Touching Christ

Something happened today. I was with a friend who is grieving a recent and terrible loss, she was crying and I leaned over and took her hand. And we sat. And cried. I have only known her a few months and for many of those we did not see each other much but I knew that taking her hand was the right thing to do, that it would be OK, for one simple reason. She’s not English.

We have fetishized touch as a culture, limited to romantic relationships only, to the extent that walking around in public holding another woman’s hand feels awkward for fear onlookers will question your sexuality. I have some female friends with whom I will snuggle under a blanket or lie with my head in their lap to talk about serious things, but although I get a huge amount of comfort from the action, talking about it makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable. This is not a universal cultural norm, in fact in my experience it is rare. My Chinese boy students will hug and hold hands throughout a class in a completely unselfconscious, platonic way, my female Arab friends will sit with their hands on my knee when we are talking, but for many of us Brits at some point in our life we learn that close, prolonged physical contact is reserved only for people who are ‘in a relationship’ and anything else is weird.

This creates a problem for some of those of who are single. It’s a difficult thing to admit but I need physical contact. It makes me feel loved and safe and secure. It makes me feel connected to other people and accepted. And the point when I need it most is the point at which it is often completely withdrawn. See a person in pain, wrapped up in a ball, head down, hurting and the English instinct seems to be back away, give them space, ignore it. We think it is what people want. It’s what many people do want, and to offer physical comfort to a person experiencing such intense emotions is a risky thing in a culture where most physical contact is taboo. But there are a significant minority of us for whom that is the wrong answer. When people see me in distress they touch me less and it leads eventually to me feeling untouchable, even dirty. It contributes to my sense of isolation, to feeling not understood, separate, sometimes even not quite human.

That’s a very specific issue which operates when I am very unwell but being a physical person affects my day to day relationships as well. My desire for sustained physical contact which is often chronically unsatisfied can lead to feeling profound wellbeing when with certain friends who are capable and comfortable with friendly touch. I value these friendships to extremes, frankly I often make idols out of them and often experience acute fear of rejection and envy of others with whom I have to share their friendship or a dramatic feeling of betrayal and overwhelming hurt when they let me down or seem to reject me, as humans must inevitably do. I hate this reaction in myself and I fight it and hide it and deny it, but it exists and it certainly can make me a difficult person to be friends with.

People with BPD are vulnerable to black and white thinking when it comes to people, believing them to either be perfect and unable to hurt you or horrible and deliberately out to damage you. I have the gospel that whispers in my ear, they are human, sinners in the image of God and loved by Jesus but it can be difficult to hold on to that interpretation when you feel baffled, bewildered and desperately hurt because this friend that you thought cared about you, who you love intensely, suddenly seems to be saying, “hang on, you’re not that important to me”.

Some people will read this and think, the culture is right then, we shouldn’t touch, look how powerful it is and what it can lead to. I think that is the wrong conclusion. The people who have most profoundly helped me change for the better in my life are the people who have loved me and kept loving me through my difficult behaviour, who have been hurt by me and have come back again and again. Because I am a Christian and I can change, and the more you put me in a situation where I see my rotten, stinking sin, the more you love me so I hate what that sin does to you, the more I pray and turn to God and seek to become more like Jesus. Pull away, try to teach me ‘boundaries’ and I will turn inward with self-loathing and self-destruction but keep loving me when I am awful and I will turn outward to Jesus in desperation for change. And I’m never going to boil anyone’s bunny rabbit. I have walked away from several people for a time when I just couldn’t get any perspective and my idolatry has been out of control. Walked away, prayed and in time been able to come back and start again on a healthy footing by the grace of God and of those friends. I hope they know who they are and how much I appreciate them.

But this blog is not about coping it’s about healing, so how can I move from fighting to keep my relationships under the Sovereignty of God to freedom to love my friends and enjoy my friendships, especially the ones that give me a deep sense of peace and contentment? I have been thinking about this lately and have come to some discoveries. The first is that the Bible recognises us as physical people and offers a multitudinous array of imagery that involves receiving comfort and safety from God, Father and Son in the form of physical contact. From the image of a father carrying his son through the desert in Deut 1:31 to the picture of a hen gathering up its young under its wings (Matt 23:39). Even, astonishingly, we find the glorious and terrifying Son of Man of John’s vision in Revelation 1 stooping to lay a hand on John’s shoulder as he lies face down in terror before uttering his words of comfort.

But the Bible goes further, far further than I would possibly dare to go. I hesitate to imagine physical contact and intimacy with Jesus for fear that I will pollute him with my sinful thoughts but the Bible pushes right through where I fear to tread in describing the church as Jesus’ bride. His bride who he has cleansed (Jer 33:8), divested of her filthy rags (Zech 3:4) and beautifully clothed, coming down to him in Revelation 21. The Bible says that marriage is only a partial fulfilment of our desire for intimacy, our need to know and be known, to accept and be accepted, to be one flesh, united with another, and that the true fulfilment of that desire, true intimacy in every sense, will only arrive when we are finally united with Christ in the new creation. That intimacy will be so absolute that the partial picture of it in marriage that we have here will cease to be needed or have meaning.

What is more we have already tasted this intimacy. I fall into a trap of thinking that Jesus isn’t here. He’s ‘up there’ in heaven, loving me, yes, interceding for me, yes, but not physically here. And of course I am wrong, Jesus is very much here by his Spirit. Just because you can’t see the Spirit doesn’t mean he has no physical presence, Jesus describes him like the wind, which has a very powerful, palpable effect on the physical world. Of course the Spirit is able to interact physically with the world he helped to create. The idea that Jesus is not physically with me is a massive lie that is concocted somewhere between my low expectations of God and my culture’s cynicism of physical, spiritual manifestations, and like all of Satan’s lies it has robbed me of a precious truth. Christ is here, physically with me and he is not running away from my sin, my dirt, my mess, my need. He’s not frightened by it, he’s not disgusted or repelled by my filthy heart, my filthy life. Not this Jesus, who touched lepers and ate with ‘sinners’ and washed his disciples’ feet. This Jesus says, “I will cleanse you from all your impurities and all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you”, (Ez 36;25b-37a).

Jesus’ Spirit is here and he is within me. And I am in hidden with him in God (Col 3:3). You can’t get more intimate than that. The complete intimacy that I will enjoy with Christ has already begun. Jesus does not keep me at arms’ length, he doesn’t give me space and to him I am never untouchable or too dirty. When I start to panic with a fear of rejection, I have begun to imagine Jesus placing his arm around my shoulders and saying the only message simple and direct enough to get through, “I love you, you’re safe, I’m here”.

Chosen

I won’t be the only one who finds the experience of rejection difficult or perceives it in places where it doesn’t really exist, but I learnt a long time ago that I couldn’t let the feeling of being rejected pass unchallenged. Rejection often feels a lot like being cut with a knife, small ones are like paper cuts, for me there are dozens of tiny ones every day and they build up over the week until I hurt all over and every new one is agony. Bigger rejections feel like someone has stabbed me in the guts. Often the rejection is totally unintentional or even imagined, or a consequence of a seriously unrealistic desire for intimacy and belonging in places or with people where I feel safe.

Whatever the cause I have become adept at applying gospel first aid to feelings of rejection, in the knowledge that if I don’t, sooner or later I will become completely incapacitated by the anger or more usually, the swirling sense of emptiness and pain. Reason and reality don’t make much of an impact on raw emotions, they feel like a rebuke and make me feel helpless. Yes, I know perfectly well that I am not justified in feeling rejected in this situation, that I am probably imagining things, that people have limitations and a hundred other reasons why my feelings are unjustified. Which is why most of my friends will hopefully not even know that I feel them, I do my absolute best to hide how hurt I am most of the time, knowing that it is utterly unfair. But the feelings exist and they exist all the time and knowing they are wrong and unfair and out of proportion doesn’t make them go away. It just makes me feel ashamed of feeling them.

So like I say - gospel first aid. “I have loved you,” says the Lord, “I will never leave you or forsake you”, “you are precious in my sight”. Quick prayer, “Lord Jesus please help me.” Repeat over and over until you calm down and perspective and/or your sense of humour snaps back in. In my experience the emotion of rejection can only be quelled by a stronger emotion of safety and security in Christ.

So that’s all fine, except maybe I want to live in a world where I’m not constantly doing first aid. Maybe I particularly don’t want to live in a world where occasionally a toxic mix of exhaustion and rejection produce hysterical panic or overwhelming anger and consequent stupid and dangerous behaviour because it gets beyond my first aid skills.

One possibility I am exploring this week, suggested by a very helpful friend, is to look at the Bible and spend time investigating what it means to be chosen by God. I know from experience that finding a truth to speak day by day into my heart can bring real change to difficult emotions. I’m hoping that it might be possible to find such a deep and abiding sense of acceptance and belonging in Christ that I am protected from the intensity of my feelings of rejection by people.

I have been looking over all the places where the Bible talks about being chosen and have picked out the following themes and verses to meditate on:

We are chosen to receive

This is the most common reference to being chosen in the Bible. God has chosen us in order to pour out his love and blessings. I have found 30 things that we have been chosen in order to receive, including freedom, deliverance, mercy, victory, purpose, peace, joy, glory and gloriously, the Holy Spirit. Most powerfully for me, we have been chosen to be loved.

Romans 8 is my favourite ‘chosen to receive’ reference, it spells out in detail the extent of the cost and the consequences of God’s choice to love me. Because I am chosen I cannot ever be rejected or condemned or separated from the love of Christ. It is a well of acceptance and love that can never run dry. It has been purchased for me so abundantly and at such a cost that all I ever need bring are my empty hands to receive it.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? ³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? ³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. ³⁴ Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. ³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

 we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. ³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We are chosen to belong

To me, the most precious way we are chosen is to belong to God’s family. We are told throughout the old and new testaments that we are chosen to be children, to be adopted, to be God’s people, to be God’s possession and to be on God’s side. I hunger after secure relationships, to belong, to be safe, to have a place where I will never be turned away. I hunger after relationships in a way that I know in my mind can never be fulfilled by people. But God can give me what I need. He can satisfy that hunger, he alone has the resources and the capacity to provide the love and intimacy that I crave. We are children, chosen to be a treasured possession. I belong to God and to his people. Deuteronomy 14:1-2 declares this very clearly – along with a very specific application!

You are the children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, ² for you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.

We are chosen to become

God chooses us just as we are but he doesn’t choose us to leave us just as we are. We are promised in many places that we are chosen in order to be made more like Jesus, to bear fruit, to be holy, to love. This is a precious truth. I am not stuck in my sin and idolatry, I am free to change, to grow, to flourish. This is how I know that I am not wasting my time trying to learn these truths, change is not just possible, but if I keep walking with Christ it is inevitable.

John 15:16-17

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. ¹⁷ This is my command: Love each other.

Colossians 3:12

¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.

We are chosen to proclaim

Finally we are chosen to proclaim. We receive and belong and become so that we at last are able to give. Give hope, give peace, give forgiveness, give compassion, give truth, give love, give Christ.

1 Peter 2:9-10

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. ¹⁰ Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

I am chosen, before the creation of the world he saw me and knew me and chose me. He said I want you, you are mine, you belong to me. I choose you to love you, to pour out my overflowing blessings upon you, to give you everything you don’t deserve, simply because I want to. I choose you to purify you, to make you whole, to fill you with love and beauty that shines from the inside. And when I am done with you, you will be so loved and so lovely that others will look upon you and praise me.

This is the truth I need to face the manifold and constant rejections of life. The truth that can sing to my heart when my brain has stopped working, when reason is overwhelmed and nothing makes sense any more. This is the truth that we all need. God grant us the power to learn it. 

Welcome to the Borderline

No one wants to admit that they have a personality disorder. When it comes to psychiatric diagnoses that one sits pretty near the bottom of the manure pile of stigma. Somewhere around paranoid schizophrenic and murderous sociopath. The name tells you the problem. Personality Disorder, your personality, the set of attributes that describe you and your relationship to the world, your essential character, is… broken. It doesn’t get much more personal than that.

But when a tsunami of evidence crashes down on you in a short space of time, starting with the gentle hints of a friend working in mental health, travelling via a recommendation from your mental health team to the refer you to the specialist service for personality disorders and culminating with your best friend reading the diagnostic criteria and commenting merely, “Why hasn’t anyone suggested this before?” it becomes hard to remain in denial.

Especially when reading through that same list you can see what she means. In fact, it’s hard to ignore that the Mind website entry reads like it was written directly about you. Someone studied your thoughts and behaviour and has devised this condition called Borderline Personality Disorder just to describe you. All that stuff that you have been hiding too, that you hardly even want to admit to yourself and certainly hope that no one else sees, written out there in black and white, like they had crawled inside your head.

And if you are honest you are maybe a bit relieved. No, not a bit, a lot. Perhaps it is time to admit that the effort you make all the time to manage and monitor and check and discipline your massive, intense and overwhelming emotions is just exhausting. To confess the effort it takes not to burn down your relationships and walk away when they get too close. To accept that you are not perfect and that your periodic lapses into that dark and terrifying place, when a casual or ill-timed comment can lead to a suicide attempt, might be in fact frightening and difficult and confusing for your friends to deal with, particularly when they saw you just fine an hour before and just fine again three hours later.

It’s a relief to start to understand some of the things you have always struggled to fit into the picture before, answering questions you have been struggling even to formulate clearly for years. A relief to know you are not alone. Most of all though it is a relief to see clearly what the problem is and that there is reason to hope. Because every item on that diagnostic list has an answer in Jesus. The problem is finally laid bare and it has a gospel-shaped solution. Of course I don’t mean that understanding itself brings healing or that I expect to wake up tomorrow and have conquered my extreme emotions or the damaging behaviours they cause, but just that I can start to see a way through.

I am free to feel hope because of the work of the gospel already in my life. The gospel that tells me that the stigma of a broken personality was carried by my Lord to the cross and crucified there. The gospel that tells me that we are all broken and that my Lord was broken on the cross so I might be healed. The gospel that tells me that my weakness and inadequacy are universal human realities and what is more acknowledging them is a necessary pre-condition to being truly useful in God’s kingdom purposes. The gospel that tells me that whatever the world may say I am not defined by anything, even my personality, so much as I am defined by the One who spoke light out of darkness and who looks upon me and says, “You are precious in my sight and I love you”, and “my beloved”, and “my child”.

So here it is, in black and white. Nobody wants to admit that they have a personality disorder. But I have a personality disorder. I have decided to write this blog to chronicle my attempts to speak the gospel into the dark places in the hope it might encourage others. I don’t know how well I will succeed, the stats tell me that I have a more than 1 in 10 chance of finishing up committing suicide so it’s not going to be a cake walk. But I have some great support, wise and loving friends and most of all a loving and mighty Saviour on my side. Welcome to the journey.