Yesterday marked the one-year anniversary of my health avalanche. The day seemed typical at first. I took my usual prayer walk and felt great. But a few minutes into my shower everything came crashing down. I could feel the energy drain out of me and severe fatigue set in. The words “Call in sick” popped into my brain like a pre-programmed emergency message. Within an hour we were at the ER.
This avalanche had been rumbling for years. In the fall of 2013, I felt depression for the first time. Until then I enjoyed a sunny, optimistic disposition as my default. To feel nothing, even dark thoughts, was an entirely new experience that I could have lived without. Over time Rachael and I found natural remedies that could keep the anxiety, overwhelm, and depression at bay. We made dietary and environmental changes. But at best we were managing symptoms, never getting to the root cause.
When my dad died last May, I swallowed my pride and called a doctor who specializes in mystery illnesses. Providentially, my appointment was two days after the avalanche. To make a really long story short, they found mold in my system and believe this was at the root of my physical and emotional fatigue. I have walked through the protocol to address this for the last year. There have been ups and downs but overall the progress has been encouraging.
Our working hypothesis that mold is behind my depression and exhaustion has provoked some existential questions. Indulge me in a trip down the rabbit’s hole for a bit, beginning with these stray questions:
- If the introduction of mold into my system alters my mood from being sunny and optimistic to sullen and withdrawn, do I understand that new, depressive state as being “me” or something that happened to me?
- Three of my four grandparents suffered from Alzheimer’s, with varying degrees of recognition and recall before death. For my Mimi, her lifelong character of mercy and self-giving persisted through her disease. Five years earlier her husband, my Pop, died with barely a spark of his gregarious, industrious self left. So was he more dead than she was before the final breath?
- Stories abound of people whose personality changes dramatically with the growth or shrinkage of a brain tumor. Those undergoing hormone therapy can experience thoughts, emotions, and impulses they never experienced before. How do we understand those changes?
All of these questions funnel down to the biggie: what is a human being? Are we simply hardware and software? Bones, ligaments, and nerve cells run by bacteria, proteins, and electrical signals? When a virus causes a glitch in the operating system, does that fundamentally change the identity of the whole? Is that different from an alteration to the hardware—loss of sight, amputation of a leg, or deterioration of cartilage?
Here’s a fun one—how do I process the fact that the very curiosity that drives these questions could be squelched by the introduction of mold into my system? Does that make me incurious or simply infected?
We could go round and round the mulberry bush with these questions. While I have nothing definitive, the answer to “what is a human being?” is more complex than I ever appreciated. Christians can be notoriously simplistic in attributing all problems to sin (to be fair, some humanists can do the same with a lack of education). But our problems are not simple. It only took a few years of parenting to realize that sometimes my son’s behavioral issues have much more to do with his blood sugar level than his rebellious bent.
Yet the Bible’s anthropology is far from inadequate. God created us good, in his image, worthy of dignity, and empowered to realize his rule on earth. Sin corrupted this magnificent existence, compromising all our relationships—with God, ourselves, one another, and the physical world. It’s all there in Genesis 1-3 and the complexity is baked in. We may not be able to dissect which facets of the fall are at work in a health crisis or relational breakdown (Is it thorns and thistles? Jealousy? Shame?), but it is still true to say that sin is the problem and find hope in the promise that God is at work to make all things new.
This expanding anthropology has had practical implications for how Rachael and I pursue wellness. We know that stress in the home affects us, so we take turns doing a personal 24-hour getaway that is free of demands. Certain foods make us tired or grumpy so we try to avoid those. With the help of doctors we have located the causes of fatigue and mood issues (mold for me, thyroid for her) so we take the medicine and do the necessary protocols to address those. We have been in hurtful relationships with other broken people so we talk to counselors who can help us make sense of our stories. And, because sin within us—not only around us—really is an issue, we make sure we have space in each day to commune with the Savior and rest in the power of his death and resurrection.
I long for the day of new bodies and the eradication of sin and all its infecting, distorting effects in the world. Until then I am trying to be well so I can do good one day at a time. Here’s to another year.
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