October 12, 2010: Ancient Wisdom For Bipolars

In 1373 Lady Julian of Norwich experienced a series of mystical impressions which she wrote about in Revelations of Divine Love. I think her "Seventh Shewing" indicates that she suffered from a bi-polar affliction:

And after this, he put a most high inward happiness in my soul. I was filled full of endless certainty and it was sustained so strongly that it left no room for doubts and fears. This feeling was so happy and so holy and put me in such peace and rest that there was nothing on earth that had the power to make me sad. This lasted only a while, and then my mood was changed and I was left on my own in sadness and weariness of life. I loathed myself so much that I could hardly bear to live. There was nothing to comfort me or give me any ease except for faith, hope and love. And although I knew them to be true, they gave me little joy.

And soon after this, our blessed Lord gave me again that comfort and rest of soul so blissful and mighty in its sureness and delight that no fear, no sorrow and no bodily pain that I might suffer could have taken away my peace. And then the sadness once more overcame my mind, and then the joy and gladness, and now the one, and now the other - I suppose about twenty times.

And in the time of joy I might have said with St. Paul: "Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ." And in sadness I might have said with St. Peter: "Lord, save me, for I perish."

Twenty mood swings! Poor woman - give her some depakote. Clearly she had a chemical imbalance. A little alteration in the molecules of her synapses might have leveled the mental/spiritual roller coaster and set her on a steady emotional plane.

But there were no mood-stabilizing drugs in 1373, and afflicted persons simply had to make do with the alternating morose and ecstatic brains that God gave them. I suppose that trying to reason well while suffering from bipolar disorder might have been like trying to drive a car whose engine races then stalls. It can be done - but you need God's grace and Solomon's wisdom and Job's patience. Thankfully, the blessed Lady of Norwich had all three. She concluded:

The vision was shown me, as I understood it, because it is necessary to some souls to feel this way - sometimes to know comfort, and sometimes to fail and be left on their own. God wants us to know that he keeps us safe through good and ill.

For his soul's sake a man is sometimes left on his own, but his sin is not always the cause. For during this time I did not sin, so why should I have been forsaken, and so suddenly? Also, I did nothing to deserve this feeling of bliss.

But our Lord freely gives what it is his will to give, and sometimes lets us suffer woe - and both are part of one love. For bliss is lasting and pain is passing and shall come to nothing for those that shall be saved.

And therefore it is not God's will that we should linger over pain, but that we should pass quickly through it to joy without end.

I believe Lady Julian was right. I love her words "it is necessary" (in the original, "speedful") for some souls to feel alternating comfort and desolation. They remind me of Jesus' "it is proper" when John asked him why in the world he wanted to get baptized (Matthew 3:15). It was just the way it had to be. God's best purposes could not be fulfilled otherwise. Some people must suffer emotional woe - not so that they might live in that state permanently, or deliberately milk sympathy from others, or develop perverse pleasure in their own melancholy - but so that (among other things) they might pass through that sorrow to even greater joy in the presence of God.

There is also a place for the frenzied activity of the elated manic. Josh MacDowell wrote his influential bestseller "More Than A Carpenter" in a single sitting in 48 hours. That's something no balanced midpolar person could ever do. And certain elements of St. Paul's life sometimes suggest to me a manic-depressive who never went depressive.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not against mood-flattening drugs for those who need them. In some cases they are as necessary to sustain life as insulin is for a diabetic. I am just saying that there is a place in the will and providence of God for both despairing sorrow and lively exaltation. A friend of mine, who was medicated for a while, said, wisely, "I think I'd rather feel sad than feel nothing." C. S. Lewis would have agreed. In The Pilgrim's Regress, an angel explains to Pilgrim John that the unfulfilled longings of those who fall short of God's glory are not exactly a punishment, because "any liberal man would choose the pain of this desire, even for ever, rather than the peace of feeling it no longer: and that though the best thing is to have, the next best is to want, and the worst of all is not to want." John replies, "I see that. Even the wanting, though it is a pain too, is more precious than anything else we experience."

God bless all you bipolars, who don't quite have the brain that you want. Keep trusting Jesus Christ, and someday you will see fulfilled the lovely words of assurance given to Julian of Norwich: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."