Episode #7 To Be Healed

Why would the Lord allow for an illness such as depression to continue? A discussion of what it means to be healed and the process healing within the context of gospel principles.  Also a recounting of the author's experiences regarding healing, the power of the priesthood and the process that it takes to be healed.

Transcript

What does it mean to be healed? What does it take to obtain it?

Today I am going to discuss healing, some thoughts on what I have experienced and how we seek it from the Lord.  I will approach the subject more from the perspective of priesthood blessings and prayer.  This does not mean that one should approach the Lord without doing all they can to provide for the needed blessing.  We would not think of asking that a broken bone be healed without visiting a physician so that the needed work of setting the bone and casting could be done.  We can then approach the Lord having done what we can on our side and then ask for his help.  This also doesn’t mean that we can avoid the physical therapy after the cast is off.  If we want to be healed then we must do our part.  With mental illness that might be therapy, medication, adjustments of exercise, sleep and food and a variety of other things.  However, having done those things we can then look to the Lord.  So when I speak of healing I speak of the process but my focus will be more towards priesthood blessing.

In my own life, as I suppose in most everyone else, I have sought out the healing blessings of the Lord many times.  I would say that when I have sought it honestly the Lord has almost always responded.  That is not to say that he responded in the way that I desired but he always provided.  That means that sometimes we plan our healing and what we expect before we go before the Lords servants to ask for a blessing and may not receive what we expected.  Remember when we go to the Lord we take what he gives for he knows best.

With mental illness, healing can take on several meanings that often start with the root cause.  Depression comes for many reasons whether a traumatic event, abuse, brain chemicals and genetic issues, glandular issues and for so many other reasons.  Most often we associate healing with a complete removal of symptoms and causes of the disease.  Like a cancer that shows up in a scan and at the next scan is completely gone.  We want the miracle.  We want it as though it never happened.  

But in my experience the miracle is rare.  And it is rare for a good reason.  While some pains come upon us because of our own choices, many do not and those that do not are often the result of the Lord allowing to come upon you.  Your trials, weaknesses, difficulties, sufferings and the like are really approved by the Lord and those servants who uphold his work on the other side of the veil. The is especially true if you have made covenants and are doing all you can to keep your promises to the Lord.

When we take upon us covenants from the Lord, we promise to follow the Lord where he leads and the Lord promises to put us through the necessary training program to get us there.  That program often leads us through the storms, raging rivers and cold dark moonless nights.  We have much to learn and the timeframe is short so the training is difficult and advances quickly if we allow the Lord to do his work.  We have committed to become Gods, those beings who control the greatest power given to intelligent beings that of creating independent spiritual beings capable of doing the same.

We often wonder why those outside of the gospel and its covenants seem to live a more carefree life.  I believe that some of this is the grass is greener syndrome but I also believe firmly that because they have not taken upon themselves the covenant and the celestial training program the Lord cannot put them through the training.  So we accepted the navy seal version of celestial training and they have yet to enter into the army of the Lord of hosts.  You can’t compare someone in boot camp and advanced training to the casual jogger.  One has made a serious commitment to attaining a high bar and the other hasn’t really committed anything.  I always have to tell myself that I wasn’t sent here to earn a 10 day vacation to the celestial beaches.  I was sent here to become celestial and the type of training required is a serious effort and I cannot be a casual observer.

So given that understanding we are given trials for specific reasons and if we want to be as the Father then we need some highly difficult and detailed training to enlarge our spiritual natures so as to allow us entrance into eternal life.  The major reason why the Lord does not heal us completely is that it would remove us from the program.  We need the program.  We need the training.  However, this doesn’t mean that he can’t give us some moments of rest and he will.

So I am going to divide the idea of healing into three categories.  The first is the one where the miracle occurs and while this is rare it does happen.  The second type is a relief or diminishing of symptoms for a period of time but the illness remains and the third type is added strength but no relief of symptoms.  All three can be defined as healing or what I like to refer to as the innocence clause of the atonement of Jesus Christ.  This clause of the atonement is the portion of the atonement where innocent victims are given mercy in their afflictions whether they have been caused by nature or another person or given by the Lord.  Many also refer to this portion of the atonement as grace, the enabling and ennobling portion of strength given in times of need based on what the Lord deems is best for us.

In my experience with many individuals who experience mental illness the Lord often gives the second and third types of relief and the first is more often rare.  In my own person experience, I have been able to experience all three and then a fourth type of healing that we don’t often see as part of the healing but is often very much part of the healing process.

The fourth type of healing occurs when the Lord removes the disease or affliction but the secondary effects of the disease remain.  I would liken it to being healed of diabetes where the body now produces insulin in a normal way but the disease has taken a toll on the body and it takes several years for the body to heal from the affects of the disease over time.

My own experience with healing began early in my life.  Growing up as a bipolar but not understanding what was happening until I was a young adult in my early twenties caused me many serious difficulties and deep depressions and highs (mania).  For those who don’t understand mania.  It is similar to running your mind and body on overdrive for weeks at a time.  Yes your mind works far better but it won’t shut down and neither will your body.  In any case, the nature of the disease and its corrosive effects on mentality, sociality, physicality and every other ality meant that I received priesthood blessings on a regular basis, probably not as often as I should have.  

There exists a sentimentality in the church and perhaps among those who lead that multiple blessings for the same disease really aren’t necessary.  I suppose that this might be true but in practice I have never found it to be.  I am not sure that it applies to chronic diseases in the same way as it might to a broken leg.  As many times as I went to the Lord for relief he provided it.  Not the relief I desired in the sense of a complete healing but a relief from the symptoms for a time.  I really am not in a position to say which side of the gentle debate is correct, the one blessing crowd or the more than one crowd.  

I suppose that it depends upon why.  If you are simply trying to change the Lord’s mind regarding his decision about your illness then no amount of blessings are going to be beneficial.  The Lord’s mind is not changed by quantity or even quality if he has already ordained a path.  However, if you are petitioning that he provide mercy then I don’t see more frequent blessings as a problem.  I think we don’t give blessings enough.  I have found in my own life that frequent blessings to help with my symptoms has been beneficial for both the priesthood servants who have given the blessing and myself with the relief.  I don’t see the need to save the priesthood blessing for a more dire situation or a greater emergency, as if it were some type of power that would run out.  I do see the value in making sure that you are doing what you should be on your side and when you feel it is needed you can ask for the desired mercy.

So the mentality that blessings were used in more emergency situations was the thinking of the time in my teenage years and I don’t know if it was more church wide or simply more isolated to me. However, I still received blessings more often than would others.  Now, I do give my children and my wife frequent blessings, more father’s blessings that those of the healing kind but both can bring forth the Lord’s mercy so not sure how much difference there really is in the case of a mental illness.  The one thing I do know is that if you ask the priesthood for a blessing the Lord does respond.

In any case during my youth and on my mission, I did look to the priesthood often because I really had no answers and neither did the doctors, although I did not go frequently.  In the case of teenagers as I was in the 80’s and 90’s hormones were often more the cause of mental illness rather than it being an illness.  Mental illness was not new but it was not as accepted as it now is and so many would not think to accept it.

My teenage years were more of a blur than I had perhaps wanted them to be but I suppose that it might have been somewhat of a blessing considering some of the stories I hear from others.  I don’t have great memories of my teenage years but I don’t know many individuals who do.  I really don’t have much of a memory at all for many experiences up until my mid-thirties.  Part of the disease I suppose.  I have learned that many of our memories are locked into emotional experiences and since my experiences were almost always at the extremes of emotion and I don’t experience those anymore I really don’t have access to the experiences.  I do remember facts and figures quite well so I suppose that not all of those get locked up in emotion.

While I had received many blessings throughout my life, the Lord had promised in many of them that I would one day be healed.  He did not seem to give a timeframe but the hope always existed.  I began my adult life and found I needed to do more on my side.  So I saw a physician and began taking medications.  A story I have already told in the Suicide episode.  I worked with doctors for many years with various medications finding one that best suited me.  It ended up being a anti-sezure medication that worked well with rapid cycling bipolars and an additional antidepressant.  This didn’t mean I was normal and I still had to watch my stress levels and do my part.  Something I learned far too late.  However, I was able to live a more normal life with the occasional issue needing a blessing.  I always hoped for the day when the Lord would say it was time.  But it didn’t seem to come and so I when forward with my career and my family doing the best I could.  I was living in Northern Idaho at the time and had begun working in the commercial construction industry and industry in which I still work.  I do not know even what prompted the question in my mind or the answer that it was time.  The Lord specifically told me that it was time and that weekend we traveled to my parent’s house north of Seattle.  I grew up on Whidbey Island during my teenage years and my parents still lived there.  I attended the ward where I grew up and a stake president who I knew well was in attendance and spoke.  I felt prompted to ask him to give me the blessing.  He agreed but asked my father to stand in with him.  I probably could have asked my father to the blessing and should have but I didn’t have sufficient faith and didn’t understand the nature of the priesthood as well as I do now. It really didn’t matter who gave the blessing and I know that now.  I passed up a wonderful opportunity to have my father give the blessing.  And I shouldn’t have.  However, the Lord works with our weaknesses and the president gave me the blessing I had long desired.  I was free from the disease.  I had longed for this day and prayed so many years that I would be free.  Here it was.  What I didn’t understand at that moment what it meant to be healed.

I was free from the disease but the blessing noted some things that needed to do.  While I wouldn’t have to deal with the root causes of the disease, I would have to do the hard work of healing.  Sounds strange doesn’t it.  The disease was gone isn’t that the healing?  Actually the blessing only removed the actual disease, not all of the effects it had caused in my body.  What I would find is that the disease had rewired my mind, and had left me without some very necessary skills, such as building relationships, feeling love and concern for others, emotional stability, appropriate self-worth and the many issues that had trained my body over so many years.  I couldn’t even trust my own emotions.  For most people that has never been much of a thought, not that people without mental illness don’t need to learn what to trust but they learned to trust some feelings.  I didn’t even know exactly what it was like to truly feel the Spirit without my disease present.  I had done a great job of studying the doctrines to compensate for my lack of feeling the Spirit but I had a great deal to learn about spiritual feelings and the importance of associating those feelings with moments of witness.  It would take another 15 years to feel whole and perhaps that is why I amble to talk about it now.

So what have I learned, that a healing blessing is not as simple as removing the disease and that the healing process may take decades.  It is almost ironic that before I felt whole from the mental illness the Lord has blessed my body with autoimmune issues that have limited my physical nature in many serious ways.  I have learned that the road to celestial life and the Lord’s training program is a difficult path and it doesn’t stop.  We need the headwinds, dark cold nights, storms, rain, the vivid lightning and deafening thunder to come to know the Lord.  I remember that one of the members the Martin handcart company had said something about the trek.  He had not regretted it.  He did not regret any part of it.  He said that he came to know God in that experience and that he would be forever grateful for it.  I paraphrase and hopefully didn’t add anything to it that wasn’t really there but I think that the sentiment is true.  We do not learn much about the Lord or celestial life sitting on a beach in the sun and surf.  So I see my disease as a great blessing in my life.  I have come to know the Lord in many ways that could not have been taught to me in any other form.

As I look at the three types of healing I noted in the beginning you can see in my story that the Lord provided for moments of respite when I asked.  He also would simply provide added strength sometimes so that I could bear my burdens.  I believe that those can also come together both a respite and added strength.  Yes I received the blessing I desired and was healed or rather had the illness removed but it took years for the real healing to occur.  I look at healing processes far different now and I have a firm testimony of the power of the atonement.  As I look back I am now grateful for the difficult training program the Lord wanted in my life.  I could not have come to where I am now without it.

So when it comes to healing here are my bumpersticker moments.

1)      When the Lord doesn’t heal you then know that he is in it and he has a purpose.  Knowing he has a divine purpose is not always comforting but to know that it has an exalting purpose can give us hope on the bad days and when we look back we will fall on our knees forever grateful that the Lord was willing to teach us even when we complained a little too often and maybe murmured a little.  We will see just how necessary it was and we will be grateful he didn’t remove it.

2)      If we ask that the disease be removed without regard to the Lord’s will then he can remove the disease and it will be to our detriment and loss.  I have found that when we don’t accept the tests of the Lord he has a tendency to wait for us to come to him again before he can place us back into the training program.  Be careful you don’t ask your way out of the Lord’s training program.

3)      We shouldn’t ask for specific trials, they will come more frequently that we probably want them anyway and they will be tailored to our needs.  So if you are waiting in Bountiful and feel good about life don’t worry the Lord will eventually ask you to build a ship and cross a difficult sea.

4)      Even though we may need to remain in the Lord’s training program and our disease isn’t going anywhere, I have found that the Lord will give moments of rest.  Meaning if we ask we can get a break once in a while to refresh us before we move on.  Mercy seems to be always available.

5)      If the healing should come and for some it will in this life, know that the blessing to remove the disease may be only a portion of the healing and that we may be required to provide significant effort after the fact to receive the full effect.

6)      Finally, remember the Lord is merciful and is willing to do all that he can to save us but he has limited time and if your life seems to go from one trial to another without much respite be grateful he has found you worthy to proceed.

Now as always remember that the Lord requires the fight, then he can add his part.

Next episode I would like to discuss as to how do you help someone who is suffering with mental illness.  Do you have a child that is suffering, a spouse, a brother or sister, parent, friend?  Is that suffering causing some suffering of your own?  You are not alone. What can you do when you see the signs of depression?  How can you help?  These will be the questions that I will address.  Until next week.