I’m writing this blog from the my room in Indianapolis. I can look out the window and see leafless trees and mud and the rain-soaked wooden play structure that has stood forlornly in our backyard for near fifteen years. It’s not the same as looking out the window and seeing an exotic river delta or a bustling city street covered in street vendors or a barren Moldavian road waiting for another horse and buggy or funeral procession.
This is America. This is the state of Indiana, and it’s winter time, a season of less snow than just general dreariness.
Of course, I have a bit of explaining to do, because I am pretty sure that y’all were expecting me to be in Tanzania at this point, and this blog was supposed to be me apologizing for another near month of blog silence with some prayer requests or a silly anecdote for living in East Africa seen through the eyes of an ingenuous Midwestern twenty-something.
But the truth is that I’m home. And the truth is that in the spring of 2008, I was diagnosed with depression, and then I took some medication and things got better, and then I went off my medication because the truth is that I’m a stubborn, prideful mule who thinks he can make himself better by sheer force of will. And the truth is that for the past three years, I thought I could outrun my condition just by trying hard and thinking happy thoughts.
India was a bad month for me. If you’ve ever struggled with depression, you know that it is a medical condition that makes enjoying anything practically impossible. Your brain betrays your body and makes you think weird thoughts and loathe every bit of stimuli you encounter. Depression was tough enough when I lived in America and controlled how much I slept, how much I ate, how much I engaged the outside world. In India and East Africa, it was almost literally a demon.
And that’s why I’m home: because I have a medical condition, because I was afraid of my brain entertaining unhealthy thoughts like hopping out the back of a speeding taxi in order to sustain non-life-threatening road burn that would require an American hospital to treat, or like walking too close to an irate water buffalo in the sick hope that it would kick me in the leg and snap my shin in half, making international travel next to impossible and leaving as the only solution a slow recovery in a fluffy bed in Indianapolis.
I don’t mean to hyperbolize or scare anyone or paint a caricatured picture of what it’s like to have depression; this is pretty much what my last six weeks have felt like. And I would be a fool to think that just going back home to a shower and an $.89 crunchy taco and a pill that keeps serotonin in my brain longer is going to cure me. But I would also be a fool to think it wise to wander around the bush of Africa, begging for opportunities to injure myself so that I could be forced to go home.
So that’s why I’m here. And I feel like God has opportunities for me here. And I believe that God has healing and relief for me here. And I know that God has a purpose for the places he has taken me and the destinations I’ve yet to visit.
One quick story: I was in a village this past month in the Indian state of Andra Pradhesh, and I met a thirteen year old autistic boy with a brain tumor. We prayed for him, and saw his mother accept Jesus. And as he sat and smiled at us, seemingly oblivious to the situation, I felt our translator, Agape, tap me on the shoulder.
Agape himself was only fourteen, and despite speaking excellent English, was still learning the same lessons we all learn at fourteen. He told me that he felt a special connection to this boy, that he wished there was something more that he could do to help, that he didn’t get why this boy so much like him had to be this way. And I told him, “Agape, God made this boy exactly the way he is. God has a purpose for him. He crafted him perfectly in his big, strong hands, and has never left him from the moment he was born.”
I decry any claims that God is cruel, or that he didn’t intend this, or that something is wrong with me. God does not make mistakes. And I needed to hear myself reassure Agape of God’s goodness, because, honestly, sometimes it’s hard to remember.
I had a Bible teacher in high school, Josh McEwen, who was from Australia. He used to say, “God can hit a straight shot with a crooked stick.” I understood cognitively that he meant, “God makes good things from crappy things.” But until I spent time in India, when I watched a lot of cricket for the first time, I didn’t catch the full meaning of what it meant. A cricket bat is long and flat and smooth, different from the cylindrical barrel of an American baseball bat. Any imperfections in the craftsmanship of that cricket bat will impair the batsman’s ability to place the ball exactly where he wants.
But God is the Immaculate Batsman. He can take a cricket bat warped and covered in pock marks and gouges and hit a clean, straight shot right out of the park (that’s worth six runs!). What’s more, he choosesto do so. One could have a certain sense of awe for a batsman who makes do with what he’s got and succeeds; but if the batsman intentionally uses a flawed instrument to accomplish his purpose, well, that’s just pretty darn special. He’s pretty much showing off. And it is a testament to just how freaking good God is at cricket.
I am a crooked stick. Depression warps my body, and the enemy wants to use it to bring me low and make me feel useless. But God raises us up out of the depths and makes us objects of great worth.
So my apologies to all y’all who were expecting me to be bringing you some stories from Africa. God decided to take me to another pitch and hit straight shots there. And as tough as it was to leave, and as much as it hurts to admit that I have a disease that I can’t overcome by my own power, I know that I have a purpose, one that God wants to accomplish with a broken, melancholy young man that has no other option but to lean on Him.
Blessings to everyone who has prayed for me, supported me financially or otherwise, and encouraged me on this journey. It’s not over – I left the World Race, but I’m still on the RACE, and I keep running it wherever God takes me, in order that I might receive the prize at the end.
*Stay tuned for some photos and videos from the rest of the Race that I had heretofore been unable to post.
