A Letter To A Sufferer

Dear Wilbur and Wilhemina,

I’m copying this note to your pastor so he will be more able to help you all from his end.

Thank you for taking so much time to come and visit with me. I know that took a long time and caused you a lot of stress. The whole trip must have been difficult for you.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about your visit and our conversation and I think I need to say some things that I didn’t say to when you were here.

Again, I want to encourage you to carefully look into the effects that taking Adderall for a long period of time creates in a person. I’ve done a little bit of research on-line and can see that while no one has mentioned the specific things you’re currently experiencing, I can’t believe that these things aren’t related.

From an anecdotal source I’ve heard that people call it “don’t give a-damn-er-all.” This is because Adderall doesn’t solve any problems, it simply causes your brain to go into a funk and instead of focusing on only one thing, you actually focus on nothing. Which is how you described how it has helped you over the years.

I suggested that you get more in-depth medical tests to see if the doctors can find anything physical that is causing your thoughts and moods to be so extreme and expansive. I still think you should do this.

I also suggested that if you don’t find anything definitive, you might think about checking with a psychiatrist. I’ve been thinking about this and now think that would be a bad idea. I don’t believe the psychiatric community has any real answers. They observe and describe things well, but don’t understand things well. They would be using medication to treat the symptoms, not helping with a real solution. And every medication you put into your body almost always causes more problems than they help. It could be that “treating” your attention problem with medication instead of teaching you to control your thoughts has actually caused you trouble over the years rather than really helping.

I don’t remember if I asked you about how you are living your life in front of God. What does your spiritual life look like? Let’s assume for a minute that besides going to church, there isn’t much going on in the spiritual area (just for the sake of discussion).

Here’s what I suggest as a way to begin moving forward:

First, it appears that at the center of all of this is a strong lack of self-control (concentration, then thoughts, and actions based on mood). This might be a compartmentalization problem because Wilbur doesn’t seem to have trouble doing his work, though things are beginning to be affected there.

Even if I’m totally wrong on that, the following will touch on whatever is the central problem. The greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” (Dt 6:5; Mt 22:37). This needs to be the focus and goal of your life. Love God no matter what is going on in your life. Everything else comes from that: love of wife, love of children, love of neighbors, love of enemies, hard work, and on and on. Everything should be thought of from the standpoint of how it affects your love of God. And love doesn’t mean feeling lovey thoughts, it means obedience to God (Jn 14:15; 1 Jn 5:2).

This means that when I tell you to read your Bible, it has nothing to do with reading for reading’s sake. It has everything to do with reading because you are meeting with the holy God and becoming like him in the process. Becoming like him is part of loving him. When you love someone, you want to be like them. And when you love someone, you spend time with him and when you spend time with someone, you become like him. So, loving God means becoming like him.

When you read your bible, you will consistently see passages that say things that refer to becoming like Jesus. It is an assumption in the Bible. So, part of loving God is making it a goal to become like him. And you do both of these by spending time with him. And this starts with reading your Bible.

Again, reading your Bible is not the end in itself. Obeying, knowing, and loving God is the goal. Reading is the primary way you reach the goal.

When I say primary, I don’t mean only, I mean first. Reading your Bible is only the first way we draw near to God. There are many ways to see God and experience God. But if we aren’t reading our Bible and making what it teaches the context of our lives, all the other ways won’t do anything for us. Another way we meet with God is by hanging out with others who are working hard to be like him. Church participation, Bible studies, hanging out drinking coffee (or my favorite—Pepsi) are all ways to see God and to become like him. This is why Paul said to imitate him as he imitates Jesus (1 Cor 11:1). When we hang out with others, we are becoming like them and as they are becoming like Jesus, so are we.

The fact needs to be emphasized that we aren’t doing any of this in order to gain something, we are doing all this because we are something. We are Christ-ians. Christ lives in us and the Spirit of Christ empowers us to live this way. So, what we are actually doing is living out who we are. In the process we are changing into his likeness.

What am talking about is a context of life. We need to breath Biblical air. We need to drink Biblical water. We need to live and move and have our being in Him. It is a very different context from psychology or any other worldly life creates or presents. God created the world and how it works, and it is only when we get in step with that world that life will work out the way God created it to work. When we try to do something different, we end up troubling our trouble or suffering our suffering. In short, we make things worse. So, walking with God, which is what I’ve described above gets us moving in the right direction.

The Bible has a lot to say about suffering. It doesn’t always explain what is going on, but it definitely tells us how to respond to suffering. For example, it says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials” (Jas 1:2). Trials are events in our life that tempt us to leave the presence of God. We see this in James 1:14 when it says, “But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” The Greek word translated ‘tempt’ here is the same Greek word used in verse 2 for ‘trial.’ The point is that when trouble comes into our life, it is tempting us to run away from the presence of God and grab on to whatever is enticing us (either for “good” or for the avoidance of “evil”).

When a person is walking with God, reading his word, hanging out with his people, and doing, thinking, feeling, and obeying what he says to do runs into a temptation (a trial), he will exercise the Spiritual gift of self-control (Gal 5:22-23) by obeying God and thereby avoiding the temptation.

I’m going to stop here and let this be an introduction to what I think ought to be the course to pursue with your pastor. He can take things from here. What I’m saying is that I believe you guys need to immerse yourselves in God and his world. Learn how to exercise self-control in the areas of concentration, the loud thoughts in your head, how you handle the stresses of a topsy-turvy life, jobs, relationships, church, family and on and on. View those things as trials. View them as temptations that are trying to get you to stop walking with God and instead focusing on them. Instead, keep your eyes on Jesus, look full in his wonderful face. Know that you’re in a war. The Bible says to fight the good fight of faith. All of this is tied up together. Your pastor can help you put it all together.

The great thing about this is that in Christ, there is hope. In the world of psychology there is no real hope. Giving what you are suffering a name (ADHD, PTSD, Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar, etc) doesn’t actually change anything. It only locks you into a helpless, hopeless, and impersonal world that really causes you more trouble than you already have.

The answers are in Christ. Even if you always struggle with wild thoughts, you can find joy in them and in fellowship with one another. God is good and wants to give you guys a good life.

Here is a definition of Joy and coincidentally contentment: “Joy (contentment) is the state of being we experience when we realize that our loving and kind God has us right where he wants us to be; for his glory and our good.” It comes when we are happy, and it comes when we are in serious trouble. Paul, locked up in a prison, wrote to the Philippians, who were undergoing persecution for their faith, and said, “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). We can do that when we trust him, know him, believe him, and know that whatever is happening is for his glory and our good.

You guys are going through really tough times, and have been for a long time. Trust God, rejoice in the Lord, obey him, and create in your lives and in the life of your family a Christ-ian life, filled with Christ in every way.

I hope this helps.