By the time Clair and Helen Denzer moved from their first church in an ethnic neighborhood of Cincinnati to the county seat town of El Dorado, Kansas, their son and daughter were growing up. The salary in this church was enough to provide even an annual vacation trip back east.
It was August 29, and a soft drizzle was falling as Clair drove across southern Indiana on the way home after ten days with relatives. A curve turned out to be tighter than he had estimated, and traction was lost; the car went into a skid, broke through a guardrail, and went over an embankment. Tall weeds and small saplings along the ditch slowed their momentum, and he managed to get the car stopped without overturning.
A quick check revealed no apparent injuries other than bruises. The old car, however, had been banged up considerably, to the point it was undrivable. The family spent the rest of that day in a motel in Seymour while Clair shopped for another car.
We got home two days later and seemed to be all right—but what we did not realize was that Helen had gotten a very severe whiplash. The initial stiffness in her neck went away, and she seemed fine for a while. But somewhere around Christmastime, the headaches began.
At first Helen dismissed them as tension headaches created by the holiday bustle. They continued throughout the winter, however, sometimes even preventing her from sleep.
I got to the place where I couldn’t concentrate. I was losing weight. And I couldn’t stand people—which is pretty bad if you’re a pastor’s wife!
We couldn’t have visitors in our home, even our very best friends. A pastor couple from Salina drove down one time, and I just fell apart. I couldn’t handle it.
At one point I think I was out of church for three months. Even talking on the phone was too much.
I could handle the kids. Anything inside the house was all right. But the outside world just unnerved me.
Clair, a man from strong, self-reliant roots, did the best he could to juggle a church of 140 and the needs at home. But he couldn’t resist an occasional comment that urged his wife to snap out of it. When he would happen to mention a church detail—for example, that Mrs. Smith was in the hospital for an appendectomy—Helen might break out in tears. Then he would find himself saying, “Come on, what’s the matter? Get hold of yourself.”
Helen knew it was futile to try to explain how she was feeling, and she had no words for it anyway. In fact, she was tormented some nights with the thought that she, at the age of thirty, was having a nervous breakdown. She still did not connect the occasional pain in her neck with the other disabilities.
The Enemy really used that to tell me, Well, you’re going to die. You’re not going to live very long. You’re going out of your mind. You’ll soon be finished; you’re no use to your husband, and on and on.
One time I remember Clair got disgusted with something I said and responded, “Oh, come on now—don’t be crazy.” I thought to myself, You don’t know how right you are! I AM going crazy.
In the midst of this, an urgent phone call came from a young couple back in Cincinnati whose wedding Clair had performed. The wife had been under severe and mysterious stress and disorientation. Would their beloved Pastor Denzer be willing to make an expenses-paid trip back to talk to her and pray with her?
Clair thought it odd, but the longer they begged, the more he sensed his coming might be a symbol of hope to the couple. He agreed to go.
Helen remembers a certain Sunday dinner just before Clair was to leave for the Wichita airport. There he is, going to Cincinnati to pray for someone with a nervous breakdown, she thought as she served the dessert, and he doesn’t know his own wife is having one! But she remained locked in her quietness.
On the way home, Clair began to think deeply about his wife’s condition. Maybe she really was in some kind of trouble. He arranged for her to see a chiropractor, who soon identified the problem in her neck. He began treatments and also gave Helen permission to come without an appointment whenever she felt the need. “If you just need to get away, you can relax in one of the rooms here as long as you want,” he said.
That treated the physical causes and answered some of the questions harassing Helen’s mind. But by this time, her depression and fears were planted firmly enough that they had taken on life of their own. She was still traumatized by the thought of mixing in a crowd of church people or playing the piano for a service once again. “I have no one I can counsel with!” she once lamented to Clair. “I don’t have a pastor; there’s no one I can talk to.”
Gradually her husband began tempering his impatience and listening more to her expressions of panic. He began praying for her, out loud, in her presence. He also began to show more understanding.
People in the church were compassionate and loving, often sending in food. Those who had undergone nervous problems of their own were especially sympathetic. One man told her, “When I was having my hard time, my doctor used to say, ‘It’s all in your head.’ And I’d say, ‘I know that; what I want you to tell me is how to get it out!'”
A breakthrough did not come, however, until Helen’s mother arrived from Cleveland. She ended up staying six weeks, taking over in the kitchen and the laundry room and also giving major doses of Scripture and prayer. Helen vividly remembers:
By that time I was at a point where I couldn’t cry—the tears were all gone. I couldn’t emote, I couldn’t laugh. I could talk about the normal routine, but I didn’t smile very much. I couldn’t pray, either.
One of the first things—because I was full of so many fears—was every morning after breakfast, she would have me sit while she prayed over me and read the Bible. “You just sit and receive while I pray and read,” she’d say. “I know you can do that much.”
That went on for several weeks, every day. It was during those sessions that healing began to come in.
Sometime in the third week, Helen found herself able to pray again. As she did, the tears resumed their flow. The next Sunday morning she tried going to church and found it manageable.
Sitting in the sanctuary that day, she remembered an event that had happened almost a year before, when her trial was just beginning. She had been playing a postlude for a service like this one. All at once Isaiah 41:10 had been uniquely quickened to her—”Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.” The word uphold had burned in her mind, as if to say, You can’t go under; God is upholding you.
It had really been a very dark year. But the Lord had held me from collapsing, and he had also brought my mother out to minister to me at just the right time.
As his wife began to improve, Clair finally saw a reason for the ordeal.
Suddenly the real purpose came to me: it was for me. I was always very short with people who complained about being nervous. I had a hard time being compassionate.
I learned there was a lot more than just “taking hold of yourself” like I’d been telling people to do. These nerve problems were very, very real.
Helen’s Sunday morning attendance gradually expanded to Sunday evenings as well, and then to a full schedule. The Denzers decided to celebrate with a shopping trip.
My husband took me to an expensive dress shop—it was really a treat. We picked out this pink dress together. I remember feeling so good coming out of that store. It was like a new beginning for me.
I felt great, and I looked good in the dress … and about a month later, I became pregnant and had to put it in the closet!
Helen wore that dress later on, however, and kept wearing it as long as the style would allow—a symbol of her recovery. The baby boy born that November became “my tonic child,” she says, because of the joy and strength he seemed to stimulate within her.
The dark year was twenty-five years ago now, but Helen Denzer still tells the story occasionally when she speaks to women’s groups. They listen to this voice of experience and find the encouragement to press on for wholeness.
Reflections
by David SeamandsMinisters, it seems, do enjoy better health than the average. This is probably because they are very fulfilled in their work, which helps health. But it also can leave them insensitive to the physical weaknesses of their wives.
Because women express illness more openly and emotionally, husbands often oversimplify and overspiritualize. Many a minister with a sick wife almost views her as part of his spiritual reputation. It’s like having a wayward teenage son or daughter. Ministers can be very cruel about this: “I’m bearing this cross; my poor wife isn’t spiritual; she’s always ill, always depressed.”
A lot of ministers’ wives I counsel show considerable resentment about this: “He doesn’t understand. He has time for everyone else’s illness but mine. He’s making hospital calls every week of the year, but when I get sick, it’s a different story.”
I admit that early in my own marriage, I too was guilty of inferring that if my wife were spiritually OK, she wouldn’t be sick. I’ve had to ask forgiveness for that.
Helen Denzer enjoyed a lot of blessings, however, in her case: a caring congregation, a terrific mother who understood and was helpful, and the discovery of purpose and meaning in it all. Because she could believe God was using this, she would emerge a stronger minister’s wife, understanding people better.
It’s meaningless suffering that destroys us. If we can see a purpose, we can stand just about anything. Victor Frankl discovered in the concentration camps that the human spirit can take any what if it can discover a why. Holocaust survivors were those who saw some kind of meaning in it.
The other lesson in the Denzer experience is that recovery from breakdown takes a lot of time. There’s no quickie cure. Many ministers don’t understand that. This is especially true of emotional or nervous breakdown—which is what this became because it was oversimplified in the beginning. An emotional breakdown is almost like all the computers in the Pentagon going down at once. How do you hold the outlying troops in control? You can’t, until the center is rebuilt slowly but surely.
Or it’s like falling over a cliff. The climb back to the top takes a lot longer than the fall. You have to be patient with yourself. This wonderful mother was so patient with Helen; she was the key to the recovery. She stopped her daughter from condemning herself for taking so long to get well.
If you’re sick, that’s bad enough; but if you have guilt on top of it, that’s doubly bad. Instead of sixteen tons, you’re carrying thirty-two. We’re all made for sixteen, but nobody’s made for thirty-two.
(Isn’t it interesting that the recovery in this case included a pregnancy? Between the lines there, I think I see a breakthrough of affection. She calls her new son “my tonic child”—what a beautiful phrase.)
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
