TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY

3:30

I slumped on Spooky Friend's couch and vomitted up the story of the great dinner on Friday night, the paragraph, the nightmares, the inability to feel anything morphing into a feeling of total despair. I told her I knew confessing all this to her probably meant I would not be a pastor at our church anymore. I told her I didn't think I should be. I told her almost all of me, almost all the time, didn't believe Jesus was the Messiah the Jews had waited for or that his resulting religion called Christianity was true. I was not convinced that Christianity was completely derived from other pagan religions or manufactured by a secret society but I also could find no quality thorough data to the contrary and so I asked her to please prove these accusations wrong with facts so the depression would lift and life could resume - even if it was life no longer involved in pastoring and teaching others. I drew a line two weeks ago today: Prove Christianity is true and heal me of this despair or I'm out.

The room was silent. She put down the pen and pad she'd been taking notes with.

She bowed her head and sat still for a minute. Then she prayed for herself. Then for me. Then against Doubt and Depression, whom she spoke to as if they were people. My eyes stayed open.

"Amen."

And then it got weird.

So much of what happened over the next four hours should stay back in that room two weeks ago and will, but what transpired convinced me of a war we don't see - one I don't talk about because I'm embarrassed, I don't fully understand it, it's not logical, and I've been unconvinced until two weeks ago today that it even existed.

But two weeks ago today I realized I was in it. And we all are.

I've read Paul's words to the Ephesian church hundreds of times, where he tells them they aren't really fighting against what can be seen but against forces and entities who cannot be seen. The mental image that appears when I read his warning is of me and the rest of the human race down here near sea level driving to and from work and soccer practices and piano lessons, eating at our kitchen tables, sleeping in our beds, sitting in our pews and somewhere else, somewhere far away, maybe in the sky somewhere, on another playing field, these unseen things - demons and angels - are pummeling each other. And occasionally that battle gets out of bounds for a minute and spills over into a madman with nuclear weapons or a serial killer whose dog tells him to assassinate the president for Jodie Foster or keep a collection of penises in his fridge, but the rest of the bad stuff in the world - the regret, depression, loneliness, apathy, greed, envy, sickness and doubt - is just us humans making bonehead decisions or making due with the gene pool and bodies and chemistry and life we were given. The battle is something I defend against by doing my best to be good and think happy thoughts but I'm not in the battle. I can get biffed by it's shrapnel perhaps, and people do, but I'm not a target or a soldier in it. So I thought before two weeks ago today.

I've had a stomach ache - which is really trivializing the degree of inconvenience and pain - every day since kindergarten. It has a name. It's in medical books. It shows up in tests. It is a physical ailment. I've taken medication for it since high school when my symptoms became so severe that I was no longer able to function - to go to school or, some days, stand up straight. I've coped with it not only by taking medicine, which helped immensely, but by meditating and relaxing, doing yoga essentially, praying, cutting out caffeine and red meat, not panicking in stressful situations but being more logical than emotional and more proactive than reactive. This managed the pain and made me able to climb on airplanes and tour buses and do my job. But I never ate until I was full. I spent hours some days in a bathroom. I did not take certain opportunities because I feared being sick and/or stressed because of them. And I never had a day without pain. And three months ago it stopped.

I got angry at the limitations this illness placed on my life, on my ability to go anywhere and do anything God wanted me to do. At how it took me away from family and friends, embarrassed me and hurt me. I prayed as I always had but I got proactive, realizing that Western medicine only treated the symptom and couldn't stop the cause. I saw a naturalist - the type of person I would have called a quack before I got ready to try anything. One hour later I walked out with a list foods I could and could not eat and a bottle of the nastiest tasting goop I've ever swallowed. And I've been well ever since. No pain.

My career has caused me tremendous stress. My second and third records didn't do well compared to the first. My third album was declared "dead" several weeks ago by my label - no more time or money would be spent on it. It was only six months old. I grieved. It was like, but not as severe obviously, twelve of my kids had been in a school bus accident and never got to grow up and make friends and families and have kids of their own. I owed my label a fourth album and wanted to keep my promise to do so but I became increasingly blaming and angry at radio stations, my label, the industry, myself for my apparent failure as a recording artist things I'd felt before in growing amounts but things which now overwhelmed me with angst. I was crippled by this anger. I'd stopped thinking creatively and writing songs, immobilized by the quandary of what to write and who to write for and whether anyone would hear the resulting music in such a busted system ruled by two radio station program directors, narrow play lists, upbeat and positive criteria, worship music remakes and familiar sounding production.

I got tired of being angry and sat down with my label's president for a very honest retracing of our steps over the last five years to discover what went wrong, who was to blame - even if it was me - and what would be different in the future. I confessed my hostility towards everyone - including myself - and asked if he thought it made sense to make music together any more if we both believed we'd done our best at our jobs and the last two records still didn't sell. He and the label had been asking the same questions for about the same amount of time it turns out. With me not able to tour more, and definitely unable to do 200 shows every year, because of commitment to family and church, and with radio - my label's main marketing tool - not warm to what I do any more, and with budgets for marketing and touring being cut on all records across the board, could they afford to lose money on me again? Was making another costly record together, no matter how much we liked each other, a fair or productive thing for either of us?

We agreed it wasn't. We agreed to think about some other kind of fourth record - something live perhaps - that we could put out eventually, but decided together that my contract with Rocketown Records would now end. We sat together and mourned a little. We like each other after all, under our frustrations that is. And with those gone there was peace and the liking part of our relationship was all there was. We laughed. We hugged. We talked about the plans the label has for other kinds of artists and other ways of doing business that I think will work far better than what I do is working today. I talked about the things I'd like to do now as well. We felt like we were getting one of those strange divorces in which the couple says they'll still be friends and buy houses next door to each other and even set one another up with single friends of theirs. It was odd. It was freeing. There was peace and relief and so much real estate in my mind was empty again. No anger. No blame. Just understanding and friendship and freedom. Our relationship now is clean, everything out on the table, no fear and stress or guilt for letting each other down. Turns out we'd both worn a lot of guilt for not doing better work.

My marriage during the move was weakened by my traveling, the work load of fixing and painting, having a small baby that required so much time. We barely saw each other and when we did it was to talk about what was next on the to do list. We were co-workers and not friends. No angst, just two people sharing a bed thinking we'd hang out eventually when the baby's older and my schedule thins out and the house looks good.

I got tired of that and so did Becky. We resumed our weekly date nights we'd replaced with painting and grocery store shopping. We got back to dating each other at Brian's suggestion honestly, I wanted intimacy but I didn't want to give up anything to get it. And Brian said he'd baby sit the kids if we'd baby sit for him and he and Amy go out once a week too. And so, accidentally, out marriage was revived back to health.

Spooky Friend knew some of this. And she took these pieces and put them together to form a picture for me of a battle so much larger than doubt and depression, so much more heinous and frightening than seratonin levels and accusatory paragraphs. And hard to believe.

She said to me something like this, "Here's what I think has happened and is happening. And you ask God as I'm speaking this to you if what I'm saying is true. Don't accept anything I'm telling you today without asking if it's true first. There is a battle and we're all in it. We don't think we are but everyone is. Satan is fighting to convince us all that God is not good. He is trying to immobilize us, especially those who expose his lies and convince people God is good. Isn't funny how this window was opened in you and doubt and depression and all the rest of it came in as you said when everything was going great. When you were meeting with book publishers and exploring new possibilities. When you got rid of debt and sold your house and showed that you were willing to sacrifice to be obedient to God and love people. You've been sick your whole life and now you're not. You were in debt and now you're not. Your marriage was weakened and now it's strong. And you had peace and possibilities all around you. You were free of everything that had kept you bound and ineffective. No more anger, stress, bad relationships, stomach pain. It was gone. And you were desperately looking for what God would have you do to next in your life and your career. And you were making progress in that. And Satan decided to do something about it. And you went to a bookstore and read some words on whatever and he handed you a package."

She handed me a pen and I took it thinking she would ask me to write something down - she does that sometimes. "Why did you take that?" she asked. "Because you handed it to me," I answered.

"And that's what you did that night. You took it. You didn't even think about it, and why would you? You didn't know it was the perfect package for you. Nothing else worked so he used something that always works to shut you down didn't he? Your intellect. Doubt. He knew you were weak and he knew you would take it. You are in the battle...I want you to ask God if what I'm saying is true."

"God, is this true?" I asked out loud, feeling ridiculous.

I sat silent for a few minutes. I shifted in my seat. I was thinking what many of you, I imagine, are thinking right now. What a bunch of crap. What a convenient way out for Christians. If you doubt their faith they claim it's because you're being attacked by Satan and they won't address or refute your doubts with hard facts, with real evidence. I felt myself getting angry. I wanted to leave. My face was hot, and my jaw clenched. What a waste of time. I'm not going to be getting over this today, I thought.

"Look at me," she said. "Doubt, is that you? How long have you been here? God, show Shaun when Doubt first came to him."

To be continued...


TO READ THE ENTIRE "TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY" SERIES FOLLOW THE LINKS BELOW:
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: FRIDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SATURDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: SUNDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: MONDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: TUESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY
TWO WEEKS AGO TODAY: WEDNESDAY Pt.2