In Celebration of Juneteenth

Juneteenth celebration in 1900 at Eastwoods Park. Credit: Austin History Center

I got paid time and a half today at work for a holiday I never heard of until last week. I say this to my shame because I’ve lived in the US most my life and never heard of Juneteenth. I’m proud to work at a company that wanted to honor and commemorate this today and going forward.

 

I celebrated it today! Actually, it was on my mind most of the day. The Lord has laid it on my heart for days now, to pray in thanksgiving, and to expressly say Happy Juneteenth to my friends as well. I’m sorry for not honoring it earlier, I was ignorant, but now I am not. God helped me recall and write a few memories of His faithfulness in hard time of my life for His glory. May He get the praise

 

I remember Moving to Chicago and experiencing race issues deeply as I entered into the Urban Ministry track at Moody Theological Seminary. There I learned some seriously sobering truths about Slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow Laws, the Black Migration, the Projects, Civil right, systemic poverty, and the political corruption used to prolong injustices. Equally heavy was learning about the divisions within the Church around race rather than reconciliation. This was the “head work” for my adult years in Chicago.

 

The “heart work” played out on the job. I left the white, middle class suburbs of Denver and transferred to the lower class African American suburbs of Chicago as an overnight manager while attending Moody. My entire team changed skin color except for me. I thought I could just roll up my sleeves and get to work same ole-same ole. I didn’t make friends. Not only was I the only white leader, I was a bad listener focused doing things my way to meet company goals. I cared about company lingo rather than its employees. I used to lead as if my employees were the means to the end for my success.

 

But God used these school and work at the same time to break my racial bias, preunderstandings, and to relent of my leadership style. Satan wanted me to quit and fail. I did plenty of failing, I felt like quitting. But instead I kept on asking God “What can I learn? Teach me why this leading was once so easy and now is so hard?” The ambiance was so hostile as ethically degrading the music was on the P/A all night, the breakroom was so loud by people trying to out-do each other’s stories I couldn’t catch a break as I kept to myself. I was intimidated, unhappy, and insecure as a leader. It’s safe to say those that respected me were gracious and forbearing.  Though it wasn’t true I felt that I was not being respected at all, rather I was perpetuating the perception of slavery a white man telling many black people what to do.

 

Biblical leadership, particularly Jesus Christ style of leadership helped me see 2 things. 1 that God care for the people I lead more than my own success. And 2 Jesus is a shepherd leader not a cattle driver. I started praying to this end.

 

By God’s grace inroads were made, God showed me His love and plans for the team members who would open up to me. God showed me the hearts of my team members. It was humbling to realize that nearly everyone counted this job to make ends meet. That was so different than the people I led in Colorado. I heard dreams of a 65-year-old lady who wanted to open a roller rink. I understood the persistence of a young mother working overnight and raising 2 girls during the day one of whom was heavily autistic. I let myself be schooled.

 

My leadership skills transformed into shepherding. There was still some cattle driving for getting results from the few that would not respond to my radical change. I tried to confront conflict and poor performers in gentleness. I became good at making eye-contact, questioning and seeking to understand rather than dismissing and gossiping about my frustrations. Gentleness is a quality in leadership that ought never to be mistaken for timidity or avoidance. I was leading from the front of my team putting up good examples of work ethic and modeling teachability. Expressing appreciation, voicing encouragement, pointing out the good, and even being the butt of a lighthearted joke became an everyday thing. Me being consistent in this approach and recognition meant that my team starting to “recognize my voice”. I was so busy trying new things that the music didn’t bother me, and I started holding my head up in the breakroom and listen. There were still people that played out racial roles with me, but I wasn’t falling into it. I changed, I can’t change them, God was working!

 

There is a tenderhearted mercy that I long to express to the African Americans reading this because I have learned from the past and from personal experience that racism has its residue in America today, and the role playing needs to stop.  I know that walls turn into bridges with humility and gentleness. I think celebrating Juneteenth as a national holiday is worthwhile. So, what's the justice in poverty? Why was I not born into cyclical poverty? Why was I not raised with the majority telling me "you will never go.” I challenge this racial bias that is prevalent and racist at its origin, I challenge the marginalization, the poverty mindset to urge progress and unity in the name of Jesus.

"So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,  for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Galatians 3:26-28

Healing from Mental Illness

Mental illness for me didn’t degenerate into long term insanity, violence, or make me join an extremist cult/religion; it led to Truth. I never planned on being a Christian, so this story includes much of my searching for spiritual truths in metaphysical, mystical places. Life in my twenties included a dark journey through mental illness as I acted upon runaway emotions. Leading up to that time I had no treatment for mental conditions, this coarse and sour ordeal was so unexpected. 

The Bible claims to be God’s very words, an unchanging absolute Truth upon which all purposes of creation itself is explained to the extent that God permits. I’ll admit it’s not very popular believing that the Bible is absolute Truth; However, a claim like that needs to be studied, explored, and tested prior to rejecting it by anyone on a quest for their own truth. God has never asked our intellects to take a back seat while faith drives, instead He invites us to be teachable, investigative, and full of faith. Upon believing in the Gospel of Jesus Christ I found God’s grace, forgiveness, redemption, transformation, adoption, and a plan for my life. 

Therefore, I will be describing my spiritual journey from a biblical view because I have read it, tested it, and found the Bible to be Truth. It is a book that accounts for unseen things, spiritual and supernatural things depicting them as a battlefield for the souls of mankind. I know firsthand that the mind is a battleground where spiritual forces contend. Interestingly, the Bible contains many accounts of demon possessed people. Our time and place is certainly not any more holy than Bible times, so why have descriptors such as demon-influenced vanished from our society? Where have all the demoniacs gone? When did we eradicate demonic influence? 

At 24 years of age I was diagnosed Schizoaffective (Schizophrenia and bipolar interacting together). Today I cannot trace my Bipolar 1 diagnosis or the remains of a schizophrenia diagnosis. Much of these diagnoses came as a result of “psychotic episodes”. All Bipolar is a chemical imbalance in the mind thought to be caused by both nature and nurture. I have a history of mental illness in my family, perhaps suggesting an origin.

Disillusionment, Footholds, and Strongholds

My first psychotic crisis (or episode) came about through my thought life without the influence of drugs or alcohol; I did smoke pot regularly however I was not intoxicated when the psychosis started. Soberly, I mentally created a fake reality and stepped into that world passionately -like I had a discovered what was really going on in this world around me- when really, I was losing footing on reality. During this loss of control, my mind was working frantically to keep on justifying the events as they unfolded: it all made sense to me. But I was not in my control of my thoughts, and things were just going way too fast. I couldn’t sleep or “turn the switch off.” I left reality for the directives of my mind. I accepted a bombardment of conspiracy theories, and ultimately, I knew it was all worth it because I was going be elevated as god or, more accurately, the last reincarnation of the Buddha. My theories culminated with vanishing into Nirvana as I leaped (in full faith) off the Belmont Harbor pier naked, at 3 in the morning. 

After three weeks of being in a locked mental ward, the heavy antipsychotic meds and mood stabilizers started to kill off my imagination and emotions. But I still had a persistent presence within me keeping the many theories alive. For many days I was not in control of my words or actions. 

My brother Olivier felt that there was a spiritual side to my psychotic episode, not just a nervous breakdown or an episode of intense mania. He prayed much and acted upon some biblical directives. He, his wife and some others came to the mental hospital to pray over me, read the Scriptures to me, asked me to repeat some verses and left a Bible with me. 

In light of the Bible, I have found that there are two spiritual factors that contributed to my psychotic episode aside from the mania. As a free-willed person I invited demonic influence into my life by choosing to sin. I loved doing sins and giving into temptations, it was my ticket to self-discovery. Bit by bit, as years went by, tendencies gave way to more indulgence; I mocked God and created my own satirical religion. The destroyer at work in the spirit world Satan, took note of me and the ethical ground I had surrendered to sinful deeds: I became an opportunity. Ephesians 4:27 says “and don’t give the Devil a foothold.” Some translations say “give no opportunity to the Devil”. These footholds are outside elements I chose to invite into my life, and because of their qualities/consequences I gave Satan an increased opportunity to mess with me. My media choices, likeminded friends always repeating the same folly together, and over indulging my senses were footholds that gave great permission to demonic exploitation. Footholds often lead to strongholds, the second key factor that invited demonic influence into my life. 

Strongholds devastate because they reside in the inner person. What are the inner lies that I believed? What fermented into bitterness and caused me to surrender ground over demons unknowingly? For example, from a very early age, I chose to be bitter about my father dying in an avalanche. That fueled me to blame God for years, and to hate the life He gave me. Another stronghold I had involved the concept of being an artist, a writer. I wrote narratives that always contained themes of being alone, antagonized, rebellious, and prideful. Much of my art stemmed from those themes. On some level I was just working at my craft, being transparent in my writings. But for me those themes took my spirit-life with them. This depreciating use of my imagination became an all-access pass for Satan to claim more ground and solidify his lies in my heart. My psychotic episodes seeded and sprouted from the ground I surrendered in pursuit for my own artistic truth. I was deceived (as the Bible puts it) on a heart level.  

Jesus said of Satan: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Jn 8:44) Like angels, Satan and his demon can take up residence in people for varying amounts of time.  Mark 5:2 refers to this as “having an unclean spirit”. 

My first psychotic crisis cost me my job, my roommates, my girlfriend. I moved back in with my mom and a year later experienced renewed psychotic episodes while on anti-psychotics. This time strongholds of hopelessness, meaninglessness, numbness, and alcoholism defined the next two years. I found my way to the mental hospital two other times with further delusions of complex religious grandeur elevating me. Somewhere between the objective reality of this world and the subjective reality in my mind existed an onslaught of emotional waves lapping at my perceived reality straining to grasp actuality and exchanging it for something suitable with me in the center.

The most effective part of pharmaceutical intervention in my psychoses my was that the medicine pacified my emotions. The thoughts are still there but the emotional passivity lets the thinking go by without action. The spirit world still provoked the emotions to feel, but the medicine helped me become despondent to provocations. I consider it a mercy that I always took my medicine during these years and never felt like I didn’t need it. I believe emotions are patterns that ferment behaviors into addictions and emotions when given permission to lead a person can mislead greatly. In using biblical language, I had become demon possessed for a time.  

Becoming Unrecognizable

Real, lasting change—eternal change—came on November 10, 2006. Amid the fullness of this dark depression and hopelessness, my car was stolen. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. This event made me cry out in prayer, asking for the free gift of salvation only Jesus Christ gives. To be clear, I cried out not to the Jesus I made up in my head in the mental hospital, but instead to the historical resurrected Jesus Christ of the Bible. I believed that Jesus Christ suffered for the things I had done. He was nailed to the cross, died to take my sins away so that God’s wrath which I deserved would pass over me. Jesus’ resurrection pleased God and authenticated the righteous requirements God’s just demands.

 This bold certainty of forgiveness means that I am with God for eternity, starting on that day. Jesus gave me a perfect, loving, heavenly Father; I am an orphan no longer. Added to all that, is the Biblical certainty that God now indwells me through His Holy Spirit taking up residence in me -no longer can any spirit indwell me because God put a “No Vacancy” sign on my heart. I have the Holy Spirit now. God has a plan for my life, its underway. 

Since that November date, I put my entire broken life on the table before God. I became willing to quit whatever He asked no matter, because He was going to do the quitting through me. By His grace, God was living through me as he enabled me to follow and trust Him at His Word. I prayed for a steady conversion, because I didn’t want to return to those hyper-religious, dark days of psychotic episodes. I found that placing my faith and love in Jesus ahead of doing things “my way” honored by God. I could tell, because He lifted my worries and showed me a Truth I could stand on. I started to trust the Bible, and soon found it to be more reliable in good decision-making than even my best intentions. I asked the Spirit of God to apply biblical truth to my life, especially when it meant uprooting those strongholds! 

Occasionally I am still visited with temptatios of mania, but the footholds/strongholds are not there, and each manic thought is met by the Holy Spirit. My composure and countenance are different. I praise God for taking my psychotic episodes away. The sleepless conspiring and delusions of grandeur are out of me. I am a vapor, a blade of grass, always in need of humility: time with God in His Word, in thanksgiving, and in prayer. God’s Sprit even tells me to calm down at times. I’m not in control, God is. I’m not out of control either, thanks to Jesus the Rock. 

In the early days of my new life as a Christ follower, my habit of self-medicating with alcohol still held sway. That stronghold was a tight clamp that I didn’t want to get rid of. I thought it was stronger than me. So night after night I would show up in the liquor store and view the selections. No longer was I shopping alone; every time I would have God’s Spirit nudging me with the thought that in Jesus, I was a new creation, and that the old self was gone. In times of temptation, He constantly reminded me that I could talk to God about the temptation rather than just give in to sin.

Healing from Bipolar 1

I take responsibility for my past insanity and fully accept that demons exploited the mental territory I opened to them. The spirit world fought many battles in my brain, it’s a rich mercy to state that Jesus won and established me in my right mind once again. 

About 6 years after my illnesses, my pastor in Chicago put me in touch with a young Psychiatrist who was a professing believer in Jesus. He was cautious to affirm my understandings but admitted that there was a spiritual component to some cases of mental illness. I saw him for years for medication management. He rarely charged me for a session and we always prayed together before our meetings. God used this man to speak into my disease, to help me understand that my mental illness was not purely spiritual either therefore it might not go away completely. 

In addition to the meds, he gave me tools to fight my manic imbalance. He told me that the effects of Bipolar are magnified when certain choices are made: not taking medication, sleeping less than 8 hours a day, using addictive substances. He suggested that if I could keep those three things under control, the mania would recur less, and it would be easier to deal with. 

Next, the doctor and I identified triggers—or “red flags”—of my persona when in a period of mania. He also identified people close to me that needed to monitor my bipolar, people who could recognize those times when I was acting out. These carefully considered tools represented a far deeper investment in me than any of the past psych docs had provided. I was grateful for such grace. God used my time with this God-fearing psychiatrist to equip me for the road ahead.

As God regenerated me, I wanted believe that Jesus had more freedom, that He had healing for me, a miraculous renewal. I talked with my psychiatrist about how God could heal me altogether from Bipolar and finally stop taking Lithium medication. His response was straight forward as he opened up the Bible. We talked about how Jesus many times just spoke “be healed” and people were healed supernaturally on the spot (Matthew 8). The doctor did not dismiss my faith, but he was clear to offer me other Bible passages too like when God did use things to heal. I was forced to think of my Lithium as that bronze snake God told Moses to make so that those who looked to it were healed from the plague (Numbers 21). We also studied King Hezekiah’s illness that was going to kill him; after appealing to God, the Lord didn’t just heal the king, but rather instructed him to use a poultice of pressed figs on his wound (2 Kings 20). This insight from the Scriptures gradually, gently changed my mind about healing from Bipolar as I accepted that I could be on Lithium for the rest of my life. By the Spirit’s encouraging, I have been loyal in taking my meds, sleeping 8 hours, staying away from addictive substances, noticing red flags, and allowing my wife to monitor my mood.

6 years ago, I returned to Colorado. My new medication manager was shocked that I had been stable for close to ten years. What surprised her even more was that the level of Lithium in my blood was not enough to make the drug effective for Bipolar treatment given my weight. I had been taking an ineffective amount of lithium for an uncertain amount of time. She gave me the choice of increasing the dose or weening off the drug completely and be closely monitored while doing so. It is to the glory of God that I tell you: it has been three years since I last took Lithium. I want to testify that it is Christ in me that has brought such grace, regeneration to those afflictions once so completely consuming, whose prognosis was perpetual mental illness.  

I’m still a sinner, but now with a Savior therefore a saint. I have found that God’s faithfulness in upholding His Word has transformed my past spiritual strongholds of lies, replacing them with pillars of Truth. As the book of Colossians says, “He (God) has rescued us (believers in Jesus) from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves.  We have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, in Him.”

My Dads (a creative retelling of adoption)

       My best friend’s dad is actually my adopted Father. Once He laid His eyes on me, He said, “my Son has told me all about you, and I would love to hire you, I got an extra car for you to use because my Son tells me yours got stolen.” There I was, a 28-year-old man and He wanted to adopt me? Crazy?! His generosity in meeting my immediate needs surfaced right away with the car. How could I say no? He made me weep from day one with His loving-kindness. I thought it too good to be true, but He kept inviting me into His home and sharing stories with me without wanting anything in return. Well almost nothing, Father kept telling me to chill out and not worry.

Eventually it became easy to be honest with Him even when I knew He would not approve. My best friend helped me understand where my Father was coming from and that was just what I needed to hear. When needs surfaced, my Father would introduce me to just the right person at just the right time to help me. You see, growing up fatherless I had almost never set foot in a hardware or auto parts store. And now at 28 years of age my Father would send His highly trained experts to do the job with me and teach me how to do it all for free. I’ve replaced toilets, doors, flooring, brakes, radiators, the list goes on! He taught me so much through his people that now I am an extension if His graciousness to others.  

It didn’t stop there, my personal adult beliefs that made my life turn out as constantly rebellious, self-centered, going in any direction the wind blows now was being challenged by my Father. It would have been knee-jerk of me to tell my Father off, but instead I listened and read. I had no more excuses. This Father of mine offered me absolute truth, encouragement to change without puffing me up, and He explained the world around me soberly. Like a coach my Father equipped me to rethink and change. What patience He has in dealing with me.

Father showed me where I was misled for years, for example “Life is what you make it” got replaced with my Father telling me that He has a plan for my life and more specifically, He has work prepared for me to do. My entire career was on the foundation of “follow your heart, let your loves lead you”, well my Father suggested that my heart was wicked and deceitful a horrible thing to build your life on and let lead unbridled. As an artist I chose the plunge into “self-discovery, embracing temptations, and “sins” as part of who I am and to not apologize.” My Father sat me down and said that I need to give sin up. That new life in the Spirit was about denying oneself, grieving my personal sin, and doing all I can to kill it. These were some huge paradigm shifts that He challenged me with, but He promised that my best friend would walk with me through each sin struggle. They were not going to leave me alone, this is family!

Finally, I had a Father that spoke into my life; yet wise enough to let me make the changes and ask for His help. As the years of being adopted went by, I loved the promises He made me. I love trusting Him more and more. My Father reshaped foundational things like forgiveness, and thinking of others as more highly than myself. Father placed priorities before me like purity and humility which were never on my radar before. Really though the chewy-chocolatey center between my Father and I is love. Not just the woo or the gushy love. Not just the gift giving or going out to eat love. Not just the joint adventure or up-all-night-talking love. But rather our love is the obeying, trusting, and sacrificing kind of love. In each moment unfailing love.  

One day I opened up to my adopted Father about how my father had died and the pain I carried as a child and youth. “My earthly father died when I was two in an avalanche on Thanksgiving Day.” My adopted Father was full of sorrow and greatly interested in listening. “I always asked myself if my mountain man father thought I was good enough to be his son? Even if I never climbed all those peaks or followed in his footsteps as a dental technician. My aunts, uncles and mother would share larger-than-life stories to immortalize my Swiss dad as terrific and unique to the world, which I’m sure he was. His attitude to everyone’s recollection, without exception was super positive and helpful.” I made eye contact and continued: “Oh, how I thought I fell short of those things my father encapsulated regularly.”

“Even though I didn’t have a single memory of my dad, growing up.” I continued, “I felt that God, like my dad expected more from me than I could give and that something wrong if I am less than happy all the time.”

This made my adopted Father weep and hug me. “You are a trophy of grace, what immense hardship you faced in losing your father.” He paused to make sure I was looking at Him in the eye. “When I look at my Son, I am only well pleased. I am certain your birth father would say the same of you if he could. Will you allow me to say it?” I nodded.  My Father said: “I love you and I am pleased with you.”