Call it what it is!

There is a secret that people that have positions of leadership, don’t want you to know.  The problem is the only person that really believes it’s a secret is the person that is in leadership.  

This secret is rooted fully in the sin of pride. I mean let’s be clear, I mean let’s let the Bible be clear as it tends to be more pointed and truthful than the best of us. 

Prov. 16:18     Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. 

I wrote about the elephant in the room last time.  Let’s be clear, there is no way to sugar coat a fall, sure people try and do it all the time but in the end it’s at best Splenda coated, or blue sweetener coated.  A false coating that doesn’t even taste good and in truth leaves a nasty aftertaste on the back of the tongue for just a bit too long. 

Anyway enough of the admission that pride is at the root of most of the sins that leaders, especially those in the church, especially me have issue with.  All the things that we fall to we do so from the cliff of pride. 

The secret that leaders don’t want to let anyone else in on is the fact that leaders are human.  Let that sink in for a moment.  I know that it had to for me, and I mean let's be clear this blog is my way of working through things and of letting people that want to know where I am. 

Now along with that humanity comes all the stuff that goes with being human. Along with that humanity comes fear, and anxiety, and joy, and sorrow, and depression, and stress, and trauma and positive coping mechanisms, and negative ones too.  One of the biggest secrets though that leaders keep is the one that I touched on a little bit in the last post.  That is the fact that suicidal thoughts and ideation are not relegated to people “out there.”  

Let me put it another way. 

Pastors can be suicidal too, I just knew as do many others that are out there in the same space that I was in, how to Splenda coat it.  So instead of calling it what it was, I would say something like this.  

“You know there are days that I just don’t want to exist.”  Now I am sure all of us have had those moments when we are embarrassed and we want to crawl into a hole and have no one notice us.  That is not at all what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about a daily wake up with the idea that it would be so nice to not wake up.  That being caught in a drive by, or a random act  of violence would be pretty good, the list goes on.  

Why am I telling you all this.  I want to give you a picture of what suicidal looks like.  See that, that right there is what suicidal looks like.  That was a selfie from last year right around this time. Now before you say “Well wait a moment, you had just lost your daughter, that doesn’t really mean you were suicidal, come on you were a pastor, you had people around you. Pastors don’t get that way.  So sure that picture is from this time last year when all hell had broken loose in a matter of days.  

Let's go with another picture months later, at a time that I was still hiding, a time when I was compartmentalizing and wishing with all I had that I didn’t have to  wake up. 

Recognize that guy from Facebook.  This is the guy that shut himself off from everyone that mattered, this is the guy that stopped going to breakfast with my pastor friends because I was tired of talking of politics, but lets be clear, that wasn’t why I stopped going, I stopped going because I was isolating myself away from everyone.  My wife, my kids, my family, people in the church I pastored, leadership all of them.  

The sin of pride was in full effect at this point because, you see, I was “protecting" all these poor people from Aaron.  I was protecting them from my pain and anger and sadness and hurt,  I was keeping them “safe” for that moment when I didn’t exist any more.  

What’s really sad is that fact that all those people I was cutting off, they were the people that God placed in my life that I was supposed to turn too, they were the ones that I was supposed to say “hey I’m just not okay.”  What I should have been doing was crying with Joyce, not isolating from her.  What I should have done was said, “Hey guys I know we are here for breakfast but I’m just not okay.”  What I needed to do was get into counseling and to actually be honest with myself and the counselor.    

 

What am I writing this?  What’s the point of going into this on the blog?  I can hear someone saying, “I thought you were better what are you doing this for?”

 

Let me show you the picture of a person that finally gets it, that has the tools that are needed to walk forward.  

Let me show you what it looks like to actually live in partnership with the one you love.  

People may wonder if I am still dealing with depression and PTSD. Yes.  I am, I will deal with major depressive disorder and post traumatic stress disorder all of my life.  It’s something that just is.  I can hear some people saying that I shouldn’t claim that.  That I can “speak to my depression.”  I appreciate that kind of faith, and I believe that healing does occur,  I also believe that we have doctors and medicine because God gifted and enabled people to use those gifts to help in our healing.  The thing that I had to do was come to the place that I was okay with needing more to be okay.  So while I am always going to deal with depression and ptsd.  I am not depressed and suicidal now.

I thank God regularly now for not letting me not exist.  I wish I didn’t have to learn the hard way but chalk that one up to being a hard headed Italian.  

So where does that leave this post.  Simply here.  For those that I have hurt, for those that were broken by my actions, for those that have the wrong picture of the God that I serve, because as I served him I was also serving myself in a desire to self medicate the pain away.  To those that I let down, and yes I know I let many people down.  I am truly sorry.  The great thing about God is he forgives and then he enables.  He has forgiven me.  I ask you to do the same, and know that I will do all I can in the days given to me, to walk and live and move and have my being in Christ.  

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.