“Wherever a person's deepest wound exists, that is where his greatest gift to the community lies.”
—Robert Bly
In contrast with the blackness of my mood, it was a sunny spring day in May of 1997. Using more willpower than faith, I dragged myself to the usual LEC Sunday morning service. Afterwards, I found myself in the office of associate minister Michael Moran, a colleague at whose church I had spoken five years before.
“It is the cruelest of ironies,” I lamented, “that as students of New Thought spirituality, we understand that thought is creative, that ‘whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.’ But now I suffer from a disease that renders this God-given faculty inoperative! How can I heal myself with the principles that you and Mary teach, when the mind, the instrument of creative imagination, is itself diseased?”
“Do you remember Martin Luther King's words,” Michael said, “that for those who are on the spiritual path, suffering can be redemptive?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but I can't imagine what good can result from this seemingly insurmountable affliction.”
Michael swiveled his chair to the right and gazed out the window. Outside, a robin had just alighted upon a budding lilac tree. Putting his head in his hands, Michael pondered my words for what seemed an interminable length of time, until at last he turned toward me and spoke.
“You are going through this ordeal so that one day you can write about it.”
“ Are you dreaming?” I replied. “I haven't been able to write a word in five years.”
“I know it sounds far-fetched, but that's what Spirit told me.”
Two years later, by the grace of God, Michael's uncanny prophecy has come true. Before she died, my therapist and mentor Anne Zimmerman made a similar request—that my next book should emerge from the depths of my inner torment.
And so it appears that I have been called, though not willingly, to share my ordeal as part of the “wounded healer” tradition. I pray that what I have portrayed—the account of my own struggle with depression, as well as the recovery program I have shared—has been of support to you or a loved one. I hope that this book has shone a light into the darkness that may have engulfed you. Most importantly, I wish that your suffering, like mine, can be redemptive—that out of the pain of your struggle, some unexpected good may emerge.
May the blessings be.