A Quiet Mind to Suffer With: Mental Illness, Trauma, and the Death of Christ

by John Andrew Bryant

the saddest thing in the world isn’t to have bad thoughts or feelings. The saddest thing in the world is to believe things that are not true.

This is not, of course, what I wanted. What I wanted was better thoughts and better feelings. The absence of Suffering. I wanted my brain to provide better experiences. And what I got was a better understanding of who Christ is and who I am; where I’m headed and what I’m supposed to be doing.

But it turns out the only thing I need to be okay is to know who Christ is and who I am, where I’m going and what I’m supposed to be doing. That humility, that understanding, is all I need to leave the Haunted House of compulsions and make my way through the Wilderness of bewildering symptoms.

Understanding who Christ is, who you are, and where you’re going and what you’re supposed to be doing does not make you suffer less, it only changes what Suffering appears to you as: as simple Wilderness rather than god. As symptoms rather than omens.

The psychiatric community would say it like this: it’s not the obsessions that kill us, it’s the compulsions.

The Realm is a vast country, and this patient, quiet understanding is only a place to stand, naked, terrified, seemingly alone. What I have in Christ is the simple, painful renunciation of the urges created by my brain, the ability to say no to desires and compulsions that will not just go away. I wish it was more. But that is all it’s been: a foothold in the storm of thought and feelings. A Thread in the Wilderness. A boat in the storm. A kernel. A single, hot, burning coal in the wind and rain.

That foothold, that boat, that kernel, is not a place where I do something to be okay. It is a place where I don’t. That patient, quiet understanding is the place where I stand with Christ and don’t do anything to make things right or win or be okay. It is the place where I don’t fix, the place where I don’t defend myself, the place where I don’t figure things out, and the place where I don’t know for sure. The place where it is somehow possible to not engage those compulsions. The place I stand with Christ and endure what it feels like to not do those things. The place where I’ve learned to stand with Christ by being quiet.

It turns out even the horrors I can be made to see and feel can be turned into a time of patient waiting on the Mercy offered in the gospel, with the promise we will not be most changed by the horrors we’ve been made to see and feel, but by the Mercy we’ve waited on. And this patient, quiet understanding, though it cannot remove those symptoms, can make every intrusive thought, every grotesque feeling, a time of patient waiting on the Mercy that has been offered. Every horrible thing can become a prayer.

That understanding has been a great gift. It has been a quiet mind to suffer with.

So, instead of saying that understanding is a foothold, or a place to stand, I will say this understanding has been My honor in shame. My courage in fear. My obedience in dread. My victory in defeat. My endurance in Affliction. My composure in distress. My shield in accusation. My deliverance from the hardness of my own heart.

My death was still in the room. It was wet and evil and soiled the bandages pulled around me. There was a voice. I woke up because it terrified me. Jesus was a friend but the voice He used to wake me up scared me. It would have sounded angry if it wasn’t also glory. It was a voice that made Death and me tremble. He told me to come out. I feared the voice more than death. It claimed more than death could, its purposes more inscrutable. It was a voice that held, forevermore, what was next. And because the voice was not a Stranger’s, it terrified me more. It is a thing of terror to call the living God a friend of yours. I was wrapped so that I hobbled to an opening. He told other people to unwrap me, which means they had to put their hands on my death so it would be pulled off my hair and eyes.

I have only been able to go back into What Happened, and with it the active threat of annihilation and being swallowed up, because such things as Scripture, prayer, friends, therapy, time, and writing have secured for me a surefootedness and generosity with What Happened that was not available to me when it was my shrieking and vivid present tense. I’ve only been able to go into the Past with the understanding that Mercy has been offered. I have only been able to go back into What Happened with the patient, quiet understanding of who Christ is and who I am, where I’m going and what I’m supposed to be doing.

We must give Suffering its due: it’s not going anywhere, it cannot be ignored, and it will not leave us the same. The Suffering is our own minds and bodies. Minds and bodies that, even as we live with them, are no longer ours. They have become terrifying Strangers. We cannot answer Suffering, and especially not our own Suffering. Suffering that has left us too confused and wounded. It is too close to us. And yet Suffering demands an answer. Otherwise our Suffering will become an intolerable bully, joining hands with such terrible things as fear, shame, dread, and the Hardness of the Heart. An answer to Suffering must be made. Otherwise the world will be rendered meaningless and intolerable. Otherwise, History and Affliction will reveal this world to be a total loss.

Jesus kept the scars and decided to stay in heaven as the Christ who died. And when He did that He took the crucifixion, and with it all of human pain, everything that could be seen and felt and done and taken, into the throne room of God.

What’s Wrong and What Happened were allowed in the throne room of God. They were, in fact, ushered in with singing. History and Affliction, in this way, were overcome but not removed. Neither repressed nor corrected. History and Affliction were, rather, consecrated. They were still somehow there. Held there by the scars kept in heaven, but they were made something else. They were made holy. Again, not because they had got better or worse, but because they had now been mentioned forever in Christ’s own body. Those horrors are made holy because of the body that made them holy. He bore them and bears them in His body. A body broken for us and blood shed for us. A broken body and spilled blood that is the Word for us. The only thing that can make anything holy.

Everything that can be seen and felt is already a psalm.

Everything that can be taken from us is already prayer, and has been made a prayer through Christ’s body.

It is not within the overt power of trauma, crashes, AIDs, or dementia, or within OCD itself, to be a friend to me, but only within the subversive power of the gospel to do so, to make them an unwilling friend of my life in Christ.

The endurance of Suffering is a mystery taken into Christ’s own torn flesh and delivered to us through the event of hearing His Word. The gift of humility, and the enduring of Suffering, is the creation of His Word, a Word that involves us in the power, promise, and peril of His victory.

I will be most changed by what I worship. To worship is to be changed by what you depend on.

And Christ’s promise is that we will not be most changed by the horrors in the Wilderness but by the Mercy we have waited on.

When we know that Suffering cannot deprive us of Christ because all Suffering has been taken into His very body, a body He freely hands over to us as His Word, I believe something incredible can happen over time: Suffering will no longer be able to wield the power of shame, because we are not ashamed of it. Suffering will no longer be able to wield the power of fear, because we are not afraid of it. It will no longer be able to awaken the hardness of our heart or the despair in our soul, because now that Christ has given Himself to us by Suffering, we can trust him with what Suffering has taken. And Suffering can just be Suffering, something Christ bears with us, for us in His own body. A body He now gives freely every time we hear the Word and take the bread and wine.

By that Word, Christ does not explain away History and Affliction, but becomes the enduring of History and bearing of Affliction. He has given His Word that He will be this for us. And He can only be this for us because He took responsibility for it. Whose torn flesh is the enduring and the bearing and the taking of responsibility.

It is important to make this point. There are things so secret and painful and awful that only Christ can make them holy. He is the only one who can, and He will only do it in His time and with His own gentleness and severity. Only Christ can make hard things holy things. The horrible and the unmentionable will only be made holy by Christ’s proximity to the horrible and the unmentionable. A mystery taken in His body that does not give us an answer but only the mystery of faith. A faith born through hearing, led in prayer, established by offering.

In the Wilderness of what we can be made to see and feel, of what can be done or taken, we learn what Christ will have to be for us if things are going to be okay, that He will have to be more for us than we ever thought He could or should. And by realizing what we cannot be for ourselves, and what Christ will have to be, we are given a stunning, solemn, reverent fear of who Christ is. A humility that is our way forward, an understanding of the heart that is our place to stand. And we will be led through the Wilderness as that patient, quiet understanding, led into the future by what we understand.

There is a problem with History and Affliction. The trouble with Affliction is that there is no such thing as just an Affliction. There is also the one who was afflicted. The trouble with what happened is there’s no such thing as just What Happened. There’s also the one it happened to. We trust Christ not just with what was taken, but with the one it was taken from.

The most difficult and painful and mysterious thing I’ve had to do is trust Christ with the one who was afflicted, the one who was abandoned, the one everything was taken from, the one the worst has already happened to, the one who was made to see and feel horrors.

The Howling Boy is my word for the anguish of the soul.

And so I am here to offer the gospel to an intolerable version of myself. The one who is howling because life is intolerable and he is alone. To declare peace between us. So that we are not gods and Strangers to one another.

I am here, and I am here to tell him he has been forgiven. Why would someone who suffered terribly need to be forgiven? Because the forgiveness of sins is not for people who have done something wrong. It is for people who are bound. Because that is our only way out. The only way out is to be forgiven.

It is only the forgiveness of sin that can meet us in our place of deepest need and our place of deepest bondage.

Our Hardness of the Heart is not defeated by coercion but by revelation. And because He is the forgiveness of sin, To be forgiven is to be seen, to be safe, to be fed. To be forgiven is to be changed, and to finally understand. To be forgiven is to be headed somewhere. In God’s economy, sinners are honored guests, faithful servants of the Mercy offered in the gospel.

Why remember What Happened? What Happened is the pit from which Christ rescues the one it happened to.

There is nothing in this life more beautiful and harrowing than the understanding of who Christ is. In the Wilderness we learn that Christ is not only the Word we have been given, He is the Amen we’ve been promised.

He is the Amen to the Word He has already spoken.

The Christ who made His way into the Wilderness to become that Word for us now leads us through the Wilderness through His Spirit. Through His Spirit we are led from the Word He has spoken to the Amen He has promised.

The crucified Christ is the Word we’ve been given, the forgiveness of sin, the revelation of who God is and what God is like. Christ revealed who God is by giving Himself to us, so that the crucified Christ is the glory of God. We are rescued by that revelation. The Word reveals who Christ is, and we are changed by who Christ is, and changed into who we are. His Word is the Mercy we behold by hearing.

Our intention each day is to be rescued by hearing, led through prayer, and to become what we offer.

In a Wilderness where anything could be seen, felt, done, or taken, and could make body, mind, and soul a Stranger, this was the only thing that was mine. My dependence on Christ was the only thing that couldn’t be taken from me. The intention to depend on Christ was the only thing that couldn’t be taken from me. This Rhythm, this Ordinary Life of Regular Worship, was the fulfillment of Christ’s promise to be with us always, the promise that Christ would never leave us without a way to depend on Him, and that in this way would never leave us with a way to be quietly changed by depending on Him.

In a world where we can’t know What Could Happen, or control What Should Happen, the option was always available to depend on Christ and head toward my dependence on Christ. To trust in Christ and trust Christ with things. To know someone and head somewhere.

Through Word, Spirit, fellowship. Through hearing, prayer, offering. Through beholding, being patient, and bearing witness. Through returning, waiting, and building.

The Word of the cross, the way of the cross, the joy of the cross had given me the quiet, holy fear I would need to live. It had given me humility, a trust that could be rescued, led, and fulfilled.

The fear of the Lord, that patient, quiet trust, was Christ’s most precious gift to me. I’m still in awe of it. In awe, after all this, that it is still there, still growing.

Only the Christ we can depend on can lead us to our dependence on Christ.

“This day is awful,” I once wrote in my journal. “But this day is more than awful. It is also Christ’s.”

I was in despair. And what despair was like was this: severe discouragement and unbearable dissatisfaction. It was a soul that said life is unbearable and I am alone. A heart that said life is meaningless and intolerable.

We don’t often think of Christ dwelling in hell. But I’m convinced He’s there. I’m convinced He’s in hell all the time. I’m convinced He pillages hell when we go visit each other. He pillages hell every time we go into the far country to find and see each other in places like that.

The cross is the place where God decided not to look away from us. Here, in Christ, God stared down everything that might frighten or condemn or humiliate us, and to its teething, spilling desire to be the Final Word He has said, “No.” And overturned all verdicts. And to our wretched, helpless state, He has said, “Yes.” And by the death of His Son has Clothed our shame. Cast out our fear. And buried our hardness of heart.

The heart is cleansed by hearing what Christ has done. We are freed from the power of sin by hearing promises. We cannot return to Christ through effort or sorrow, but through the vigilant hearing of the gospel, the Word proclaimed. The hearing of the gospel is the place where Christ offers Himself to us again. Hearing is the place where we behold the face of Christ and are given the miracle of repentance and faith. A repentance that is part of the gift of the gospel and not a condition of it.

The question isn’t whether hell exists. The question is whether Christ has descended into hell. The question is whether hell is a place He will go to get us.