Scream without Raising Your Voice

Chapter 5
Running

I titled this section “Running” after the U2 hit “Running to Stand Still,” which features powerful lyrics that end with the following:

You got to cry without weeping,
Talk without speaking,
Scream without raising your voice.
You know I took the poison
From the poison stream,
Then I floated out of here.

I liked U2—still do—but the older stuff is a powerful connection to spiritual truths and emotional awakening for me more than the newer offerings. One of the things I enjoy most is finding spiritual connections in secular music. I feel that it’s one of the ways God speaks to me. So, why this song? Why these lyrics? This is my story, and this is the chapter I feared writing the most, not from an emotional standpoint but from a standpoint of helping some without hurting others. My ministry life has been a challenge for many of the same reasons all of us in ministry struggle: because it’s hard and because I am front and center in a great spiritual battle, taking the bullets over and over and over again. The local church exists to share God with the world, so why wouldn’t we be attacked with Satan’s fullest army and his most powerful weapons? I was attacked indeed. Some of my attacks came in the form of relationship struggles, in which case I have tried to take responsibility for my part in the situation. My intent is to heal, not to harm, and now I hear story after story of pastors struggling with relational challenges and Satan using these struggles to break down the pastorate, to weaken the church, and to take Christ’s bride ransom for a season—or forever, in some stories. I struggled, and I think there is value in sharing my story and other stories and what I have learned from the journey.

I want you to know that struggle does things to the body and to the mind. It’s why PTSD is such an issue. It’s why trauma is something that needs to be addressed. It’s why I felt that I was losing my mind. It’s why ministers leave the calling and pastors fall to adultery, pornography, and any of a myriad of ill-fated coping mechanisms. This is not an inclusive list of what stress and struggles do. I would recommend you read a book such as The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel Van der Kolk, MD, to fully understand the effects of trauma on a person’s physical body and mental aptitude.3 I’ve been through it, the book and the trauma, and I concur. These are a few points relevant to my world:

Work
The thing about church work is that it’s church and work. And when work is stressful and one has a negative attitude toward work, one also has a negativity toward church, and then things get messy. When average Joes get frustrated at work or are struggling, they find comfort in God, their church relationships, and study. There’s a separation of bucket filling and bucket emptying. When someone in the ministry gets in a stressful place, the answer is still to find comfort in God, but there is really no separation, and the triggers are all around. There’s a claustrophobia that creeps in, and you want to step away, but you have to lean into it. You feel guilty when you just want to stop thinking about Jesus for a few days, but you know that’s not right. Still, that’s what you feel like doing. Or maybe you think you want to stop thinking about Jesus, but you feel in your gut it’s not right, and your brain gets all jumbled, and then shame comes in just to seal the deal. How do you handle that? I think it’s what many pastors deal with regularly. I think it’s what drives some of them mad. How do you say you want out when you really don’t? You want out of the pain and hurt that you are experiencing, but you’re not sure how to make it go away. Yet in some way it’s part of the suffering you signed up for, and nobody said it was going to be easy. Jesus suffered, so why don’t we pastors? Then comes the accusing thought that mental health doesn’t have a place in church and that if you were more spiritual, it would all be fine. And, You’re a pastor, for Pete’s sake; get it together. You ask yourself, “What else can I do?” thinking, Maybe I’m just not cut out to be in the ministry. Crash.

I’ll admit I’ve exaggerated here, but not too much. It becomes hard to be as productive as you used to be or want to be. When you struggle with your work for God, going to God doesn’t seem as if it’s going to give you what you are looking for. This is the time to consider what it is you are really looking for. Deep down, you realize that you’ve messed something up along the way and have gotten your priorities and your processes out of whack, but yet there you are.