Читать книгу The Psychosis of God - Jeff Hood - Страница 6

When I met Jeff Hood, I knew mental illness was part of the package. However, I had no idea what that meant. Over the past five years, I’ve gained tremendous insight, though I also understand that the human mind is something that can never be fully known. Kind of like God. The mind knows in part and the mind is known in part. That means that there is much we do not know about ourselves, and there is much we do not know about God. What do we do with the mystery of it all?

In the summer of 2011, I was living in rural central Texas working as an artist. There weren’t many people around my age, so online dating seemed like a good option. I knew it would open my world to folks I might not cross paths with otherwise. I’ve always loved adventure, and it seemed like a rather adventurous thing to do. Two years into the endeavor, I found myself disillusioned with the process and the people I was (or wasn’t) meeting. I met a few diamonds, but no one that fit the bill for a life companion. I lamented to my friend Sarah, sad that I felt so out of place in life. I was moving away from my family in a theological sense, and I wanted to find someone who understood the world the way that I did. The next morning, I received a message from a guy named Jeff. My first thought was, wow—this guy doesn’t look like all the other guys (he was wearing really cool glasses). There was also something familiar about his face. It sounds cliché, but I felt like I already knew him. Over the course of the next few days, as I traveled and camped in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of Norther New Mexico, Jeff and I shared long phone conversations. Early on he told me that he had a mental illness. It was shocking, but I appreciated his transparency. Our relationship moved rather quickly from there. We met in person over the next few weeks and continued our relationship long distance. We decided to get married, so two months after we met we married.

Since then, life has been a blur. We moved to Tupelo, Mississippi so that Jeff could pursue graduate studies at the University of Mississippi. I painted, taught art lessons and worked at Starbucks. I was doing community theater when I found out I was pregnant with twins. In the meantime, I was offered a full scholarship and teaching fellowship to the doctoral program in art education at the University of North Texas. That spring brought with it the deepest depression I have ever witnessed in another human being. Jeff constantly talked about suicide. He struggled to get out of bed in the mornings. We prayed together at night, and he would always say, “God, we pray to you because we don’t know what else to do.” Jeffrey and Phillip were born at the end of May. Phillip had some breathing issues and spent a week in NICU. I thought it was the end of the world. Postpartum depression was in full force. I was sleep deprived. A hormonal wreck. I felt doomed. We hadn’t been married a year and we were dealing with the crazy web we had woven.

After a few visits with different psychiatrists, Jeff received a new diagnosis and started on new medicine. Things got worse before they got better, but eventually we found a point of relative stability. We moved to Texas when the babies were three months old and I started PhD work. I loved it. It was my bliss.

After lunch at the park with the babies and my friend Channelle, I realized I had a significant sunburn. When you are pregnant you are more susceptible to sunburn. My suspicions were confirmed by a home pregnancy test. I was happy, though I wondered what this would mean for my studies. We kept going.

Quinley was born in a therapy pool in our living room in early December. Jeff was the best birth partner. He stayed in the water with me at the end and applied counter pressure to my back for an hour or more. He is loyal and determined—a theme that often resounds in the vessel of our marriage. I again struggled with postpartum depression. I remember that Jeff and I were arguing, yelling at each other one morning. I left to go take a shower. Sobbing as the water splashed down on my face I knew our marriage was falling apart. I thought it was over . . . based on one fight. My ability to reason logically was completely shot.

After the birth, Jeff lost his mind. On multiple occasions, Jeff described seeing things that were not there. There was no way to make it stop. Jeff kept swinging back and forth between mania and depression with a touch of paranoia and hallucination thrown in. I didn’t know what to do. I just prayed. The days and nights got worse before they got better. Eventually, Jeff pulled out of it. In the midst of the chaos, I always pray for Jeff to pull out of it.

On and off, we talked about having another baby. An even number of kids seemed like a good idea, and since the first three were so close in age, we went for it. A couple of weeks in, I felt horrible and started having flashbacks to my first pregnancy. I knew I was pregnant with multiples—I feared it might be triplets! The doctor confirmed my suspicions, and once again we were having twins. It was a difficult time. For me, twin pregnancy was physically and emotionally draining, and even still, there were three little people who needed constant support. I carried the babies to full term. I felt so many things that I can’t begin to describe. I thought I was going to die. But amid the struggle, I was excited to meet the babies. This time around, I realized that something about impending childbirth triggered Jeff’s depression. So, all of these obstacles seemed to come at once. When the babies finally arrived, we ended up with one vaginal birth and one emergency C-section. We were grateful for the health and safety of our babies, but I was spent emotionally and physically. Despite these obstacles, we made it through.

I will never forget the day that my Mom, my Aunt, and I stood in my grandfather’s kitchen discussing the arrival of the second set of twins. They looked me straight in the eye, and with deep concern and disbelief said, “How will you ever take care of five little children!?” At the time I was really hurt by their lack of hope for the situation. I told them, “I don’t’ know! I’ve never taken care of five kids before! I do know we won’t all just lay down and die.” I guess that was my way of sticking up for myself. What I should have said was, it hurts my feeling that you said that. What I need now is love, support, and encouragement. I don’t have room for negativity and fear.

I relay that story to illustrate something very special about my relationship with Jeff Hood. Despite the challenges that we have faced over these five years. Despite a constant juggling of mental stability for both of us. Despite the demands of exponential family growth. We are committed to hope. We are committed to asking questions. And we are committed to creating a world that is not dominated by fear and rules. We believe that the image of God makes it thus, and if we are to be faithful, we must move forward, side by side, notwithstanding the expectations and fears of our world.

This creative way of living is complicated. It is full of unknowns as we forge new paths. But, it is a divine right and the pathway of freedom. As such, I return to the idea of the God we cannot fully know. The God in whose image we are created. There are fundamental characteristics that belong to the Divine. Love being the foremost. How do we imagine the love of God for the mentally ill? How have our churches extended divine love to the mentally ill? What does our society have to say about the mentally ill? You can take the time to answer each of these questions, and I think you will find incongruence and failures. The mentally ill are marginalized. They are defective. We are afraid of mental illness. Perhaps in this day and age, Jesus would say, “Blessed are the mentally ill, for they will experience the world in profound ways.” My academic mentor always talks about how outsiders often make the greatest theoretical contributions to any given discipline or field because they are able to see that particular world through a different lens. For many mentally ill people, the experience of the world is never normative. Even with medication there are struggles with each moment. Dealing with this kind of adversity, this instability, causes one to struggle and fight to survive. For my husband, his will to fight has ensured his survival and equipped him to do the social justice work that he does. His grit, along with the lens God has given him, allows him to make theological innovations, such as this book. In many ways, his mental illness offers him creative affordances that others will never have. I know Jeff is not alone.

What if we apply our creativity to God as well? What if we allow ourselves to imagine God in an infinite number of ways? I believe it is important to do so with humility, knowing that for now, our knowing is partial. Nonetheless, God calls us to be co-creators. God is in our midst and we are made in God’s image. For many that image includes mental illness, and so generating ideas about God based on psychosis allows those who are mentally ill to become an integral part of the flock. Many indigenous cultures have much more reverence for those whose minds allow them to experience the world in non-normative ways. Perhaps we can learn from their traditions. Perhaps we can reimagine God and in so doing reimagine mental illness, ultimately accepting it as a complex way of being that is fraught will challenges, and yet ushers unique knowledge into the world that would otherwise not exist.

This book is a theology of mental illness, and yet it is about all of us. This book emerges from Jeff’s personal struggles. Though it is an intensely personal topic, it is simultaneously collective in nature. Mental illness touches all of us in one way or another. We must decide how we will respond to mental illness in various context within our culture. This book calls the reader to imagine how psychosis and mental illness might be part of God’s divine perfection, and then asks the reader to apply their thoughts to practical engagements of theology in everyday life. May we never forget that the unknowable aspects of God are an invitation to imagine perfection more perfectly.

—Emily Jean Hood, May 2016