking at our reflection in another’s grateful face. We start to see ourselves differently as we see ourselves as givers, joy-bringers, french-fry sharers, baby-holders. Maybe we can’t hold a job or read right now, but we are bringing someone else beauty.

A devastated self-image can regenerate when it is redefined through service. I am amazed at the heights I can reach when I am climbing for the sake of another. I can loathe so much inside myself, believe I am not worthy, believe I am not good. But love elevates me, service saves. The fastest way out of our own heads is empathizing with another. The fastest way out of bed is to answer a call. So, get out there! Be. Do. Serve.

Here are some ways I have found to serve:

  1. Help with children . I realize we are all in different stages of recovery and having all of your nieces and nephews over for a slumber party may prove a bit much (and overloading yourself will not help you succeed!), but there are still ways to help. Volunteering for an hour a week at church or a drop-in center in the company of other adults (so again you are not overwhelmed) can be a great way to start. Also, just offering to help entertain a child in their own home so that a harried mama can get her house cleaned is a great help. There is nothing like the love in a child’s eyes to heal a soul. There is nothing like the grateful look in a mama’s eyes when she is offered some loving help!

  2. Bring a meal, a plate of cookies, or a latte to a friend. I love to do this. When Samuel was a baby and I was completely overwhelmed, the mom’s group at our church dropped meals off three times a week. Their foil-covered containers covered in handwritten cooking directions were not only a time-saving blessing at dinnertime, but also a reminder to me in the midst of those unending days that I was not alone. Since then, bringing food to others who are experiencing difficulties, having babies, or just need some cheering up has become my favorite giving project. I can do it on my own time-table, and sometimes freeze food to deliver at a later time. The end result is always the same: joy in the face of the recipient, and joy in my heart as well.

  3. Send an encouraging word either by text, Facebook, or (if you’re really together) through the mail . My Aunt Dana takes the cake on this one. Every holiday and birthday, she sends our family a silly card with a sweet message inside. Sometimes she sends the boys a dollar each, and it means so much to us! My Grandma Afton also sends me beautiful, encouraging words. I keep all of these cards as if they were priceless treasures. Encouraging words have the ability to lift us and others out of our own circumstances, even for a moment. The right text at the right time can turn a day around. And you can do that for someone.

  4. Host . Okay: so this might be the most challenging, but it may also be the most beneficial. Hosting friends for a cup of coffee or a dinner party helps me stay on track all week. Where I might be tempted to let my house become a disaster zone, knowing I have the girls coming over for coffee on Thursday motivates me to keep things tidy. It doesn’t matter if you serve homemade coffee cake or store-bought donuts, opening your home for a specific time on a specific day gives you a goal to shoot for, a reason to do the dishes. Believe me: worrying what others might think of your dirty house can be a great motivation. Whatever works, right?

  5. Pray for people . I know there are days when getting out of bed may seem impossible. When you feel like you won’t be able to keep breathing without a conscious effort, you can always pray for someone else. What? You might be thinking, shouldn’t I be praying for myself? Well, yeah, but praying for others has a way of making me realize that I’m not the only one with problems. And, focusing on the needs of another reminds me that I’m not the only one in the universe, period. Some days, it’s important to remember that.

Whatever you do, however you serve, I promise you: your life will be richer and your self-image will improve. As you reach out to another, you may just find that you’re capable of more than you thought possible. Love makes us bigger than we could ever be on our own.

God bless you in your service,

Taylor

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Bipolar Mama: Every morning

5 November, 2014 / / 0 Comments

It’s my privilege to read this to you: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:22-24

I had a bad day yesterday. I’m not sure if it was hormones or the fact that I didn’t get enough sleep the night before or if it is was just that one thing that someone I love can say that pierces a hole through the wall in my heart: the wall that I keep up so I that I don’t feel and so that I can forgive and so that I can get up out of bed every morning. It was a bad take-a-bath-in-the-middle-of-the-day day. It was a take-the-bowl-of-Halloween-candy-to-bed day. It was a day.

Something happens on those days: my brain plays this funny trick on me. My brain focuses on the “bad” things I did and the things I didn’t do, not the fact that I drove Abraham to school on time and played with Samuel (in my bed for part of the day, but we cuddled and watched movies and he was “Dr. Sam” and checked my blood pressure and gave me shots) and read him books and fed him and made lunch for Jack and a big pot of white chicken chili for the week and fried pork chops, sautee’d green beans and potatoes covered in this fantastic gravy for dinner that I almost took a picture of it was so beautiful a sight on a day when everything seemed hopeless. And my family ate this glorious dinner, which is a miracle . And then I was tired and my back was freaking out and I sat on the couch while Jack put the kids to bed. And I beat myself up for being lazy. Yeah.

So I grabbed the bowl of halloween candy–not a glass of wine or a cigarette, mind you (which is a miracle, too!)–and crawled in bed to watch back to back episodes of the Good Wife. And as I sat there eating m&ms and Skittles and wondering if I would even have the energy to get out of bed again to brush my teeth or wash my face and how that is just terrible and my skin won’t regenerate all night and I’m going to look like I’m 50 when I’m 40 and my teeth are going to rot out of my head because I’m just so lazy I can’t get out of bed. But I did get out of bed. I did wash my face, but skipped the wrinkle cream. I did brush my teeth, but damn the floss!

And as I cozy in deeper, pulling the comforter up to my chin, this diseased brain of mine loops around and around the Halloween candy, and tells me that because I ate too much Halloween candy today, tomorrow has to be a bad day, too.

And the crazy thing? I believe my silly, diseased brain. I go to bed feeling like a failure.

When I woke up this morning, I was still believing the hopeless lie. I made myself take a shower, even though it felt like I was moving through concrete. My sweet husband brought me a cup of coffee, and I curled up in my fluffy robe and read my morning devotions, even though I told him I felt terrible and hopeless and didn’t know how all of this pain could ever be put in perspective. Then I read this:

I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Phillipians 4:2-3

Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
Genesis 28:15

And after all of this time and so many of these days, I see Paul’s words differently. I see that I am going to have desperate days, and I am going to have joy-filled days. And I am going to have to walk through both. Somedays will feel like they never end. 7 pieces of halloween candy will haunt me, and shame will whisper in my ear. But just because I have hungry days, lonely days, curl-up-in-bed days, doesn’t mean that I am a failure or lazy or broken. Today’s depression doesn’t define tomorrow. And if I know anything, it’s that tomorrow is a brand new day.

As I sat there and reflected on this God of mine, on this Best Friend who loves me and will never let me go, on this promise that He will keep me through the good and the bad days, the fog lifted. I heard the pitter patter of feet in the hallway, and remembered who I was, all the good that makes me who I am, my life worth while, this day brand new .

I am the daughter of the King, regardless. When I can’t trust my own head, I can trust His promises.

He is all I need.
He is my strength when I am weak.
He is with me.
He is bringing me back to the Promised land, because that’s what He promised me He would do.
He always keeps His promises.

So, if you’re hungover this morning with regret, if you feel poisoned with the drug you used last night to just make it through, know this: today is a new day. And His mercy is fresh every morning.

Go take a shower (I know how hard that is!).
Get dressed.
Look for mercy. He’s showing up for you, my friend.

God bless you,

Taylor

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Bipolar Mama: Ask

29 October, 2014 / / 0 Comments

An audio version for you, my friend:
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:7-10 NIV

How hard it is to ask for help! I remember being a junior in college, unraveling as I drove through the dark downtown streets of Spokane mid-snow, mid-panic attack. Smoking a cigarette and sucking down a steaming cup of coffee, usually dressed in my Starbucks black, begging for help, DC Talk’s In The Light on repeat:

I keep trying to find a life
on my own a part from You
I’m the king of excuses
I’ve got one for every selfish thing I do
What’s going on inside of me?
I despise my own behavior
This is only serves to confirm my suspicions
That I’m still a man in need of a Savior

I believed then that He would answer me. So I asked, and the nightmares grew worse. I banged on my Father’s locked door, and no one came. Doctors called it hormonal imbalance, adjustment disorder, homesickness . I prayed harder, on my knees, scared to death to leave my bedroom for fear I would kill–yes, kill–my husband. A snake slithered through my heart. Stones rained down from heaven as I begged for sustenance; Heaven darkened and closed its doors above me.

I heard, felt, broke with the reverberation of alone.

For the first time in my life, I couldn’t feel God. I felt nothing but black and haunting abandonment of a Father I had always believed in. In my broken disbelief, I raged and raged. And then, I gave up.

Mental illness, unlike any other sickness or condition I have encountered, steals God from a soul. It was if every God-receptor I had was blown, every circuit shorted. All the capacity that I had possessed for good and light warped into darkness. The darkness blocked God from my sight, from my nerve endings.

I know in darkness that swampish demons masquerade as angels and the hunt for home rips you from one set of arms and into another. All the while, the darkness fills and poison and terror set in. And that’s what it is to be mad: black. Moving black, roaring black, hell-courts-you-then-rapes-you black.

This is the pit David was speaking of in the Psalms, where the snake slithers freely and the monsters come alive. And It was here, in this God-forsaken hole this daughter of the King found herself: aghast, broken, electrified with the ends of goodness now pulsing with dark.

I stopped asking to be saved after a while. I stopped believing that I would ever see heaven again. But that’s not the end of my story, and it doesn’t have to be the end of yours.

What I didn’t understand is that HE was still there, right beside me in the pitch black. He didn’t leave no matter how alone I felt. My brain shut me off from registering His presence, but it could not shut me off from Him. Psalm 139 says,

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

Even the dark isn’t dark to God. And if you’re there, my friend, down deep in the pit so dark that you can not see your own hand in front of your face, know this:

HE IS THERE IN THAT PIT, THAT DARK, THAT SHAME WITH HIS ARMS AROUND YOU. AND HE’LL NEVER LEAVE.

No matter where you make your bed tonight, no matter what you swallow or smoke or snort to quell your demons . . . He’s there.

No matter how many times you take the razor to your arms, He’s holding you.

No matter how broken you’ve left your family, your marriage, your livelihood, your dreams . . . He’s holding the pieces.

And when you feel the most alone, you’re not.

When you can’t feel God, when you are the most afraid you won’t beat this, go find someone to pray for you. If you were diagnosed with cancer, wouldn’t you go seek out prayer? If you were given any other diagnosis than the one you’ve been given, wouldn’t you go forward for healing, for anointing?

Why don’t we do this for the very illness that not only will kill us but shuts our hearts off from God?
Why don’t we keep asking?

Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24

I wish I would have known that He was still there. I wish I would have gone forward for prayer, instead of skulking in the dark, ashamed that He had abandoned me. I wish I would have known that no matter where I go, I am always His daughter.

So go. Go forward today. Ask for the anointing of the sick. Ask for prayer. And keep believing in the God of the dark, the God who follows His children into hell, the God whose love will never end.

You are not alone. You’re just sick.

Answered and loved,

Taylor

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Bipolar Mama: WORK THE STEPS

22 October, 2014 / / 0 Comments

For your listening pleasure:

Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Romans 7:24

One of the whispers that began deep in my heart and has grown louder and louder over the years is this:

I am powerless over Bipolar. Without help, my life is unmanageable.

This didn’t happen all at once. For the first years of my diagnosis, I believed if I swallowed the pills and went to therapy, I could trick my illness into remission. I managed to stay out of the ER, but I wasn’t healthy. I did things like stop taking my lithium for several days so I could go camping and drink like a fish alongside all the normal people. Like a dry drunk, I was still living crazy.

It wasn’t until I fell ill again that I was driven to my knees. One morning, waking up in a tent on yet another camping trip, I woke up with a beast inside of me. She started screaming, shaking me from my organs out, until I trembled with her unrelenting, ferocious power. She threatened to throw me out of the car as we drove down the highway and off of escalators in the mall. She made it impossible for me to work in the kitchen, as the sight of a knife filled me with an unrelenting hunger to cut myself to pieces. I saw cruel and vicious, savage imagery of debauchery dancing upon every body and every surface. The voices and appetites rang through my head every minute,from my waking to the last moment I succumbed to a Seroquel- and Benadryl-induced unconsciousness.

Mornings were the worst. I remember waking to enjoy a millisecond of peace before the attacks would begin. I wouldn’t even be able to savor that moment of peace because it passed so quickly, before I was awake enough to realize it was there. And then, the thoughts flooded in, and I was again tormented.

This hell ravaged me for months. What began in late summer overwhelmed the last days of the year. I took more and different drugs trying to quell the monster inside of me, to no avail. Overwhelming torment then plunged me into the depths of depression. I finally asked Jack if he would drive me to church.

It was then that I began to ask for help from the God I believed had abandoned me to this torment. I succumbed to the idea that without help, I would die. It wasn’t until His hand literally grabbed me in a church service in Spokane that I began to live again. And when I could breathe, when I could walk without bending in half under the unknown weight crushing me, I began to submit to the overwhelming reality that I could not survive on my own.

When you get to that place, when you truly realize that this illness will kill you if you do not start to recognize it for the savage beast that it is, you need the Twelve Steps practiced by Alcoholics all over the world. Why? Because your brain, just like that of any addict’s, will destroy you if left to its own devices.

But I never chose this! I never picked up a bottle or a crack pipe! This is who I am, the same as my blonde hair or my stubby toes or slow metabolism! This isn’t fair!

I agree. It’s not fair. But this is your reality. Are you ready to deal with reality? Do you want to get well? Then, here goes. WORK THE STEPS.

Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over (MY MENTAL ILLNESS) – that our lives had become unmanageable
Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God
Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves
Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character
Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings
Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all
Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others
Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it
Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out
Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other (PEOPLE SUFFERING WITH MY MENTAL ILLNESS) , and to practice these principles in all our affairs

I know what you’re saying. I agree with you that you shouldn’t have to apologize for things you had no control over.

It’s not fair .

But people were hurt nonetheless. When we admit our powerlessness and submit our illness to Something or Someone more powerful than us, we take the power away from the illness. When we ask for forgiveness from the people we have hurt–regardless of our intentions at the time of the hurting–we again steal away Crazy’s power. When we ask for help to CHANGE, we fight back the beast. Every change made with God’s help pulls us further into the land of the living.

And, don’t you want that, deep down in your secret places: to be in control, to change, to grown into a responsible, loving, productive person? I know you do.

Let’s do it together. Say it with me:

I am powerless over Bipolar. Without help, my life is unmanageable.
God, I need your help. I may not believe in you, but I need something bigger than me to manage my life.
Please show me that You’re bigger than my illness.
Please bring me the help that I need to change.
Please bring me the strength and the courage to admit my faults.
Please give me the courage to ask for forgiveness when the time comes.
I give my life over, and I pray for a new life and a new way.
Amen.

Never forget how much you are loved.

The famous Christian-Killer, Paul, (read his story in Acts 9 ), said of God’s love:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-35, 37-39

Let’s do this together.

Your friend in this fight,

Taylor

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Bravin’ it

17 October, 2014 / / 0 Comments

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I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.
Joshua 1:9

It seems like everywhere I look these days I see a call to bravery. The Bloom Book Club over at (in)courage (see that word there?!!!!) is studying Annie Downs ‘ new book, Let’s All Be Brave , my MOPS friends have been sharing their theme for the year, Be You Bravely , and my friend Abbie over at Practice of Patience just published one of the most unabashedly humble, blatantly honest, Christian blog posts I have ever read: The Real Reason I Quit . Then, as I’m chin-deep in Annie’s book, my good friend Leah sends me a video of Shauna Neiquist talking up the courage to be honest.

So here we are. And, I must confess that after all of these blog posts, being honest is still really hard for me. Being honest requires risk, and while that’s difficult online, it’s much more difficult in real life. Being honest to the people I love, the people who may walk away–or worse–tear me to pieces is the thing I fear the most.

Until now. See, God’s changing me. I’m realizing maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. Maybe I’ve been fearing the wrong things; maybe giving power to people AT ALL is wrong. Maybe courage is really saying, “Ya know, a relationship in which I must constantly be afraid may not be a relationship that’s good for me.” Maybe courage is saying God decides who I am, not people. And maybe bravery is defined by living out that God-designed definition, whether people cheer or boo me down the field. Wow. I just wrote that.

Maybe if I’m in friendships and/or relationships with people where I constantly have to put up a front in order for them to like me, constantly afraid that if they find out I really do use birth control or maybe I don’t need to because my husband’s been sleeping in the guest bedroom for six months or maybe that we don’t go to church every Sunday or that we do go three times a week but scream at each other all the way there and back, or that I have a mental illness or did commit that sin in my past that they’ll ditch me/bitch me out/stab me in the back–maybe these aren’t the people I’m supposed to be sharing my heart and life with? Maybe I don’t even know because I’ve never been brave enough to open my heart to anyone at all?

Maybe being brave is being able to look myself square in the mirror and ask myself these questions:

Do the people and causes and organizations I spend my life-blood on know who I truly am?
Do these relationships and time commitments reflect what I believe is God’s purpose for my life?
Am I pretending that I have more money, strength, time, energy than I actually do to please?
If I had an honest conversation with my spouse, my friend, my boss, my pastor, my kids’ teachers, my family members–would they be surprised by what was really in my heart?
Am I living what I believe?
Am I living the life I’ve always dreamed I would live, or am I living only to accommodate, facilitate, navigate others (and not God’s vision for me)?

Wow. You know what I think of when I read those questions? selfish . I have this little voice, ya know, this little nasty old lady voice that points a bony, needly finger at me every time I start to go down this path of truth and real and fearlessness. selfish halts my climb up the mountain of wellness faster than any other needly finger.

And yet, the thing I fear more than being selfish is getting to the end of my life of people pleasing, only to realize I missed the true path God had for me: one of authenticity, of deep and brave love, where my gifts pour out of me to bless others and my Jesus fills me up continuously as my Ultimate Source. I say to selfish : that path doesn’t sound selfish to me. But it does sound brave . . . and AHMAHZZZING! (That’s amazing the way I say it when I’m really excited about something, like a Hailey’s gluten free cinnamon roll.)

So I want to live cinnamon roll ahhmahzzing. Don’t you? Don’t you wanna live brave, too? Don’t you want to take a deep breath and exhale? Live the life you were meant to live instead of all that bullshit people-pleasing? People-pretending? People-pushing-away-because-I-don’t-want-to-be-that-real?

Okay: I’m gonna start it. And if you want to be real with me, I ask that you share this post on Facebook or twitter and say one brave thing. I don’t know what your brave is, but I agree with Annie Downs: “Bravery begets bravery.” So here goes:

I need a lot more downtime than I let on. Like, a lot. Like, I know I’m bubbly and energetic when you see me at school or church or the family function, but that one performance may cost me a whole hour of productivity later on. I need a nap every day. And, after a family party, after I’ve usually had a few too many glasses of wine just to get through it, I need several days to orient myself again. And it’s embarrassing and weak, but I cannot socialize and keep the same schedule everyone else does. It sucks me clean dry. And that’s the truth.

So there’s my new brave. I’m accepting after so long that I just can’t be like everybody else, and there are ramifications for every choice I make. I have more limits, and I’m going to start honoring them. If it takes me drinking three glasses of wine to get through a social event, I’m going to rethink my attending. If something is so hard that you can’t find your brave, maybe it’s harder than it was ever supposed to be.

Your brave may be saying you can’t work full time, or your brave may be saying that you want or need to work. Your brave may be saying you need a house keeper, or a baby sitter, or to put your kids somewhere a few hours or twenty hours a week. Maybe your brave is that you can’t host as many family gatherings as you have in the past, or that it’s time to spend more time with your spouse’s family and stop placating your own. Maybe your brave is just saying that you need help, or letting your grass grow, or the dust gather because you can’t do it all.

Whatever your brave, whatever you risk, ask Jesus for guidance. Ask Him to reveal His love, His plan, His will for you. Remain in that: As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. John 15:9

What’s your brave? I made you a little play list of some of my favorite songs that help whip up the brave in me. I think we all need music to get up the courage, ya know?

Be brave, friend. I’m quakin’ in my boots, but let me tell you something: life with Jesus is big and scary, but WORTH IT EVERY TIME! Let’s live big. And brave.

Quakin’ and Dancin’,

Taylor

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