"Well me and the Lord. We got an understanding..."

It has taken me a long time to fall asleep as long as I can remember. Typically these days it's 1 to 2 hours. Once I am asleep, I tend to sleep well and I love to sleep in (especially as I can't fall asleep quickly). But something about turning off the light and setting the book down...suddenly no matter how close to sleep I was my mind begins racing, and racing over thigns which are not sleep-friendly. Worries, anxieties, things which bring up strong emotion for me of all kinds. Martial arts, lifting, sex.

My therapist tells me this is because my mind is hauling butt so much of the time, spinning the ocd spin above the anxiety and dread beneath (and the emotion below that), that when I lay down without stimulus of any kind, wham-o, my mind doesn't want to slow down or shut off. A lot like a kid who doesn't want to go to bed. My brain keeps getting up for a glass of water and a pee. Usually, this is not too bad, as even when I take Mikey to school at seven puking thirty I am able to come home and, after an hour or so, fall asleep again for maybe an hour. I'm up by 9, the time I like to get up, not too the worse for the wear.

Lifting and exercise of all kinds do help. Alcohol doesn't work because I wake up later in the night, my throat and brain dust dry, truly unable to sleep well. No, the older I get the more true it is: alcohol doesn't help me sleep. I have a med called ambien which works remarkably well; one minute I'm chatting with my wife or reading and the next I'm waking up the next morning, but I believe it makes me snore which of course disturbs my poor wife, and I'm actually very stringent with a med like that. It's for rare, precious use only.

So what to do? Right now I got up and began blogging about it which feels constructive. It's only 11:30. Not bad. Last night I went into the kitchen and read about four of Paul's epistles while lying on the floor. That was very enjoyable, but I was up till 2.

The fact is that recovery from a disease like ocd is a long road. I am supposed to make a relaxation tape for myself, the kind of exercise I've learned to do in therapy, and listen to it when I go to bed. That's been my homework for a month at least and I keep not doing it. But I know that I will; it's a good goal for this weekend. Then, as long as I can play it without bothering my wife, maybe I can get into deep relaxation, right at the edge of sleep, pop off the headphones and go down. That would be a true treat, a great wonder for me, to take charge of my falling asleep. Some nights I get plenty of sleep, but not all. And for someone as emotionally intense as me (who also lifts weights) sleep is critical for mental and physical recovery.

I love this blog. What a gift, to be able to share at nearly midnight and know I will be heard by friends. Hi wife, Mike, Karen, Dave, Scott, Ian, maybe Romy or Sheri or Steve. Think that covers my audience.

I will say that the last few days my anxiety has been much lower; I've really been doing well. Why? Uh, the exposure work with my therapist on Monday most likely. I'll do more of that myself this weekend. Times like this give me such hope that I will lead a happy, even 'normal' and loving life. I can't describe the crap ocd puts me through. It's a constant sense that something really bad is happening somewhere in/around me and I need to think obsessively to assuage it. It's the manufactured catastrophe. Things that would hardly bother someone else become the focus of my mental being, burning, dragging...the ring on Frodo's neck as he climbs into Mordor. It is exahusting and relentless and worst of all, powerfully insidious. It is very hard to know I am obsessing when I am. Like schizophrenia, only on a tiny scale. That probably really doesn't make sense. Think of Monk again, the cheesy tv show with thin plots and Tony Shalhoub walking around the set nailing the ocd phenom/affect. Monk sees something crooked and just knows it has to be fixed. He can feel that something is disastrous when really it isn't. Like that.

I know that my mind is special. That I can think critically on a scale and with a speed that most people can't (though there are many people quicker than me). Like Monk in a person's living room, I can walk into a set of ideas and see the tiny details in a problem in a way not everyone can, or perhaps simply more quickly than others can. But when that critical prowess is turned elsewhere...it burns me like fire. That speed and exactitude is hard to turn down or turn off, and hence, it takes me two hours to fall asleep. That incidentally is maybe the least bothersome symptom.

I do have hope though. And here's where I will share something I think I've only told my brother and P. Dave.

I am extremely skeptical of anyone who tells me God told them anything. My parents were pentecostals to a superstitious degree, and I can't tell you how many times my mom told me God told her to do this or that to solve some problem and nothing happened. I guess one time my dad did tell me something would work out which did, but you get the idea. And then there's my own life story, which I've just begun to tell. So many other Christians have seen God's hand here or there, felt God's will or call in this or that, and been flattened. Okay, maybe I can't actually think of many, but I can think of a few. Hence when someone feels 'led' or 'called' or says 'the lord told me' my skeptical apparatus (see above) goes into full swing; it whirs on like a gyroscope.

So I've never really looked for God to tell me anything directly, and I'm not saying he did, but here goes:

I was praying hard about my obsessions a few months ago. I had been seeing my therapist for two whole years, doing conventional therapy, and while it was helping a little, it felt more like I was getting support for the suffering in my life than directly changing the anxious mental pattern. But, around March, I was driving home and sincerely asking God for help. I'm not a big prayer-guy; while this surely wasn't the first time I'd asked, I seem to remember getting serious about asking for help from Jesus. And as I pulled up to a stopsign, praying out loud about this, the idea came to me, the impression, just a thought, really, 'use your gifts.'

Now I had been thinking about this already. I had been a Christian for four years, I knew God had given me some abilities though I wasn't sure what they were. I thought maybe I could write an article for a magazine or something, perhaps teach some day, both things I had done in my profession. But I didn't see much opportunity living where I do and frankly, being in a church as structured and small as the one I'm in. Right away, of course, I was skeptical about this thought, and I tried to self-analyze and see where it might have come from inside me. No luck. So my response to this idea was, 'how will I do anything where I live, and what will I do? but okay, if an opportunity comes, I'll take it.' That was it. I won't seek anything out, but if something comes up, I'll say yes.

I don't know if my friend Alan had already asked me to be on vestry. I think that he had (over scotch to ply me as I recall) and I'd said sure, okay. But it was not long after that day I prayed that I actually was elected and accepted the position, stood up and said sure, I'll do this, not really knowing what I'd do but willing to use my organizational skills in my parish. And I swear to you it was almost to the day, I know it was the same week (and I really wasn't thinking about my 'deal' with God) that I pulled a book off my bookshelf I'd had for months and never looked at. It had been recommended by a psychiatrist I saw more than a year before. It was called Stop Obsessing, and it was written by an expert on ocd.

As I began to read it, I somehow knew that the cognitive therapy the book describes, which I had known about but poo-pooed for years, was going to work for me. I took it to my therapist; she seemed a little surprised but agreed to read it. And once she did, there was no stopping her. She told me right then we were going to begin doing these kinds of exercises (which she had talked about with me before but I had no interest in doing). From the first time I did exposure, I felt something shift in my head. It really felt like that. As if I had been hit and hit and hit in the same sore place and now I could deflect the punch, as if its force was reversed.

It has been no magical cure, but exposure work is reducing my obessions and anxiety in a way nothing (besides booze, temporarily) ever could. I have had obsessions of one kind or another since I was abut 8, and chronically since I was a teenager. And it strikes me that I would be a damned fool not to thank God for dropping that book in my lap and changing my heart so that I would read it with an open mind. It was published in 1991; I was in therapy for years during the 90's down south and never heard of exposure work. The answer had been siting on my shelf for months, maybe a year. Unread. Unread! And you guys know me and books.

And then Scott told me he was going to start blogging, and here I am; I believe this is another unexpected opportunity to use my gifts and one I said yes to; the great thing is I could never burn out in the blog because it's as much for me as for anyone else! It's no-pressure. It actually nurtues and settles me! Yet whenever I write about my faith here, I consider that I am keeping my end of the bargain.

Am I afraid I was mistaken, that my ocd will come roaring back, that the blog and/or vestry will somehow be a disaster, that I'll lose my faith, that aliens will land who have never heard of Jesus, that any one of a number of things will happen to assure me that I am deluded in believing God (may?) have spoken to me? Yes. But I'll tell you what, I've been given assistance I never had before, and I prayed for it, and as long as I remember that you'll see me up here, or somewhere, talking about Christ when I have something to say. If I don't argue myself out of my belief, of course! (I admit that does seem unlikely at this point).

As I've said, this blog meets my needs; it doesn't feel like 'ministry.' I'm working my salvation out in fear and trembling, as Karen said. But I also try to apply whatever gifts I have, when I can, to issues in the faith and put them here. If I make an impact, it's pretty limited, but so what? I'm just taking the opportunity presented.

Now it's 12:30 and I am tired. Peace to all. Sleep can't be too far off.

t