The emptiness
Sitting down to do my morning Bible reading. A few chapters in Job, one of my favorite books.
Having a hard time of it lately. A new chronic digestive problem struck six months ago, sending me to the emergency room for diagnosis and treatment. It’s generally manageable by diet alone, but occasionally medication is needed.
Many people my age have this condition. It runs in my family. And yet I feel completely alone in my suffering. Why?
When I have that sense of discomfort in a certain part of my gut, it’s always accompanied by weird emotional symptoms. A gloomy darkness. A heaviness. A gulf between me and God. As the discomfort passes, so do the other symptoms. Does anyone else with this condition experience that?
I’m afraid to ask.
Afraid of facing skepticism or judgment. Afraid of being told that it’s all in my head, that a good psychiatrist can fix it. Or that I’m just feeling sorry for myself or giving in to fear. While self-pity and anxiety tend to enter the picture whenever I get sick, with this condition it’s not that simple. There’s some kind of strange connection between my gut chemistry and my brain chemistry.
Can anyone else relate to this? Or am I truly alone?
This latest flare-up has been especially hard emotionally and spiritually. Those symptoms have been building up as time passes. Now the physical discomfort comes and goes throughout each day, but the bad feelings continue 24/7.
It started on a Sunday afternoon. I wanted to get over it without taking medication, but made a mental note to call my doctor for a prescription if it went on for too long.
Somehow I misplaced that note.
The gut symptoms improved little by little for the first week. Then they kind of plateaued. At the same time, the emotional symptoms bogged down. God drew further and further away. A sort of spiritual deadness hit. I reached the point where I was wallowing in the dark, begging for healing, wondering where He had gotten to.
Over the decades, I’ve learned many ways to draw nearer to Him when I’m hurting. I tried them all. Nothing worked. Like Job in 16:6, “If I speak, my pain is not relieved; and if I refrain, it does not go away.”
God, why won’t You heal me? Why are my emotions stuck in such a difficult place? Why do I feel so far from You? Why don’t You pull me in closer?
A week and a half after the worst of the symptoms hit, I was filled with fear and dread. Fear that this time it was more hopeless than with previous episodes. Dread of a drastically reduced diet for the rest of my life. Fear of being told that I needed surgery. Fear of losing my independence.
Then somehow that mental note popped back into my head. I called my doctor, got a prescription, and began to heal again. But I had another minor episode when I’d almost used up the medication, and God was still too too far away.
The refilling
So I sit down for my morning Bible reading. It’s in Job, but it’s not touching me, reaching me, strengthening me like it usually does. There’s a wall inside that I haven’t been able to break through.
I’ve written before about how Job actually struggled emotionally and spiritually. He didn’t just take his suffering in stride, as some evangelicals seem to think. They cite chapters 1 and 2 as evidence of his unshakable faith.
But I look to chapter 3 and hear him cursing the day of his birth, followed by the heart of the book where he openly challenges God, and I’m grateful for the model that he provides, because I need to know that God can handle our questions and complaints with compassion.
As I’m reading the opening chapters this time, my heart is heavy and my spirit is lonely. I’m more critical of my own thinking and assumptions. Job really did say some pretty profound things in chapters 1 and 2. It’s not until chapter 3 that he seems to fall apart. What happened?
First God allowed Satan to attack Job’s family, servants, and belongings. Job’s faith remained strong. Then He allowed Satan to attack Job’s body. Job broke down.
There could be different reasons for this change. Coincidence. The straw that broke the camel’s back. The natural irritability and self-pity that come with illness. Moving through the stages of grief from denial to anger.
Or Job could be so self-centered that even the loss of his children didn’t affect him that much. It was only when his own body was damaged that he couldn’t handle it. That seems to be what Satan expected. With all the uprightness attributed to Job at the beginning and end of the book, though, that doesn’t seem likely.
Then something I’ve never thought of before comes to mind: Maybe the physical changes in his body included physical changes in his brain chemistry. Wow.
Did Job, my hero, my role model, go through the same thing I’m going through? Did Satan’s attack include not just the natural emotional response to physical distress, but a biological change that brought on almost irresistible* emotional and spiritual symptoms?
I can’t say an absolute yes, that’s definitely what happened. But it would explain so much. Job’s strength in chapters 1 and 2. His weakness in chapter 3.
Some evangelicals won’t like this idea. One reason I’m having a hard time getting my memoir published is because there are many Christians in positions of power who deny the possibility that biology can directly influence emotions.
Some publishers won’t consider my manuscript because it clearly declares that my first depressive episode wasn’t cured through spiritual practices. They helped a lot—they saved my life!—but only an antidepressant could restore my brain to its normal functioning.
There’s a link between our physical bodies and our minds and souls. Changes in brain chemistry can badly damage our emotions and our spirits.
I always feel so alone and misunderstood when this happens to me. But now, for the first time in my many years of being blessed by reading this precious book of Job, I’m seeing something new and profound. Job himself just might have suffered from the same problem. (And if he did, then maybe other people in the Bible did, too.)
I’m not alone.
I’m in good company.
The company of one who was declared by God to be blameless and upright. One whose story God has chosen to include in His inspired Word.
And God loves me enough to come to me when I feel like He’s so far away, and to open my eyes to see an incredible truth that I’ve been missing for all these years.
My head collapses onto my folded arms on the desk in front of me. I cry hard. I release the tears that have been bottled up inside, unable to escape for the last couple of weeks even though I’ve tried to let them go. I pour out the pain and frustration and emptiness. And, eventually, the joy. God has brought me home to Him once again.
*A note to my evangelically-correct friends who might think I’m saying that we have no responsibility for thoughts and emotions that spring from biological causes: We might not be able to control the thoughts and emotions themselves at the instant when they strike, but we have at least a little bit of control over how we handle them.
The more we practice responding in more biblical ways to the feelings that seem so unmanageable, the better we’ll be able to handle the next attack. Christians also have the Holy Spirit inside strengthening us when we’re at our weakest, enabling us to deal with these challenges in more godly ways.
