The Brother God Gave Me

It has been a very sad and emotional week for me.  We laid to rest my big brother, who was only 44 years young.  Tony Renee Goodwin was a dynamic and outgoing person who lit up a room with his “camera ready” smile.  He had the most beautiful expressions and was so full of happiness constantly.  In fact, I don’t ever think I saw a single mood swing in his behavior.  He was unconditional in his loyalty to friends and family and generous with everyone.

During the eulogy yesterday I shared a story that as a young boy I looked up to my brother so much and wanted to be just like him.  I would follow him around and try to imitate his every move.  Of course, like most big brothers he would grow tired of it eventually and would need “his space.”  Whenever I managed to push him to his breaking point, Tony would hold me down and tickle me relentlessly.  I could not stand to be tickled.  It absolutely infuriated me.  I would certainly stop my aggravating behavior immediately.  Later, we were grown men, and our Dad was suffering from stage IV stomach cancer.  UAB Hospital had given him only a few months to live, but my Mom was insistent that we try every resource and avenue to achieve better news and better results.  I found the Cancer Center of America in Zion, Illinois.  Eventually they were able to give my Dad about nine really good months and a much better quality of life.  Tony and I flew to Illinois with our Dad and my Mom.  They had never flown before or even really traveled out of the south.  We had to leave them in Illinois for a couple of months.  After we got them moved into an apartment and were ready to head back to the airport, I was falling apart…leaving Mom and Dad behind in a strange, city, state, etc.   With one arm around my shoulder, Tony said to me, “Dry it up, or I will bring out the old tickle monster.”  Needless to say, I dried it up.

On June 25, 2011 my big brother left this world in a tragic and devastating car accident.  Our family is left with a huge void.  As the shock has worn off and the wonder creeps in about how do we live in a world without him?  I think about the few short years our lives are here on earth, and how eternity will be so wonderful and so worth the wait.

Tony was proud of the work I am doing with emotional wellness, he encouraged me often to pray and remain diligent in this work.  It’s nice to know your parents, friends, loved ones, and church family approves of your work and supports you, but hearing “I believe in you,” from Tony will last me for all time as I continue this journey.  Thank you God for giving this amazingly strong, caring, generous, and happy person to me as a big brother!  Rest in peace, Tigger!

Faith Is A Factor

When I spoke publicly for the first time about my personal battle with depression and my advocacy for others with the same struggles, my mission was to remove the shameful stigma attached with the disease.  I stood before two hundred or so of my brothers and sisters in Christ and poured my heart out about my deepest secrets.  It was painful for my family and those who loved me to hear the thoughts I had actually entertained.  The amount of support I received was astonishing, because I had always feared the worst.  I spoke matter of fact about my rearing in the church and being taught that depression was a sign of weakness in faith.  I disputed that teaching.  I am going to stand before the same group in another week or so, plus a few more, and I have decided to communicate the message that faith is a factor.

Depression is not caused by a lack of faith, but certainly can lead to weakness in that area.  In order to illustrate that point, I am going to have to make it personal.  I certainly don’t want to offend anyone with the intimate details, but when I started this mission to serve God, spread my testimony and perhaps save the lives of others, I conquered my fears of embarrassment.  The people I have been fortunate to meet over the last four to five years on this journey share much of the same outlook as I do.  Once again, we did not become depressed because we distrusted or had little faith in God; however, we have suffered moments of weak faith during our emotional cycles.  I want to help others learn how to pull themselves out of the situation that causes weak faith and learn to become even stronger in their relationship with God.

Depression and Bipolar disorder is not something I woke up with one morning.  It has been an illness I have dealt with my entire life; however, it went undiagnosed for many years, just as people often go undiagnosed for illnesses like Fibromyalgia, Diabetes, or Heart Disease.  A mental illness is harder to diagnose because you can’t exactly pinpoint it with a blood test, MRI, or regular office exam.  It takes a lot of discussion, documenting symptoms and trial and error.  It is proven that it can be hereditary.  When my first significant adult manic episode occurred, I was twenty eight years old and a youth minister, bible school teacher and on the publishing team for a major Christian magazine.  My career was at an all time high, I was financially stable and tithing more than ever had before.  My faith was strong publicly and privately.  As the depression began to increase, every aspect of my life began to fall apart.  I began to make impulsive and negative decisions with career, relationships and of course I began to distance myself from God.  I did not blame God for my declining happiness and increasing stress, I just stopped going to Him in prayer for help and I started making excuses for skipping church services.

Over the course of the next few years I covered up episodes and deceived my family, friends and coworkers.  I couldn’t deceive God regardless of how hard I tried.  When a man becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit dwells within him and I believe that life gets harder when you turn away after obeying the Gospel rather than if you had never known God.  He loves us so much that He will do whatever it takes to bring us home.  Naturally, the more I lost faith, the harder it was to cope.  As I reflect now, it occurs to me just how much of a factor faith is when dealing with depression.  If I had reached out sooner, let me rephrase that, if I had reached up sooner to God, my actual path to better health could have been shorter and less rocky.

Throughout my life I have heard many preachers tell me they felt called to preach.  Many women tell me they feel called to teach.  My cousin Sherry has a beautiful soprano voice, and she tells me that she feels called to sing as part of her ministry.  You never really understand the true meaning of what you are “called” to do until the passion is so strong in your heart that you know God put it there.  I know without any doubt that God intends for me to remain an advocate for emotional wellness.  He wants me to use my experiences, open mind, and talents to make a difference and shine for Him.

I will be speaking again on Sunday June 26 at the Ohatchee Church of Christ morning services.  I invite anyone who needs to open their hearts and minds to the Lord and allow Him to put you on the path to recovery.  If you are affected by an emotional illness directly or indirectly by a loved one who suffers, whether you understand the disease or not, it can’t be ignored.  Depression can be a matter of life or death.  Pray for yourselves and loved ones.  Please share this blog and help me reach as many of God’s children as possible.

Faith is a factor.  In my story, it was the determining factor that saved my life.  Love to you all.

Laughing Out Loud

It seems like every time I am chatting on Facebook or Blackberry messenger with my best friend, his every other comment is LOL.  Let’s face it we all overuse this acronym.  Finally the other day I just asked him, if I really bored him that much?  Or is he seriously “laughing out loud” at my every comment.  He responded that sometimes he uses it because he can’t think of anything else to say and he knows I am going to keep talking or telling a story, so it’s his way of encouraging me to keep going, but most of the time, he really is laughing out loud.  He enjoys laughing and believes it’s the best medicine for anything.  Point taken, because this is a guy that allows stress roll like water off a duck’s back.

I was reading an article the other day about Julia Roberts and her signature laugh.  It’s a money maker.  Just about every movie she does, the directors and writers pen a scene where those pearly whites are gleaming and that long flowing red hair is tossing and that hearty beautiful laugh makes the moment.  It really got me to thinking about my life and how laughter can lift tense and traumatic situations.  Think about your friends and family, isn’t there someone you know who is laughing all the time and just really brings your mood up right when you need it?

Back in my school days I can remember two girls who laughed constantly.  They had that Julia Roberts kind of beauty and infectious nature as well.  Carrie Dempsey and Stacye Bramlett attended Roy Webb and Pleasant Valley with me, so we were very close growing up.  Stacye had this machine gun kind of laugh and it didn’t matter what you said, it cracked her up and she could get everyone around her laughing with that sound.  I think the teachers were always calling her out for being loud, but it sure did lighten up the day.  Carrie and I are still close friends today and she has one of those spirited laughs that will make you feel like you are riding around in a convertible.  I can close my eyes and just hear it and it makes me smile.  Humor is one of those sensations that will help a person get through hard times.  Laughter is contagious and it primes the brain to produce serotonin, the chemical that makes you naturally feel good.  My cousin, Diane Kiser has suffered so much tragedy in her life.  She lost her little brother when we were only 15 and then both her parents before she was barely 30 years old.  Sometimes I know she becomes overwhelmed emotionally, yet she can also be one of the happiest people in the world.  Her laugh is so authentic and uplifting, she can have a room full of people rolling around holding their stomach with her wit and humor.  She told me once that she laughs to keep from crying.

God intends for his children to live happily and in abundant joy rather than sadness and despair.  Of course we all face tribulation in this life, but when we concentrate on the promise of salvation and eternity in Heaven we can overcome life’s burdens.  We each differ in our reactions to situations.  We all have strengths and weaknesses and that makes life interesting.  In my personal journey to find victory over these chemical imbalances and mood cycles, I am discovering just how complex the body and mind can be.  Who can question that God is the creator of all when you think of the natural abilities we have within ourselves.  Our immune systems can be strengthened by laughter, love, friendship, etc. as documented in the American Medical Journal. 

Each of us should reach out and encourage, comfort and love our friends more and more.  It edifies and strengthens our bodies and minds.  How much clearer does He need to be when He tells us to “love thy neighbor more than ourselves?”  I think I am going to try and use the acronym LOL a little more in my daily communication and put it into physical action just as much as written.  God bless us all.

Back To The Basics

When things are not going to so well at a company, the owners, managers, or leaders may decide to change the direction.  They may have to make difficult decisions to remove negatives.  As individuals we may get too comfortable with negatives and find it hard to let them go.  I remember back in the 1980’s the battle was so fierce between Coke and Pepsi.  Michael Jackson had signed on to be the spokesperson for Pepsi and they were basically taking more and more of Coke’s market share.  The leaders at Coke came up with this new strategy called, ironically, New Coke.  Well we all know how that ended…it was a flop.  When Coke did what it does best and went back to the basics and focused on its quality and American iconic traditions, Pepsi was left in a distant second.

In our personal lives we sometimes become complacent and we get involved in new strategies or things that we think are going to jump start our lives in a new direction.  We allow worldly pleasures to compete with God as being our number one motivator.  I can relate to this analogy in the sense of allowing doubt, defeat and the devil to compete with my faith and commitment to God.

Back  in 2003-2006 when I was at my worst point of manic depression, I gave up on faith and I retreated.  I was living in a cottage on Lake Wedowee in Randolph County. It was a beautiful place to live, if you had a family or maybe even to use as a vacation home or a writing retreat, etc.  It was not a good place for a person who was contemplating suicide to live.  However, overcome with the depression and the feeling of defeat, I hid from my loved ones, my church family, and many of my colleagues.  In my mind, I think I had developed this new marketing strategy to destroy my life one day at a time so that no one would notice when I was gone.  The biggest change and attribute of this new way of life for me was that faith was nowhere to be found.  I truly abandoned God and was guilty of forsaking the assembly.  I called my Aunt Emily one night in one of my tearful pity party’s.  I was sitting in the hall closet, completely in the dark, hiding from the world, with my cordless phone.  She asked me where are you going to Church?  There are two people in this world I can’t tell a lie, my mother and my aunt Emily.  They know me too well.  I had to tell her I wasn’t going anywhere.  She proceeded to lecture me about how my grandmother had raised me and how that is why I can’t get a grip on things.  She scolded me for hiding from the world and from God.  Angry at first, I said, where do you go to church?  I asked this because I knew she didn’t go anywhere.  She is a wonderful God-fearing woman, but she does not attend church on a regular basis.  Her response to me hit home.  She told me she had never been regular in her attendance to church, but I had.  She had never reached out for edification from others, but I had.  That’s what was missing.  Nothing was wrong or different from her faith or her pursuit of God…it was mine.  I was the one who was living differently from what I had always known!

Once you become a Christian and you worship with brethren on a regular basis, you can’t ever fall away and expect to be happy.  The only choice you have is to progress and mature.   I had to make major changes in my life if I was going to survive.  I had to stop hiding in those woods and get back to civilization and to a place where I could reach out to others, and I had to get back in church and get my life right with God.  Hebrews 11:6 says “And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”

My first step to healing emotionally and getting control of my depression was getting back in church and getting my faith in God on track.  See, He never left me, but I left Him.  When you find that you “earnestly seek Him” and you truly believe in your heart that God exists to take care of us, you can achieve and overcome anything.  Recently my friend, Courtney Hammett and I have been having a lot of discussion about faith.  She has always attended church in different congregations where I have.  Her family and I have been close friends for a very long time, but she expressed a desire to get more involved and to give more of herself to God.  She’s an elementary school teacher in her first year of teaching.  She recently started mentoring the young girls in our Church and even teaching Sunday School.  She also told me that she has improved her prayer life immensely and focuses so much on His Word every day.  In a day and time where most first year teachers get pink slipped, Courtney prospered and now is going to be celebrating her second year as a teacher.  She and I both believe God’s plan is for her to be successful.  If you look at your life and all your successes, isn’t it true that God was a major part of it??

These days when I trip and stumble and when I go through my rapid cycling of emotions related to the Bipolar Disorder, I count on God first to get me through.  Never again will I turn my back on Him and what a great blessing it is to know that when we obey the Gospel and become a Christian, regardless of where we go or what we do, He will never turn His back on us.  He is always right there waiting with open arms.

Back to the basics as a Christian, every challenge or hurdle in life we encounter needs to be conquered with prayer and faith.  It’s the only marketing strategy our lives need to yield the desired results of success.

This Must Be What They Call The Ocean

It was the summer of 1994 and I had been reassigned to the Huntsville area with my job. Granny (Bertie Mae) and I had never been separated. In fact she had lived directly behind my parents for the entire 22 years of my exhistance. We talked on the phone every single night and I ventured home every off day. Finally she asked me to take her to Huntsville with me for a short visit. "I just want to see where you sit on the couch when we talk on the phone," she explained. "It will me make me feel better if I can imagine you there when you call."

I picked her up in my small white pick-up and we headed north on US 431. As we approached the town of Guntersville I explained to her that we would be crossing a lot of water and she should not be nervous. As we crossed the large bridge over Lake Guntersville (The Tennessee River), her mouth dropped and she raised up in the seat. She gasped, "this must be what they call the ocean?" I laughed a little and then realized she was serious. I asked, "Granny, have you never seen the ocean?" She replied that she had never seen anything, travel had not been a part of her life.  In her younger days, cotton fields along highway 21 were all she saw.  She never had the means to travel. Immediately the wheels in my mind began to turn.

Two weeks later I drove her to Gulf Shores, Alabama. We stayed in a beautiful high rise hotel where all the rooms had a private balcony overlooking the beach. She couldn't tell what she was about to see when we drove in because the tall buildings along the strip blocked her view and her sight was already bad. My anxiety built like my tears are now as I write this. We rode the elevator up to our room on the 8th floor. I walked her out on the balcony and she literally stumbled backwards gasping at what she saw. She absolutely could not believe her eyes. We spent two days and nights on that balcony laughing and talking about things and enjoying God's most wonderful and beautiful creation.  Before we left, she said to me, "this is it, what I am going to imagine Heaven is like."

Nine years later,  at the age of ninety-four, in the wee hours of an October Tuesday morning, we reached the last few moments of her life. All the family was gathered around, but I was at the head of her bed craddling her in my arms. Just before she slipped away, I whispered "I will see you at the beach."......and I surely will.  I keep a picture of the two of us strolling on the beach hand in hand.  To me, that's what Heaven will be like; Granny and I strolling arm and arm along Heaven's shore.

Ten Hugs A Day

At the Ohatchee church of Christ where I worship, several of the men and I rotate leading the communion devotion each week.  My good friend Rod Pollard is one of the best speakers I know.  Recently Rod was leading the devotion and noted a statistic that ten hugs per day would generate enough serotonin in a person to calm a depressive episode.  I am confident in Rod’s research, especially since he has spent more than sixteen years in pharmaceuticals.  Since that day, I have been thinking, if I could just line up ten people to hug me every day, how wonderful that would be.  It sounds funny, but the desire to have that kind of affectionate relationship with your friends and loved ones is exactly what God intended for us, especially since compassion causes natural positive feelings.  It’s a symbiosis, advantageous to both parties.

Most people probably have the same story about their church families, but I am certainly honored and blessed to worship with more than two hundred of the best Christians.  Sundays are such rejuvenating days because we come together to praise and worship our Father and remember the life, death, burial and resurrection of our Savior.  In addition to the praise and worship, the edification and fellowship one with another is so comforting and motivational.  I have a lot of friends who talk to me frequently about dealing with emotional issues, depression, etc.  The first thing I tell everyone is that you have to talk to God and you need as much support as you can get.  For me, I have progressed so much over the last few years because of the relationship I have with my brothers and sisters in Christ.  My Minister, Wayne Dunaway is the most open and compassionate preacher I have ever known.  He’s the first person to admit that he makes mistakes every day and that Christians are sinners trying to get to Heaven.  When you worship in that mindset, there is no hypocrisy, because no one is pretending to be perfect.

 My good friend Patricia Dulaney gives me the biggest hug every Sunday and the days that either of us are feeling the least bit down, we just hold on a little longer and tighter.  The smiles that come from Zip Lambert, Louise Williams, and Gladys Muncher are so reassuring and right on time.  Sometimes, Jolaine Bowers will walk right up and take me by the hand and just say, “proud of you,” and it provides the strength and encouragement to keep serving the Lord and loving the friends he places in our path.  The men who worship in our congregation are not afraid to show affection and compassion.  Whether in our frequent handshakes, pats on the back, or encouraging hugs, we enjoy being brothers.  Not only do I get support and encouragement at services, but my church family keeps in touch with me all week.  I rarely post anything on Facebook that doesn’t get a word of encouragement from the beautiful Kay Wildman.

We are all taught in sermons and by reading scriptures that we need to do a better job of living the Christian life every day of the week, not just on Sundays.  Imagine what the world would be like if we were able to show each other the same compassion at work, school, in social circles, and even in our families that we enjoy on the first day of the week.  As part of my self-treatment for depression, I think I am going to work a little harder to show kindness and encouragement on a daily basis to everyone I meet.  I think Rod was definitely on to something regarding the hugs.  We can’t just go up to a stranger and hug them, or start touching everyone at our jobs, but the attitude of compassion that initiates a hug can certainly be reflected in our behavior.

I encourage anyone who faces emotional challenges to rely on God and Christian friends to get them through the hard times.  When we turn to God, we find that he uses others to comfort us just when we need it.  Every person deserves a warm and friendly support system in life.  We will all face tribulation and challenges, it’s inspiring to know we can gather together as servants of the Lord, support and love one another in this life as we will in eternity. 

I am definitely looking for ten hugs a day!