Bible

Scripture Help for Depression & Anger.

/ Erin Kirk / 4 Comments

A few people have asked, what’s up with The Bible stuff? Why are you doing it?

Here are the top three reasons:

  1. This isn’t me but it feels like it. Nice, France.

    I was anxious, lonely and depressed after moving to Texas. I thought, “if I don’t find something to help me get out of bed every day, I won’t.” I’d already read everything by Wayne Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Louise Hay, Eckhart Tolle and Oprah. I’d read The Purpose Driven Life, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting, the Yoga Sutras and The Secret and I was still lying face down on my bed. Why not add The Bible to the list? Why not read the best-selling book of all time and do what it says as an experiment? That’s literally how much thought I put into this, nearly-three- year project.

  2. I wanted to be a writer, not an insurance salesman. I didn’t have the courage to pursue what I wanted and I was jealous of people who did.
  3. I was burdened with rancor for the Religious Right, Republicans, Monsanto, Karl Rove, The Bush Administration, BP, Enron, Lehmann Brothers, Fox News, the pharmaceutical industry and the machine that created Justin Bieber. But that was proving tiresome and unhelpful.

So I read The Bible, studied it and tried to do what it says. Here’s what things look like two and a half years later:

This isn’t me either. Not yet. Nice, France

  1. My life didn’t get easier. It got harder. The holy magic wand that many Christians secretly expect as a reward for their obedience, didn’t pass over my life and sparkle everything up. Instead, my attitude toward my circumstances changed, which takes practice. Life is hard now like swimming in the ocean is hard – especially when the current is strong – but I swim every day with determination because it’s rewarding. Eventually, I hope to swim gracefully, for long periods of time, with many other people, because swimming in the ocean is fun and an awesome privilege.
  2. I write every day. When I was stubbornly forcing my life, plotting, competing, conniving, I got to sell insurance. When, per The Bible’s suggestion, I surrendered all that to God, I got the space and the courage to write a book.
  3. Rancor still raises its ugly head but The Bible helps me choke it. I quit watching the news because the American media is in the business of feeding indignation. It was making me bitchy and that sometimes soured relationships with people I like, who happen to vote Republican. Thanks Google and Twitter for making this possible.

So here are two scriptures I used to combat depression and anger and one I used for courage. My teacher put the text in the first person, which makes them easy to say out loud. Stick them on the bathroom mirror. They help.

Depression – God is my shield, my glory and the lifter of my head. Psalm 3:3

Courage – I am strong, vigorous and very courageous, I am not afraid, neither am I dismayed for the Lord my God is with me wherever I go. Joshua 1:9

Anger – I speak soft answers that turn away wrath, not grievous words that stir up anger. Proverbs 15:1

Try it and let me know how it goes.

 

How To Solve Your First World Problem.

/ Erin Kirk / 2 Comments

Learning to live biblically, I think, is like losing a lot of weight, and the best way I know to describe it is to show you before and after pictures of myself.

I got some good snapshots this afternoon at Urgent Care, moments before the doctor stuck a needle in my foot, gliding it into the same hole occupied by a shard of glass, the size of a Tic-Tac, that I had corkscrewed into the ball of my foot.

That really wasn’t on my agenda today.

So naturally, waiting in the doctor’s office for 45 minutes, I got impatient and began to wonder what was taking so long. “I mean, what’s up, it’s not like they were that busy….Ugh, the American Healthcare system, especially in a small town…Are there even any doctors on duty? I mean I need some competent help and….”

That is snapshot A – Me exercising my considerable gift of criticism.

Snapshot B was taken five seconds later when I thought,  “I wonder how long it would take to get this glass out of my foot if I were Haitian.”

Would there be a doctor and a nurse standing by in Port au Prince with sterile instruments and anesthetics to numb the pain while they very capably dug the glass out of my foot? After their success, would there be a nearby pharmacy from which they could order a round of antibiotics for me; and if all this did exist, could I pay for it?

Repent has to be the most misunderstood word in the Christian lexicon. Before I read The Bible, I hated that word because it was the battle cry for every crazy, white-haired, bible-thumping fundamentalist in the world.

But the word repent in the Greek is metanoia and it means, to change your mind, to turn and go the other direction; and I think this is another way to look at Jesus’ teaching on the broad and narrow paths – something I talked about in a post called Two Paths.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. Matthew 7:13

In snapshot A, which used to be me all the time, I would have scarcely concealed my irritation when the doctor did get to me. That’s a broad path so often chosen that First World Problems are a meme. Who’s life am I improving with that behavior? Nobody’s. It’s destructive.

But because I have invited God’s Holy Spirit to invade me, Haiti popped into my head and helped me “repent” onto the narrow path where Jesus and his example live. As such, I thanked that doctor and nurse about 15 times for helping me and I meant it.

I’m not telling you this to excite you with my awesome holiness, I’m sharing it because I’m having some weight-loss success. The Bible is changing me from an occasionally sweet but mostly critical, impatient, eye-rolling, selfish American into something new and better. The work is ongoing and it’s often hard, but on days like today, I’m encouraged.

So, how To Solve Your First World Problem? Pack it up and mentally go to Haiti. How does it hold up there? Did it disappear and leave you feeling grateful instead? Repeat this every time you catch yourself complaining. It’s not easy or magic, it’s a narrow path practice.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly.

/ Erin Kirk / Leave a comment

Yesterday, I received a rejection letter from a company to which I have applied for five different jobs.

It was a Christian company.

The first time they didn’t hire me, I wondered if they found me online and didn’t like my “brand” of Christianity, because they never even called me back. In the weeks that followed, I found myself pulling punches, editing myself into something they might like better, just in case they looked again. Reading those drafts, which thank God I didn’t post, is painful. My voice is fractured, boring and meanders all over the place.

I made myself into someone I’m not, so someone I don’t know would like me. Guess what? They still don’t.

Maybe it’s just the economy, but the point remains: I am useless to the world if I am lying about myself. I have learned from reading The Bible that I shouldn’t be domineering or offensive or aggressive, but do have to actually like who I am and not apologize for it – a topic I mulled over in yesterday’s post.

So I’m a Democrat and a yoga-teacher, and a thinker and a skeptic, who’s in love with organic farming, food politics and Jesus; and I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. Watering any of that down to be palatable to everybody, just makes me bland, and that, I think, is an insult to God.

Photo: TPSDave

Photo: TPSDave

That’s the problem I had with Christianity forever. I believed I had to be a pious, churchy version of myself, and hose down the fiery parts that actually fuel the things I care about, like girls from poor families
sold by the busload into sexual slavery. Lots of religious folk trade in such phoniness, but Jesus does not.

In the gospels, Jesus prizes poor, marginalized women and will happily put my energy into their service, if I allow him to direct it; and surely the mind behind the aurora borealis can be trusted to handle that.

I believe there’s a juicy sweet spot in America populated by tons of people who would delight in the gospel if they actually could hear it, but if what they hear first is hell, the Law and a six-day creation, they’ll keep rejecting all of it and never know what good news the gospel really is.

So today, I’m changing the tagline on this blog to: Going to the Sea: A Sassy Democrat’s Guide to Faith.

This is who I am. Who are you?