just by getting out of bed, that is a purpose that testifies to other people that this life is worth living despite great suffering. And it is exciting to people. And I think it's exciting that we get to participate in that testimony.
Brian Beatty:For many people sorrow, anxiety and mental illness are everyday experiences, that we can see this clear as day in a post COVID world. And while we've made tremendous advancements in therapy and psychiatry, the burden of living still comes down to mundane choices that we each must make. Welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty. welcoming you to this edition of restoring the soul with Michael JOHN CUSICK. Alan noble, joins Michael to discuss caring for yourself when you just don't want to when it's important to rise above your circumstances and put one foot in front of the other. There'll be discussing Allen's latest book published by InterVarsity press called on getting out of bed, the burden and gift of living. Alan is an associate professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University, and has written for the Atlantic Vox, the Gospel coalition Christianity today. And first things. He's also the author of disruptive witness, and you are not your own. This is a deeply personal conversation for both of them. And we invite you to join Michael and Alan, as they teach us how to steward our suffering. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael John Cusack.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Dr. Ellen noble, I want to welcome you to the restoring the soul podcast.
Unknown:Thank you. I'm excited to be here.
MICHAEL CUSICK:I've heard of you for a long time as a thought leader. And as a professor, we have some overlap and some of the circles. And so I'm curious for my first question, you're an English professor, by training and by vocation, but you wrote a book about mental suffering and anguish of all kinds. And I'm wondering, as an English professor, What compelled you to write the book on getting out of bed?
Unknown:Yeah, well, I mean, for one thing, working with students. It's a topic of common conversation right now. That Gen Z in particular is struggling with mental health crises. And so you know, working with college students, it's very clear to me that that a lot of them are struggling. And that's a lot of conversations that I have, in addition to my own struggles, which I won't get into a detail, but meeting with students who are struggling with anxiety and depression and feelings of inadequacy and trauma and not as a counselor, but just as a mentor figure has given me a deep appreciation for how serious the problem is. So that was part of the pressing thing. And then, you know, you know, as a literature professor, I, I read widely and so, one of the things you'll find in my book on getting out of bed is that I quote from various works of literature that helped inform my understanding of mental suffering, particularly Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which I think asks the fundamental question that Hamlet asks and that I pose in trying to give an answer to in this book, which is, Why live to be or not to be.
MICHAEL CUSICK:And that was a profound way that you integrated McCarthy's book the road, you also incorporated JD Salinger. And I understand that both of those are part of what you did your dissertation on one of your areas of expertise.
Unknown:Yes, yeah. Two of my favorite authors Kirk McCarthy and JD Salinger. So and both heavily influenced me and the way I think about mental health and life struggles and challenges. And so those showed up there.
MICHAEL CUSICK:So I loved how your references to the Road by Cormac McCarthy, you continue to weave that through in chapter after chapter and how it didn't seem like just an illustration that you use for the purpose of illustration, but I felt myself there in the story, and I thought that was really cool. You said that you wouldn't go in detail, but I do appreciate you making a reference to the fact that part of your own story informs this I loved how early on in the book you said, now this is the part of the book where I would insert, insert my own story, but I'm not going to do that. But as a psychotherapist and somebody who's lived with bipolar for over 25 years, page after page, I was like, There's no way this could be written by someone who hasn't. Who hasn't walked through some kind of depth of pain that has disoriented your life. So without going into detail, just like where in your life, have you experienced your own mental anguish?
Unknown:Yeah, so I'll just say, in general, that I deal with anxiety, I won't go further than that. But that has been a serious part of my life experience for the past, I don't know 20 years or so. And so that has shaped me and affected my family and my career and my day to day existence. And I had some decisions to make in writing this book, I could have written a memoir, I could have, you know, tried to write a self help book. But I decided instead to write an essay, and not really make it about me, because it's not about me, it's about this common human experience that is more common than people like to acknowledge of mental affliction, and what it's like to suffer from diagnosed or undiagnosed, or undiagnosable. mental afflictions. So that's part of what inspired it for sure.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Well, as I read the book, I found myself saying, and especially in the last two thirds, it was just this progressive sense of this author knows me, he's describing my experience in my reality. And, you know, you talked about a story of someone in a swimming pool, who was in great mental anguish, and was having to just repeat the Lord's Prayer, while they were there, kind of guiding their child in the water, while they're learning to swim. And the gift of giving out of that kind of pain, it was really remarkable, just the descriptions. And so anybody who's listening to this, who has experienced mental suffering, anguish, anxiety, depression, or any of the different diagnoses, I think they're gonna, they're gonna say, Oh, my God, it's me, you know, literally. So thank you, thank you for writing it in the way that you did. But offering out at the depth of what your experience was, you do an excellent job in the book, of naming the depth of what I would call ordinary, everyday pain that people have. So this is not a book. And the essay is not just for people with a mental illness or a disorder, but that we're all walking around, where inside, we feel like we're broken, or we are broken, and nobody knows.
Unknown:It's, you know, that was one of the things and I talked about this in the book. But one of the things that I've learned growing older, as I got into small group Bible studies and community groups and made friends with other, you know, adults, and it surprised me, but I kept learning about these forms of suffering and affliction, these traumas, these experiences, these diagnoses that I just, I had no idea that people were struggling with things like this. And, and I say in the book, and it's true, you know, growing up, I grew up around a lot of a lot of suffering, a lot of my extended family, lived very traumatic lives, and with addiction and abuse and neglect and all kinds of problems. And so it wasn't like I was sheltered from suffering. I knew suffering was a real part of human life. But I was able for for most of my life, I think to say, well, that's something that people over there have, you know, just some people. But it's not true. And I think the more you get to know people really well, the more you realize, Wow, a lot of people are suffering in a lot of ways. And that's eye opening and, and humbling.
MICHAEL CUSICK:You also dispelled the myth that a good Christian or living the Christian life or following the commands or you know, for that matter, reading your Bible and praying that that's somehow going to immunize us against great suffering. Talk a little bit about that. And even maybe some of the ways that you experienced that.
Unknown:Yeah, you know, I think I think Christians experience a pressure to be happy and content and joyful in certain very superficial ways. Part of this, I think, comes from our anxiety about living in a secular world. We feel like as Christians, we've got to put the best face forward. Otherwise people are going to look at us and say, Well, why would I be a Christian? You're You're still suffering with depression, I'm suffering with depression, I guess that's not going to help me. So what's the point? And so I think because of that, and other reasons, we get to this place where when you go to church on Sunday morning, and you ask your neighbor, you know, how are you doing, or you greet them, there's a, a, an expectation that you're, you've got to be positive, that you've got to be cheerful, that you've got to be excited that you've got to be flourishing and happy. And, and. And then to add on to that there's a sense of shame, that and guilt that you can develop when you have a mental illness because you feel like, well, if God is who He says He is, then I shouldn't be suffering like this, I shouldn't feel this bad, I should feel joy, I should feel happiness, and I don't. So that means there's got to be something wrong with me spiritually, I must be ascending in some way, because I'm not joyful. And, you know, the reality is that our minds are fallen, just like our bodies, and the rest of creation. And we suffer in various ways. And, and I think, you know, contrary to our impulse, actually suffering publicly, and choosing to continue on and to live life, even when you're depressed or anxious is actually a great witness to the faith. You're you're not showing that, you know, Christianity magically cures all your problems, you're showing that Christianity gives you hope, that there is healing.
MICHAEL CUSICK:So instead of it being like, if I talk about my suffering, that's bad PR for Jesus, that the way that we the way that we're vulnerable, and either out of our pain care for others, or allow others to care for us that that's actually the best PR.
Unknown:Yeah, yeah. I mean, that that's, it's, it's the best reflection of our faith, because it's the truest reflection of our faith, right? I mean, Paul's got a thorn in his flesh, that he's begging God to take from him. And God doesn't. And I think a lot of people with mental illness can really resonate with that thorn in the flesh. You know, and maybe that's Paul's, maybe Paul's thorn in the flesh was, you know, clinical depression or something? You know, I don't know.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Yeah, I've always pondered that. This is unrelated to your book. But it's since you also, I read in one of your bios that you study Charles Taylor. And so one of my best friends, did his dissertation on the work of Taylor, as it relates to cultural contextualism. Actually. And so this is a little bit of a philosophical question. But because we're talking about suffering, I have this opinion, that a lot of what we call deconstruction with younger generations, that it's because we don't have a robust practical theology of suffering and brokenness that we can explicitly talk about, and that the gospel addresses, and that if we could somehow present that to people, in pulpits, and in lots of other ways that it would give people permission to be messy, to be broken. And to say, that's not contradictory to my faith, it's actually an invitation to integrate by faith. What are your thoughts about that? Having written a book on suffering?
Unknown:Yeah, well, I mean, excuse me. I mean, I certainly think that we have a problem with talking about suffering in the church, that we don't do a good job of it, that we don't have a good theology of suffering. Well, actually, I should say, we, there are good theologies of suffering. It's just that we're not communicating them. Well, like the church is historically always known that it To live is to suffer. It's only the recent church that has lost that sense of things, and instead replaced it with this idea that to suffer, you're somehow less than you're somehow failing. And I certainly think that, for some people who are deconstructing there, they are looking for a place where they can mourn and weep and be broken and flawed, and they're not finding that space in the church. And so they need some place else to go where they can have that space. I don't know if it's, it's a main cause. I mean, deconstruction is such a wide movement, right? There are some people in May there's just lots of different reasons why people are, are going through something that they would call deconstructing. I'm sure that some for some people, what they're looking for is a faith that will allow them to suffer because they are suffering. They know they have that experience. And so what they want is, you know, can you give me something of faith that makes sense of that can frame what I'm already experiencing? But the answer is we can. But we need to be doing that from, as you say, from the pulpits.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Oh, thank you for that, that perspective, that's, that's it just fans the flames of some of my own thinking. And it's just had super helpful. Because as I read your book, it got me thinking about so many aspects of suffering. As I mentioned, I've been a mental health patient for since I was 16 years old. And as an adult, I've lived with a number of diagnoses that I frequently talk about on the podcast. But I've also been a mental health practitioner for 35 years. And I appreciated and was like, wow, this is hard to do, you walked a very fine line. While on one side, you're a real advocate for psychiatry for mental health for diagnosis, and you're very clear about that over and over again, so that no one would misunderstand you, you know, saying, Oh, just just read the Bible. Right? Right. But because because a lot of mental health issues are biological, neurological realities. And at the same time, you said, not anti mental health, but two things stood out. One was that we need much more than mental health treatment, we need a community, we need neighbors, we need people that will come and truly neighbor us, and that mentors, friends, etc. But you also said that we that we set or have unrealistic expectations for what mental health will do and talk a little bit about that tension, and what those expectations are.
Unknown:Yeah, to that first point, you know, there's an interesting thing happening, where, particularly among evangelicals, but across the board, there's a lot of skepticism towards authority figures. That means that people are are hesitant to trust practitioners, trust experts like yourself. And so that's why several times in the book, I'm telling people, no, these are great resources, take advantage of these pursue these, this is what you need to do for your healing. And so I wanted to be a strong advocate. But while that's happening, while we have this pressure to be skeptical of all authority figures, there's also a professionalization of what used to be friendship, right. And so some people need to see a psychiatrist or a therapist, some people need a good friend, some, most of us need both. But, but I wanted to advocate for that too, because there's a way in which we can turn mental health into just a, you know, like another technique, like getting our oil change, or getting a checkup at the doctor's, you know, just something very formal. And I want to say, well, it's more complicated than that. And that gets to your second point that you highlight that I make in the book, which is that we do have these unrealistic expectations. And I think it's because, you know, we have such a hope in our medical professionals, and in, you know, doctors, and so what we want to imagine is that if we can get a diagnosis, that there's naturally a cure, that there's, there's a treatment plan, which you can have, but that treatment plan is going to lead to a cure. And just, you know, the reality of living with a mental illness is that more often than not, at least in my experience with people I know, it's not a cure that we're working towards. It's it's living a healthy, sustained life. And I think we do a disservice to medical, mental health professionals, when we have these unrealistic expectations when we think, Okay, I've got this problem. So I'm gonna go in, and I'm gonna get a pill, and it's going to cure this, or I'm gonna get a pill, and I'll do treatment, and you know, see a therapist for a couple months, and then I'll be cured. And then I'll go home, and everything will be fine. And the reality is that our minds are messy, and it's complicated. And so I wanted to do both, I wanted to say, Hey, this is really valuable on and advocate for that, while also saying, at the end of the day, or at the beginning of the day, in the case of my book, you still have to face the challenge of getting up. And you still have to face these fundamental questions. And whether or not, you know, the help you receive is satisfactory or not, or it meets your expectations or not, you're still gonna have to get up.
MICHAEL CUSICK:And so I just want to state again, the book that we're discussing that you wrote is on getting out of bed, subtitled the burden and gift of living. Have you gotten any pushback from the community of faith that said, you know, you over emphasize the burden side of things too much, you know, we have joy and Jesus and come on. There's there's the gift side, but the burden side, you're just a little melancholic.
Unknown:I, you know, it's interesting. I haven't I've gotten several Um, you know, the book is just just came out, you know, less than a month ago. And so there's still time, there's still lots of time to get pushback. I've gotten several, two star reviews, but are ratings. But they didn't come with reviews, people didn't explain why they gave it two stars. And so that's very puzzling to me. Not that I think it's a five star book, but I don't think it's a two star book. And that makes me wonder if what they're experiencing is something exactly like that. They're reading it, and they're thinking, Gosh, this is heavy. This describes life is such a dark thing. And we should be joyful and stuff. And, of course, I want to acknowledge, you know, not everybody deals with the mental illness. But what I argue in the book is that everybody's going to have to answer the question, why get out of bed, at one point or another. It could be because of a mental illness, or it could be because of the loss of a loved one or just the trials and travails of life. At some point, you're going to have to have a good answer to that question.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Yeah, that really, really is true. And in some ways, if we expanded the word salvation, it's kind of like, this idea is what's your salvation every morning? You know, what's what's what's giving you hope? What's the basis of goodness? What are you trusting in? In some ways, when you talked about the five star, I am not trying to flatter you. But I think it's a five star book. It's short, and Q. It's very concise, but you just, it's, there's a clarity, and a appropriate repetition of clarity, where I close the book on the last page, and it's only 100 pages long. And I was just like, I know exactly what that book is about. And I know the major points. To me, I felt like you helped people steward their suffering, that you put words to it, but just like we steward money, you know, the resources that we've been given, that suffering can be a kind of resource that we have to not just embrace and tell the truth about, but where we can actually be generative. And out of that, somehow, so talk about how you came to see both maybe personally, theologically and otherwise, the importance of having room for self care and treatment and setting boundaries. But at the same time, how generativity and other centeredness is such an important part of stewarding our suffering.
Unknown:You know, I think this is one of the things that parenting can do to you, you know, when you parent and you are experiencing a mental illness, or a disorder of some kind, or just mental affliction and suffering. Your kids, depending on their age, it's hard for them to understand, and they still need you. And you know, you can go into your room and cry or hide or not get out of bed, you can try to do all those things, but they're still going to come to you and say, I need you please help. I'm fighting with your my sister, my brother, you know, I, you know, put out this fire, whatever, you know, I need help with my homework. And it's a great experience, in part because it reminds you that you are not alone. And you are not your own, which is the topic of my previous book, there is this inner dependence that we have that's just built into creation. And it's good, it's beautiful. But it's hard. And that's why, you know, that's part of the subtitle, the burden and the gift of living, you know, that's part of the burden is that you are a witness to other people, whether you want to be or not like you didn't sign up to be your brother's keeper, you didn't sign up, you know, to have people watching you, but they are. And they're going to observe how you deal with suffering, how you deal with trauma, how you deal with problems. And that's not an easy thing to bear. But it's also a beautiful thing to bear in. And one of the things that I've been trying to emphasize to people is that it's beautiful being a witness to others, in part because it gives you purpose. And one of the first things to go when you experience particularly depression is a sense of purpose. You feel like your life is purposeless, that there's no reason for you to go on that there's no you're not contributing anything to the world. And one of the things that I want to say with this book is just by getting out of bed, that is a purpose that testifies to other people that this life is worth living despite great suffering. And it is exciting to people. And I think it's exciting that we get to participate in that testimony.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Yeah. Again, the theme all throughout this idea that that you are desperately needed. I am desperately needed to show up in the world. And not perfect, not without anguish, but our presence makes a difference. So to the question of, if the book title is on getting out of bed, the burden and gift of living? How do you most succinctly answer the question why get out of bed?
Unknown:Because a loving God created you in a sustaining you and his caring for you. And you have the opportunity to testify to the goodness of his creation, just by getting out of bed. That's what I would say.
MICHAEL CUSICK:That's really profound. Well, I hope so. Yeah, I wish we could talk about that for just that idea for an hour. And that's really the heart of the second half of the book. Yeah. You talk about this idea of needing to learn to be cared for. And then for many people, they feel guilty if they are a burden, you know, we hear that all the time, oh, I don't want to be a burden to my children, or I don't want to be a burden to society. But we all know Galatians, where it says, carry one another's burdens. But none of us want to be the person with the burden. But you say that that's an important. That's an important part of this.
Unknown:Yeah, we all want to be the hero kept bearing the burdens of others, but nobody wants to be the one who has the burden to bear. Yeah, no, I mean, it's one of the things that you're going to discover, again, at one point or another in your life is that you can't do this alone, that you can't sustain your life by yourself. That's a healthy realization, that's a really good realization, because you've never been able to live alone, you've always been dependent upon other people, it's just that sometimes our lives are going smoothly enough that we can pretend that we are self sufficient, when we're really not. I think it's beautiful and good for us to come to this place where we recognize that, gosh, I need someone that I can call and ask for help. I need someone I can text and say, you know, I'm having these dark thoughts is this is this true or not? And, and get somebody to give you an outside perspective, because we can get lost so easily in our own heads. And sometimes, the lifeline we need is just somebody outside of our heads, who can say, I'm sorry, you're feeling that way. That's not reality, that darkness that you're feeling is not reality. So please keep going. And I think that's, that's powerful. And I think we need to remember that it's a gift to be able to give other people are suffering. They might not feel like it all the time. But it's an honor to bear each other's burdens. And so instead of feeling guilty and ashamed for being human, I think we need to delight in the opportunity to give others a chance to to bear our burdens.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Yeah, you said that they they may not, you know, enjoy it. But you shared this beautiful story. And I'm going to quote you on this one. Yeah. The next talk I give where you said at one of the hardest points for you. You were talking to a friend and saying how guilty you felt. And the friend said something to the effect of hey, I signed up for this when I became your friend. Yeah. And that was just it was just gorgeous to hear that it brought tears to my eyes. I know, I have friends like that. That really does come with the job description of friendship, doesn't it?
Unknown:Yeah. And we need to, and I love what my friend said there. And and I think, you know, he put words to what we ought to be recognizing. And that means that, you know, we need to pursue friendships and being that friend for other people, when we're in a healthy place, especially, we want to be that friend for others.
MICHAEL CUSICK:Yeah, I want to close with this. At the end of the book, you brought up the category of usefulness. And I have another a number of friends who have in their own process of healing and some their deconstruction, they've had to come to terms with this idea of, you know, God, first and foremost wants to use us. And I don't think that that's true. I think that that's a fruit being useful as a fruit of a number of other things. But you brought this free, prominent cultural idea that if I'm not useful, my life is not worth living. And you just talked about that in some really neat ways. Talk a little bit about that.
Unknown:Yeah, so you know, there's a tension here. God does use us but as you say, That's it. That's a fruit and he doesn't love us because we're you is full. So I think at the book, the way I describe it is that we have no use value to God, that when when God looks at us and he sees our value, he doesn't think, well, Alan is good. And Alan has value because he's useful. I can use him to, you know, to get books out into the world, or to teach students how to read poetry or whatever, right, or to share the gospel or something were to, you know, to serve in a church, or a local community. Those are things that I can do, and that I can do for God that are useful. But when he sees our value, that's not what he sees. He sees his son, and his son's accomplished work on the cross. And He loves us as we are. That's a fundamentally different way of understanding things. And what it does is it reminds us that when we feel useless because we can't compete in this world, we still are valuable and worthy and loved by God. And, you know, he is going to use us, as I say, throughout the book, you know, just by getting up, you know, God is using us to testify to his goodness. But that's not why he loves us. And so that's the fundamental tension that I'm trying to communicate.
Brian Beatty:So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in our intensive counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change and half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com