I found out I have Bi-Polar Disorder two weeks after I was ordained a deacon. It started several years earlier with a breakdown while I was on a trip to Appalachia with two high school classmates and a Franciscan Brother. We were off to save the world.
It was there I began that roller coaster ride from manic behavior to deep depression. I spent days eating and sleeping too little and praying too much. In my mind I thought that if I ate less, there would be more for the poor. If I prayed more, I would be holy. I wanted to be a saint and decided that I would kill myself in the process if need be.
Within two weeks I was on a flight back to New York with some unknown illness. I had lost a lot of weight, I wasn’t sleeping, I experienced delusions, and I rambled on about anything. The plane ride only added to my agitated state. When I arrived home, my parents took me to a psychiatric hospital.
I spent a long and painful month in the hospital. The goal was to slow the chemical imbalance in my brain and bring me to an even pace. I left never knowing why I was admitted. Everyone hoped it was an isolated event. It was not. It was five years before I even mentioned my illness anyone. Eventually the cycle repeated itself, and again I was hospitalized; by this time, though, I was a priest. That’s when they called me bi-polar.
Heavily medicated this time, I was a virtual zombie for about two weeks. I could not carry on meaningful conversation or deal with reality. The shame remained, as my family and friends were told I was having my appendix removed.
I cried myself to sleep. I felt as if I had descended into hell. Questions flooded my mind: Why is this happening to me? Where is God now? I thought God was on vacation or something, for he certainly wasn’t with me. I felt abandoned.
What I didn’t realize, because of the medications and the disease itself, was that God was right there beside me, crying with me and for me. Even so, I focused my anger on God. I was reminded of Jesus’ innocent suffering, but that doesn’t always help when you’re aching.
I wanted God to reveal saving love by telling me that I didn’t need the medicine anymore. But God didn’t say that, and I do need it, because loving who I am means taking the medicine.
Some time later, while on retreat, the line from Mark’s Gospel hit me: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone” (Mark 12:10). These words haunted me. The rejected stone in my life was the disease. The Lord invited me to accept and embrace my disease so that God could continue to build me into the person God intended. The shame was lifted, but the scars remained.
It has taken twenty years to “let go and let God,” but it has made all the difference. I have now been able to recognize mental illness as one, and only one, aspect of who I am. Once I could embrace that, I could be more in tune with who I am, and who God calls me to be. I was able to live life without shame.
My greatest fear was that I would experience another psychotic attack and never regain my health. Now I am confident that if this should occur, it would not change my relationship with God. My love for God and God’s love for me is so strong that when my body finally surrenders in death we shall embrace again.
“Nothing will separate us from the love of God …” Not even mental illness.
—Jerry DiSpigno is a Catholic priest in Bellport, New York.
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