It seems I am always tired, angry, and laughing too loud.  Depression is EXHAUSTING. During this current bout of it, I listened to an audiobook for the first time. If you’re wondering, I find that it takes just as much focus as actually reading the words.  The lovely part is that there is a storytelling presence. It feels intimate. It feels like a connection, like someone sitting next to you, keeping your heaviness in check, engaging in a relationship. Listening to this voice feels like you have a FRIEND.

It disturbs me that I was listening to the authour of a ”TELL ALL” memoir narrate her own words this week, and I was feeling all kinds of validation and solidarity with her when I heard about the death of Sinéad O’Connor.  GULP. It was HER voice, HER memoir, “Rememberings” that I’d been listening to.  It makes me shiver in shock.

I’ve admired Sinéad since I was a teenager.  Back then, she was mesmerizing and terrifying. She was so angry on behalf of the causes she supported that she stopped at NOTHING to clearly advocate.  She was about the age of my older brother.  It wowed me that she was so young and passionate about things I’d not given a thought to, if I was even aware of them. 

I’ve just invested hours into getting to know her, to understand her more, to LOVE her, and to look forward to MORE from her.  My respect for her has done nothing but expand. She endured SO MUCH.  And now THIS.

Despite abuse and misogyny, she spoke TRUTH. She did everything she did on her own terms.  Despite multiple mental illness diagnoses, she kept on keeping on. She was a mother, a woman of faith, and an advocate for the helpless.

My parishioners are familiar with what I call our Godsparks – the Holy Spirit dwelling IN each of us. Sinéad expressed that she strongly felt the Spirit, the Comforter whom Jesus promised, in and around her.  She said that when she was speaking, the divine in her spoke to the divine in another. Her music was her ministry, and  she followed her Godspark wherever it led. 

During coffee time after church this morning, a friend and I were discussing how no one goes untouched by trauma.  We may not be aware of what influences our behaviour or that of others. I know I wasn’t.  We are so quick to label and judge.  Mental illness is still so STIGMATIZED that we who have serious risks often go unchecked.  Even under close supervision, disaster can strike.

No medical cause for her death has been offered, but we know Sinéad O’Connor lost her son to mental illness by suicide.  I lost my brother to mental illness by suicide, too.  Suicidal ideation is sneaky.  I’ve always maintained that I could NEVER go through with it.

This week reminded me of my own vulnerability. There WAS a time in my first pastorate when I was young, I was married, and I held the world.  YET, one snowy night on a back road, my little sports car started to get hard to handle. I was sliding and DECIDED there was nothing I could do. I didn’t even try.  I GAVE UP.  I just surrendered to the darkness. I let go of the wheel and let whatever was coming COME.  I denied being clinically  depressed.  I hadn’t sought diagnosis, treatment, or any help at all.  Thankfully, the car slid off the road, cleared the ditch, and sunk deeply into the snow just inches from a tree.  I liked the adrenaline rush and the attention I got when I shared the carefully edited story about what happened.

Mental illness, unresolved trauma, impulsive behaviour – it can MESS with your brain even unto death.

We do a lot of praying in church. I pray almost constantly wherever I am.  When things go sideways, my impulse isn’t to blame God. Instead, I CONVINCE myself that I must be praying WRONG, or I’m so BAD that God’s not listening. Really awful theology, I know.

Two things that will stick with me from that memoir I listened to this week. First, Sinéad O’Connor thought ‘cry laughing’ was the best expression of the mania and depression of so many mental illnesses. “Nothing feels better than cry laughing,” she said. She also said, “God doesn’t always GET to answering our prayers IN TIME because sometimes God is TOO busy WEEPING.”  Indeed.

Look after yourselves.  Pray. Feel your Godspark at work and let God answer prayer in, with, and through you.  Peace friends.