We were sitting across from one another in the monastery dining hall, eating our lunch\u00a0in silence per the rule.\u00a0 We hadn’t met yet.<\/p>\n
“Would you like to come to my party?,” she blurted out.\u00a0 Loudly.<\/p>\n
Heads turned.<\/p>\n
“I’ll think about it,” I whispered back, a bit embarrassed.<\/p>\n
Two days earlier we had been sitting in a room full of other strangers also there to retreat.\u00a0 I was there to begin writing a book, but upon suggestion chose to sit in on one of the weekend sessions. \u00a0A funny thing, really, because it was one of a series of workshops on the topic of “Boundaries.”<\/p>\n
There we were, each of us familiar only with the sound of our own voices which we had been instructed not to use too often while there. \u00a0We were here to escape the noise of the world outside the walls of this place. \u00a0To open our ears to what God might be saying to us in the stillness.<\/p>\n
“I take lithium for bipolar disorder,” she turned around to say to the couple behind her, strangers like the rest of us. \u00a0She said it loudly enough for all of us to hear. \u00a0“The last time I was here I had lithium poisoning,” she exclaimed with almost mischievous\u00a0glee, like someone who having been afflicted with something for so long can actually see the humor in it.<\/p>\n
Some of us exchanged nervous glances.\u00a0 Others laughed awkwardly.\u00a0 I was thinking, “It’s a good thing she’s here– at a retreat on boundaries.”<\/p>\n
Earlier, during the question and answer time, she had issued another exclamation: “Have you noticed how the windows of the church are blue, but it looks yellow inside?”<\/p>\n
It is amazing how community can form even in silence, though, when the silence is worshipful and orients around God in our midst.\u00a0 At first, I was afraid of her, maybe of how her experience with bipolar\u00a0illness touched the circle of my own struggles at times with depression- but by the end of my weekend at the monastery, I was grateful for her.\u00a0 Grateful for her transparency in the same way that I was grateful for the boundaries that separated us.\u00a0 That cordoned her off as a unique child of God, with an experience that witnessed to the pain and glory of Christ in our brokenness.<\/p>\n
In a few minutes she had told me her life story.\u00a0 How at the age of 19, while in film school at New York University, she had had her first “manic” episode: she chased a truck barefoot through the streets of Manhattan and ended up in bed with one too many men.\u00a0 How after that there were the drugs- she had tried all kinds.\u00a0 She had even given herself away to\u00a0some loser guy\u00a0for a bit of cocaine.\u00a0 Which had landed her in a halfway house, where she had a nervous breakdown.\u00a0 She had been clean for nine months but then relapsed.\u00a0 Because of the same loser boyfriend.\u00a0\u00a0For years she\u00a0had fought the diagnosis of “bipolar disorder.”\u00a0 But now, at the age of 36, she had written an autobiography about how through these experiences she had “overcome.”\u00a0 And now she was writing a second book.\u00a0 On pigeon tongue. (Apparently her second degree was in linguistics.)\u00a0 Hmm, I thought, wondering how much of this was grounded in any reality.<\/p>\n
But I listened.\u00a0 And as I listened, her eyes latched on to me with an almost furious intensity: they were the eyes of someone struggling to find some sort of authentic connection from a place far away.\u00a0 I wanted to help her even as I wanted to turn away.<\/p>\n
On the last day we were in the church for noon prayers with the monks.\u00a0 She strode un-self-consciously over to Father Michael.\u00a0 “Look at my new tattoo!,” she exclaimed with childlike enthusiasm, baring the right side of her arm with pride to the priest.\u00a0 He patted her shoulder.\u00a0 “Emmy (a pseudonym), you are a very courageous girl,” he said, gently.<\/p>\n
Some of us couldn’t\u00a0help but smile.\u00a0 And be grateful.\u00a0 Grateful for this person made in God’s image.\u00a0 Grateful for her courage and her\u00a0joy in the midst of a life that had dealt her cards that we would have all liked to give back for her sake.<\/p>\n
For Emmy and for all those like her who this Thanksgiving struggle with mental illness or any kind of affliction, I give thanks- and ask God to bless them.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We were sitting across from one another in the monastery dining hall, eating our lunch\u00a0in silence per the rule.\u00a0 We hadn’t met yet. “Would you like to come to my party?,” she blurted out.\u00a0 Loudly. Heads turned. “I’ll think about it,” I whispered back, a bit embarrassed. Two days earlier we had been sitting in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":461,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,187,5],"tags":[245,246,204,244,243],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-addiction","category-saints-and-sinners","category-women","tag-bipolar-depression","tag-drug-addiction","tag-mental-health","tag-mental-illness","tag-thanksgiving-day"],"yoast_head":"\n