S2S Sisters: "Bipolar Disorder: A Story of Thorns, Roses, and Redemption" by Sue Kauffman

Lesson Transcript

Our prayer is that you will be filled with the knowledge of His will, strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power. Okay, hello and welcome to Strength to Strength Sisters. My name is Marielle Frost, and I'm from Ohio, and I want to just thank you all for joining us—those that are joining us live, and those that will listen in the future through the recording. We are glad you are here.

And, um, our talk today is "Bipolar Disorder: A Story of Thorns, Roses, and Redemption." Our speaker is Sue Kaufman from Iowa; she's a wife and a mother of 5, and she has, um, experience with bipolar disorder. Her father was diagnosed with bipolar, and also her husband, and so we are just so blessed that she is willing to be here today to share with us, with the encouragement of her husband, to share honestly and openly about their journey. And, yeah, give us her wisdom and experiences.

And although it's a unique situation—probably that many of us won't relate to specifically—so many of us are affected by stressors of many kinds, and so, yeah, we are looking to the Lord to teach us something today. Thank you, Sue, for joining us. While you're going through the talk, if you could just keep yourself muted, that would be great, all of you that are listening in. And after the talk, we will have a time of question and answer. We welcome your comments and your questions for Sue.

And during that time, if you can turn on your video for sure to ask a question, that would be great. Otherwise, you can also share a comment in the comment box. So, let's get started. I would like to pray for you, Sue, and then you can share with us. So let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord, we come to You, Lord, looking to You to give the grace that we need. Father, I pray that You would be with Sue, that You would anoint her lips.

Father, that You would help her to share honestly and openly in a way that will be helpful to many who are tuned in and listening to this. And also in a way that is discreet and reverencing, Lord, help her to walk that fine line. Father, we ask that You would set her heart at ease, and also open our hearts to hear whatever nuggets You want to give us from what she has to say today. We ask, Lord, that You would be here with us. We invite Your presence. In Jesus' name, amen. Okay, go ahead, Sue. Thank you.

I would like to echo what Marielle said, that I do have the full blessing and encouragement for my husband to tell this story. And I also need to give him a lot of credit. We have spent hours talking, the last few months especially. He shared his testimony on Anabaptist perspectives a few months ago, and since then we've talked about the things he said, we've talked about the things that I'm saying, and it's been with his encouragement that I have what I have to say today.

I also would like to say that my dad said once that, you know, if my story could help somebody, then it's okay to tell it. So my dad was a tall man, he had curly black hair, he had a spring in his steps, he had 10 children, and I'm number 4. He took us swimming, he showed us how to swim on our backs, he played softball with us in the backyard, he was strong, he would bat with one arm so that we wouldn't lose the ball.

And he would often load several of us children up in his little pickup, and we'd go with him to work, he might be painting or roofing, cutting trees, mowing lawns, and we would help him paint. We'd carry shingles up to the roof, help him nail them on, then he'd buy us a soft drink and we'd drink it while he visited with the homeowner. We lived on the edge of a small town, one whole city block to ourselves, we would say.

And Dad knew his neighbors, he was friends to all, even the crabby lady that lived across the street. He'd bring home the town drunk for supper, he'd bring home a hitchhiker for Sunday lunch. And my dad had a dramatic conversion in his upper teens. "I heard God say my name," he would say, and my dad never turned back. He was a devout follower of Jesus until the day that he died. But sometime in my life, I—perhaps when I was about 11—I started noticing some things that disturbed me.

And I remember waking up one morning, it was early, and I heard Dad, he was excited, he was pacing, and he was talking on the phone, and he asked the man he was talking to, he said, "Did I wake you up?" And I just cringed, because, you know, of course he woke him up, it's 4:30 in the morning. And I—I just didn't want to get up. I wanted to just sleep forever. I knew that the next few weeks, the next few months, would be very difficult for our family. We called it a nervous spell.

And he'd have several weeks with just boundless energy, he'd train his children, make new rules for us, spend a lot of time admonishing us, and he'd have new ideas. He'd spend hours on the phone with people talking about church. It was like his passions that were good were on overdrive. He also spent money that he didn't have. He—old vehicles were his specialty, and it wasn't nice old vehicles, it was, you know, a lot of junky old vehicles that he would buy.

And once, I remember, we had so many on our property that our friends snuck in at night and they put prices and balloons on the vehicles so that when we woke up we were in a car lot. So that was kind of a fun time, but it wasn't always fun. He seemed to do really well with his younger children, but as we would get older and would question his lack of judgment, things would really morph into chaos. And he'd blame simple mistakes on rebellion, he'd ask us to do things that were unreasonable.

If our work or school schedules would cut into his long family devotionals, he'd be upset. He'd say we're—we're putting money ahead of God. And we especially felt sometimes like we were in a difficult situation because he was our authority, and we were conscientious, we wanted to respect him, but it didn't feel safe, it didn't feel wise. I remember one time a young man came around, I remember him as someone who had some rather odd ideas, and he wanted to date my sister.

And my dad, you know, to him all things were possible, and he was like, "Sure," and my sister was horrified. You know, his sense of judgment just wasn't very keen, and that was one time when my sister put her foot down. I remember a lot of blame happening. Dad would accuse his children of being nervous. It was our problem, it wasn't his. And I remember him telling Mom to take his medication since she was the one with the problem.

And when at last he'd collapse on the couch, his body and mind would be exhausted, and our feelings were relief. We were just, you know. And I don't remember much about him being sad. I remember him sleeping a lot. You know, I have so many good memories of my dad, and I never doubted that he was a good dad. I respected his values. He was—he loved his family, he loved people, he loved Jesus. And yet there were those segments of pain and chaos in our lives.

And this was in the '80s, it was before the age of information overload, and I think some of the pain that we felt was just the shame and the confusion of not really understanding what was going on. We struggled with guilt, you know, there was just so much blaming going on. And one day my mom came across this little article in the paper, and it described a person with manic depression, and the description just—it fit my dad perfectly.

And some—a few years later, she took my dad to the family doctor, and he diagnosed him with manic depressive disorder, and that was later updated to bipolar disorder. And the doctor prescribed some medication, and I remember Dad's life after medication as better. I would look at his highs and lows as much less extreme. I think he and Mom enjoyed a lot of time together. They went on trips together.

There'd still be times when he was talkative or spent money more freely, but in general his emotions and moods seem much more leveled out. My mom has many happy memories the last few years that they were together after he was medicated. They'd take trips together, she'd ride with him to work. My dad passed away from a heart attack at age 63. He was still in bed, praying with my mom before they were to get up for the day, and he told my mom that he loved her, and then he turned over and died.

And those were the last words that she heard him say here on earth. William Faulkner said, "The past is never dead, it's not even past." And I understand that there are many things from my dad's story that shape who I am and how I live life. Sometimes I wish I could sit down with Dad and talk to him about his story and about my story. That's not possible, at least not here, but I do think learning to engage my story is part of my path forward.

When I was about 22 years old, Arlen, a young man in our youth group, went to a Bible school, and while he was there he experienced a psychotic episode. He completely lost touch with reality for a time, for several days. And he was diagnosed with manic depressive disorder, and the diagnosis was later updated as bipolar disorder. And I knew Arlen well. He had—I had gone to school with him, our families were friends.

I remember after that that my sister told me that I shouldn't even think about ever getting married to him, and I assured her that that was not in my plans. So I saw Arlen occasionally over the next 13 years, and I learned to appreciate and respect him, but I was unprepared when he asked me if I'd consider dating him, with thoughts about marriage.

I was living in the Dominican Republic at the time, and I knew that getting married to him would mean totally uprooting my life, moving from the country I had come to love. And being married to someone with bipolar disorder did not feel safe. I spent night after night crying and talking to God about it, and night after night I would feel God's assurance. Every reason that I had to say no was selfishness and self-protection.

So maybe six weeks later, with the full blessing of my family and friends, even my sister who had told me 13 years earlier not to, I started a relationship with him. We started dating. About a year later he asked me to marry him, and I literally felt like I was jumping off a cliff. I felt like I was jumping into something unknown. I had an underlying peace about it. It was something that, you know, I had prayed and prayed. Our courtship was hard, with just a lot of things to work through.

The day before the wedding—well, I did say yes, obviously—but the day before the wedding, when I expected Arlen to be, you know, spending time with me and getting ready for the wedding, he was in an elevated state, and it was probably because of the wedding excitement. And he had cut hay a few days before the wedding, and it was ready to rake and bale the evening before our wedding. And instead of delegating it to someone else, he roped his friends in that had come for the wedding, and they were baling this hay.

And I was sitting there in my house alone, and I'm a bit bewildered, like, boy, what am I getting into? I was vowing to be in this marriage for life. This was not an experiment with an outlet. And I was certain that God was in it, but I still felt like I was jumping into something really, really hard. You may ask why I went through with it, and one of the biggest reasons is trust. I trusted God, and I also trusted Arlen's character.

I had seen humility in his life, I had seen a willingness to listen to other people, and I got married to him the next day. We've now been married for 13 and a half years, and I have no regrets. I enjoy being married to Arlen. Our marriage story has not been dramatic, but it is possibly the absence of drama that helps define our story. We're ordinary people with a rather ordinary marriage.

Sometimes people will tell me, "Wow, it must be really hard to be married to someone with mental challenges," and I have to stop and think a little bit, because, you know, the last 13 and a half years have not been dark. We have had challenges. But I sincerely enjoy being married to Arlen. It's been a good thing in my life. I look at my marriage as a gift from God, a treasure from God. So there have been some challenges, and I would like to go into some of them.

Some of the challenges come from Arlen and his mental health challenges, and there are other challenges that I brought into the marriage. I think when I was growing up I tended to blame Dad for everything that went wrong in our family, or most things that went wrong. And after he died, our family still wasn't perfect. And, you know, Dad's—some of Dad's struggles were the most visible, but they weren't the only struggles. We all come as we are. And in our marriage, we're two people.

We've both brought strengths, we've both brought weaknesses. And, yeah, Arlen is not the only one with challenges. But because this is a topic about the challenges of bipolar, I will be addressing some of those. Just describing Arlen a little bit: he's a very kind and thoughtful husband. He's an extrovert. He loves people. He especially enjoys helping people solve problems. It's just a good day for him if he can fix somebody's tire or, you know, help somebody.

His elevated states, to me, do not seem as high, and his lows do not seem as low as those that my dad had. He does deal with a lot of brain fog and tiredness. He ponders things deeply, and he can be prone to despair and tiredness, lack of motivation. He has never had another psychotic episode since the one 29 years ago, and we don't know what the future holds. It's not something we fear. We have found God to be very present, especially in the hard times.

I'd like to describe some of the challenges related to bipolar, but there are three things that I would like to say. The first thing is that I don't look at Arlen's mental health challenges as an enemy. I believe they come from a broken world. And yes, we do anticipate the day when he'll have a new body, a resurrected body, and a new brain. And yes, I do feel bad for him that he has so much pain and trouble from a brain that doesn't always work very well.

But even with that, I don't look at his challenges as an enemy, because God has used them so much to make some very beautiful things. I think Arlen has a compassion, just a depth, that come from depending on God for his day-to-day strength. He's got a deep sensitivity. And his bipolar has softened edges. It's just given him a dependence on God. So even though it's been painful, there are some beautiful things that would not be there in the same way as without the challenges. So I don't look at that as an enemy.

Another thing I want to say is that the avoidance of pain is not a good lifetime goal. We're children of a suffering Savior, and he's called us to embrace suffering. I'm not promoting self-harm or bad decisions that put us into unneedful suffering, but I enter the marriage being fully aware that opening my hand to this marriage would include some pain. And it has, but certainly not all pain. It's brought an abundance of blessings and goodness as well.

The very things that Satan intends to use to destroy us can be used by God to strengthen and to beautify, and that has happened in our lives. And the third thing I'd like to say is that I'm not my husband's Savior. There are things that I have done and will do to make his life better, but I don't feel the calling to fix Arlen, nor to take responsibility for his mental illness. Sometimes when we have this huge problem in our lives, like mental illness, we just—we can become fixated on it.

Like, we just want this to go away, and we can become almost desperate to make it go away. And we might even know of some things that we think would—might help to make it go away. You know, we might read about a supplement or hear that running two miles a day is really good for the brain, or a new medication, or—and we might even be right, and our husband may or may not be on board with us. The Apostle Paul talks about this thorn that he had in his flesh, and he wanted it to go away.

And I don't know not to say something that's not in Scripture, but maybe he thought God could use him better without it. And God chose to use Paul with his thorn in the flesh. God had chosen not to make it go away. And so I sometimes think that my question needs to change from, "What can I do to make this go away?" to, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" And I've found God's answers to be quieter and slower than my solutions. God—maybe God wants me to just leave the problems with him.

Maybe I think that my husband should go outside and take a walk to make him feel better, but maybe God wants me to go on a walk and worship him. Maybe he wants me to go visit a neighbor, or maybe he wants me to just accept my husband the way that he is, just to give him a hug and say, "You know, I like you." So I think it's pretty big to realize that we don't have to wait for our problems to go away, or look at our mental health challenges as something that has to go away before we can live a good life.

Now, as my brother often says, I don't have time to say all the things that I don't mean by that. I definitely think there is a time to call 911. I think there's a time to do what we can to help. But I think there are many times when it's time to let it go, give it to God, and just enjoy our husbands. Okay, so I want to go into just describing a few of our challenges, and also touch on some choices we've made. When my dad was having—or in an elevated state—we would live in a high state of chaos.

We'd go from one crisis to another. But my dad was a relational man, and he would try to reach out to me when he was feeling better. And I had built some pretty good walls of self-protection. And I was conscientious. I wanted to be respectful to him, but I wasn't ready to be close. And that's something I lament. I wish that I could have let those walls down and just enjoyed my dad, allowed myself to be vulnerable. So staying connected has been a lifeline in our marriage.

And when Arlen is in an elevated state, staying connected can be more challenging. He's less predictable. At times I'm unsure if his latest idea is genius or insanity, and there's just a hairline difference sometimes between the two. But at those times, what we both need is connection. He needs it just to stabilize him, but I need it to be at rest. We need connection that's constant. It's non-dramatic. It's not anxious. It's not avoidant.

I need to know that he feels safe to come and talk to me about things, and that he doesn't have to escape me to talk to people that get it. It makes me much more peaceful to just be connected. So that's something that we have made important in our lives. And when he's in a lower state, he also needs us to be friends. He needs me to believe that he's valuable, that he has something to offer. And we don't have to wait until we have our act together. We don't wait until things are tidy to connect.

As I said, Arlen put his disorder on the table before we got married, and it's always been there. I never have felt blamed for his problems. I didn't have the years of confusion with him or feeling like I was the cause. It's always been there. Another challenge is that it's no secret in our marriage who's the better decision-maker. I'm spontaneous, and Arlen, he thinks things through. He researches. He thinks through before jumping into something.

But once in a while, he will get to where I suddenly feel like maybe my sense of judgment is higher than his. I remember one time he came back from a garage sale, and he had bought three old gas grilles. And I remember looking at it and thinking, "Three old gas grilles." Now, he's an adult, and I don't micromanage what he buys at garage sales. But—and the grills never became a painful issue—I don't even remember what happened to them.

He probably eventually loaded a couple up and got some money out of them at recycling. I don't know. Now, if the stakes are higher and he's talking about a life-changing decision, then I'm going to be cautious, and we're going to take time to listen to each other and to take time to make a decision. There are some things I've had to give up because of his depression. I lived in the tropics for 11 years before we got married, and I love the tropics, and I left part of my heart there.

But for some reason or another, his brain fog flares up when we go to the tropics. And so, you know, we're—it's bad enough that it would take a miracle to ever move there with our family. We've found Arlen's diet to make a significant difference on how Arlen feels. And since I'm the primary cook, that's been a journey for me, just to learn how to cook. And yeah, it's changing my life. We eat mostly savory. We try to avoid sugar as much as we can, other inflammatory foods.

We try to eat mostly homemade foods and some brain-friendly foods like beans and eggs and vegetables and fish. Another challenge is paying attention to routines. We don't do too many crazy things that take away from a good night of rest, and I struggled with that after we got married. It didn't really seem like much fun to always go home and go to bed. I would have liked to stay up and, you know, hang out and have a good time for a while.

And I started to notice, though, that, you know, when we would stay up late and we'd get to bed late, the stakes were higher for him. I might feel rough the next day, but it's okay, and he might just feel despair when he's feeling rough. And so learning to stick with routines. The other routine is getting up in the morning. If Arlen doesn't have to think why he needs to get up or what time or what he'll do that day, it's easier for him. And I lived as a single for a long time before we got married.

And, you know, on a Saturday, I like to just get up a little later and chill and have a more relaxed schedule. But Arlen doesn't do very well on that. So I had to give that part of my life up. And even on Saturdays, we get up in good time and keep our routines. That's been good for our lives. Rushing thoughts can be a challenge. He might be in Sunday school or in charge of a topic, and depending on the state he's in, he just has a lot to say. And what he says is good. It's well thought through. It's valuable.

But after a while, people might be not thinking about what he's saying, and there's just too many thoughts, and they're going too long, and I'm starting to squirm. Arlen is not a defensive person. He is open and honest about it, and he doesn't want to talk too much, and he will be very open. And that has made it easier to talk about with each other, with other people, with our children.

So, you know, on the way home from church, he might say, "Oh, I didn't want to talk so long in children's class or Sunday school class, but I just had so many thoughts, and yeah, I feel kind of bad." So people ask me what parenting is like, and in my experience, Arlen is a kind and he's a wise dad to his children. I lean on him a lot for parenting. Our oldest child at home is 12, and maybe a little younger than we were when we started challenging our dad a lot. So I don't know what our future holds.

We have really tried to keep communication open. We don't want this big thing, this elephant in the room, if you can say it like that, that we can't talk about. I think that there are many things that we can go through in life if somebody will walk through with us. My dad would have had many more elevated states than Arlen would, and those invariably were the hardest times. So I think the dynamics in our family are different. But I do think that, you know, God has put all children into imperfect parents.

We're all imperfect, and all children need to learn sometimes to forgive their parents. And so I believe that, and I also believe that God can redeem hard things in our children's lives. I don't want to say that gliddly because—but I do believe that with all my heart. He has been so faithful to me and to my family members, and I believe that God can even use hard things in my children's lives.

Another thing that I've felt challenging about Arlen's mental challenges, or specifically his bipolars, the shifts, you know, is my husband thoughtful and quiet, or is he outgoing and energetic? Is he frugal, or does he enjoy shopping? The answer is yes. There are times when he shifts from one state to another, and, you know, you have your patterns and your ways of relating, and they get disrupted. And it takes me a bit longer to catch up with him sometimes. I just have to give myself time to shift as well.

Another challenge—and this is especially when Arlen is in a more elevated state—but it's knowing when to enjoy the ride and when to pull back to a safer reality. When Arlen's feeling energetic, all things seem possible to him. And because of his personality and giftings, he gets asked to do a lot of things. This being on this board, that speaking engagement, teaching here, serving there, and shooting down every idea just because he's in a higher state doesn't feel wise.

I also know from past experience that if he signs up for too many things when he crashes, that can be overwhelming. And so, on the other hand, using his gifts has been a great blessing to him and to other people. It can almost make his life worth living if he has a way to share his gifts. So, you know, most of his ideas and ventures have turned out very well.

Sometimes I'll be saying, "You know, Arlen, which part of the pie are you going to give up to take this new venture?" My dad would spend a lot of money when he was experiencing a higher elevated state, and we got to where we were pretty jumpy about anything he'd buy. And as he got older, he started buying houses for rental properties the last several years of his life. And once he said, "You know, you all thought I was crazy, but I was just taking care of Mom." And those houses have been a great blessing to Mom.

She has been a widow for 23 years. She's had bad health for the last 18 years, and those houses have supported her. They've given her an income. So I think it's not always wise just because somebody—you're not sure about their judgment—to shoot everything down that they're coming up with. Sometimes it's actually a good idea. To wrap things up, I want to quote Henry David Thoreau. He said, "Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it will elude.

But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder." I might rephrase that a bit, but there's a sense where it describes my story. We die to ourselves. We embrace even pain and suffering. We pursue something that's good and true, and we open our lives to the possibility of hard things. And intertwined with the hard is a richness and a joy. You know, God has been so faithful to us in our lives and in our marriage. We've failed, and we've messed up. We've got up.

We've tried again. And I have, like the Apostle Paul says, the confidence that he that has begun a good work in us will carry it on to the completion until the day of Jesus Christ. And that's in Philippians 1:6. Thank you, Sue. That was a real blessing. Thank you for sharing so many details, so much of your story that way. Well, we'd like to open it up for questions and answers, for comments.

We'd love to hear from anyone else listening right now who may have experience with mental health, and people who maybe have specific questions to ask Sue. If you feel comfortable and you can turn on your video, that would be great. You can ask the question directly to Sue. If not, you can type your question into the comments, and it will be read to Sue. One thing that stood out to me, Sue, is that you mentioned the blessing that you were never blamed for your husband's mental health.

Would you have any wisdom to share with a wife who is finding that she is blamed? Because I know I've heard that, that sometimes church or family or the husband himself will say, "It's all your fault." Maybe you mentioned that in regards to, you know, it was somebody else who said something about, you know, "It's the wife that's the problem." Yeah. Do you have any wisdom for that, or did you ever come up against that? Yes. I have never felt blamed by my husband. You know, it was on the table before we got married.

As a child, as a youth, I felt blamed and probably felt like I was to blame. I can't speak from voice of experience, but I do think that sometimes finding a friend that you can trust can help with your perspective and being vulnerable, saying, "This is how I feel. I know I didn't do everything right." Sometimes I know growing up, there were some people that reached out to me and maybe had an outside perspective that was very comforting.

And, you know, sometimes we can't do it alone, but we can do it with walking with somebody. And there have been times, you know, of course I haven't done everything perfectly in my marriage, and there have been things that I've done to trigger responses. So, you know, having a humble repentant spirit is also good. But there is a thing about not absorbing what your husband is going through. It is what it is, and accepting him for who he is, learning to enjoy him.

Yeah, maybe somebody else has more experience on that than I do. Thank you for that. There is a question in the comments here. It says, "Thank you so much, Mrs. Kaufman. I wonder if your husband regretted any decisions he made in his highs, in his elevated state." Oh, I didn't expect that question. Let me think a little bit. I'm sure I can remember some times when, because he was impulsive, he might have said some things that were hard, difficult for a neighbor. Maybe a broken relationship happened.

So there's that. I remember, you know, he, of course, doesn't do everything perfectly. One story that comes to my mind right now, and my husband actually loves to tell this story, so I guess this is my turn to tell it. But he can be kind of impulsive, especially if he's excited. And one time he brought home a homeless lady, and to his credit, he thought it was a man when he invited the hitchhiker into his vehicle, and it was a lady. And it came at a time when I had a one-year-old and I had twins that were babies.

So I had three babies. And he brought her home, and it was great. And, you know, we gave her a shower or access to the bathroom. She took a shower, and we fixed supper for her. And she went out, and I don't even know what she smoked, but it was obviously something that, you know, weed or something. And she came in, and she's not in very good touch with reality. And she starts talking about how she has a ministry with rescuing children.

And I'm getting a little nervous because we have three babies, and I can't hold them all at the same time. And she's definitely not in a good state. And, you know, here she is. She's going to spend the night. And then Arlen said, he said, "So in the morning, I need to go to work early, and you can just, when she gets up, you take her to the bus station." And I said, and he loves to tell this story, but I said, "Arlen, you brought her.

You take her." And I think I had visions of, you know, her thinking that she's rescuing my children and taking off with them and just causing a lot of drama. Anyway, he did. He waited to leave until she was up, and he found a bus station. She was a little confused, but she thought her daughter lived somewhere, and I think they got it figured out. But anyway, it ended well that time. I think the question is probably about something more serious than that.

I think with Dad, there would have been many things that he would have regretted. And it seemed like when he came down, when he crashed, it was depressive to him to have all these bills that he couldn't pay. He would often have to sell a bunch of cars that he had bought, or, you know, it was hard. And so, you know, I think it was there were many, many times. Yeah. Does that answer your question? Do you have a further question on that? I think that answered the question.

It must be your husband who said, "Yes, I do regret some things," with a smiley face here in the comments. There is another question here. It says, "Thank you for sharing, Sue. We have mental health on my mom's side of the family, and we're very much familiar with it. I was wondering if you have ever experienced a violent behavior from someone dealing with mental health." That is a very good question, and my answer is no. My dad never was violent, and my husband is not violent. So my question is no.

And my heart and my prayers go to people who have that experience. Yes. And sometimes when you are facing violence, yeah, bringing it out into the light is definitely the best bet. Finding someone safe that you can talk to, because being a good wife is not always suffering in a hidden, silent way, but for the sake even of the soul of the person involved in the violence, to bring it to the open is sometimes best. Amen. There's another question. Sorry. I just said amen to that.

I definitely feel like there's a time to call 911 to talk to people. That should not be hidden. Yes. Here's another question, comment. "Thanks for sharing. If I understood you right, you said that we don't need—excuse me—to change our husband, but it changes ourselves. I really appreciate that." Okay. My question to you is, on this mental disorder, in particular bipolar, do you see any connection with the spiritual realm or, like, even personal spiritual growth or, like, where he was with God in his highs and lows?

Is that brought on those highs and lows? I have never experienced bipolar, more into, like, deep depression and that kind of thing. And I have sometimes struggled how to handle that when people point fingers and say, "You are not a Christian if you're that way." So I would like to hear a bit what you have to say on that. Yes. That is a very good question.

My husband and I look at it as—and he probably gives a really good answer on his episode on Anabaptist perspectives—but we feel like we are spiritual and emotional and physical beings. And all of those are so intertwined that it's how can we separate them? So has he experienced healing from repentance? Yes. Does he have something chemically wrong with his brain? Yes. Do experiences affect his brain? Yes. I think that we find it maybe easier to see when it's something like heart disease.

So somebody with heart disease, maybe they're worse because of some very difficult things in their lives, some stressors. Maybe it's anger and bitterness. Maybe it's we don't just blame them. We don't look at them and say, "Oh, they must be bitter." That could contribute. And, you know, repenting would be a good thing. I don't know how to separate our lives. I think that our bodies and our souls and our emotions are so connected. And I don't point fingers at somebody because they have depression.

I think that we don't when, you know, somebody has heart disease, although, you know, we're connected. Somebody else could probably answer that much better than I could. And I would encourage you to listen to my husband's episode. He does talk about some of those things. There are many physical things that we can do. I encouraged my husband to get blood work done, like extensive blood work, and that was helpful. He feels better when he eats better. I mentioned that.

He feels better when he gets exercise, when he gets sunshine, when he is with other people. So those are all physical things. God has given us a body, and I don't think we should just put all the blame on spiritual. If there's something to repent from, absolutely. We open that part of our lives to God as well. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's a very balanced approach.

It makes me think of some controversy and discussion about if there's any value in labels in all these many letters we sometimes use to diagnose people. Have you found that there's some benefit in naming it so that you know what you're talking about, even between you and your husband, knowing that he has bipolar disorder? Does that help, or does it hinder having a diagnosis? That's a good question. I don't know if I have a firm answer on that.

I think as a child or as a youth, when my dad got a diagnosis, it was freeing to us because it started making sense. For my husband, it has taken a lot of confusion away. And yet, you know, labels are just labels. He doesn't fit neatly into every box of bipolar disorder. And so, you know, sometimes we end up just calling it mental health challenges. Yeah, I don't have a strong answer on that.

I think there is some value in, or it could be freeing to have a diagnosis, but I don't think it's all important, like the only important thing. Thank you. Here's another question from the comments. "Thank you for sharing and being vulnerable about mental health journey. Does bipolar disorder come with manipulative tendencies? If so, how would you go about that if it's family? God bless." I don't feel manipulated.

I think it can tend to, but I don't I think it's something that people with bipolar can tend to do, but I don't think that it has to be that way. It's not something I experience. So I'm not a good one for that either, for the question. I'm sure there are people that could understand the question in a real way. Go ahead. Yeah. And I feel like we recognize that you're just sharing from your own experience, and you're certainly not a doctor or an expert on mental health.

But yeah, thank you for sharing from your experience. This, too, maybe would be a little out of your league, but we'll open it for your input. What causes bipolar disorder is another question in the comments here. Yes. I am not a medical professional. I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I think there's so much we don't know about it. My husband, to get medication, and he has been on medication some of the time, not all the time. He doesn't feel well with medication all the time.

But when he's on lithium, he has to go in to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist periodically, and he needs to get blood work done. And he asked that question one time to the professional, and she said, "You know, there's so much we don't know about bipolar disorder." She said, "It's not a popular field of study, and there are things we know about it, but it hasn't got the funding and the attention. It's not really a popular thing.

People spend millions or maybe billions of dollars on cancer or breast cancer or, you know, other things, but there has not been that much research on mental health. A lot of it is guesswork." And I say that carefully because I think that there are people that have studied and they know a lot about it. I don't think I can answer that question very well. I think that the popular belief right now would be that it comes from an imbalance, a chemical imbalance to the brain.

And we have found some supplements to be helpful. We've never found the silver bullet, but there are obviously some physical things that do make a difference with bipolar disorder. Here's another question. "What if your husband does not want to recognize the problems he's dealing with?

How much should a wife do to help him move toward improvement, especially when it negatively impacts her and the children's quality of life?" You know, I will bring things up, and my husband is pretty self-motivated to try different things. But I really feel like connection and acceptance trumps diet. It trumps almost anything else that you can do. And there are helpful things you can do. I read a book about med-free bipolar, and it had a lot of ideas about things you can do.

But I believe with all my heart that connection trumps all of that. So if my thinking that my husband should do this and this and this, and I am feeling upset with him because he's not, I think that that's going to be harder on his mood than anything else he can do. I think walking with him, being a friend to him, is going to trump anything else. That's really good, Sue. And I think it bears repeating one thing that you mentioned during your talk about connection and relationship.

You said, you know, "Allow vulnerability. Let the walls down. Enjoy the relationship because"—and I thought this was really key—"he needs that relationship and connection in order to stabilize him, and you need that relationship and connection in order to enter into rest." And that's such wisdom. Just a really good teaching there. Yeah. There's a comment here. It says, "Thank you for your talk.

As someone with relatives who have struggled in life with bipolar and other mental disorders, I enjoyed hearing your experience, Sue. I think you have a beautiful way of acknowledging and accepting it." And then someone says, "Have there been moments where you felt God gave you peace when you didn't understand what was happening? Was there a specific prayer or Bible verse that carried you through?" Definitely. There have been many times of uncertainty.

I have the verse on my wall that one of my really good friends gave to me at my wedding. "Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed," says the Lord, "who has compassion on you." That's found in Isaiah. Here's another thought.

"I would add that if a wife is in a situation where there is danger or chronic instability, I would hope that the church or trusted friends could help provide some support and advice for specific situations." Maybe you could speak to that a little bit, just the role that your local church and community has played in this journey. Yes. That comment is absolutely true.

There are times, and I've told my story, I have no doubt that some of you are thinking, "Wow, well, she doesn't have it very bad." I acknowledge that God my husband is a good husband. I will say that. But yeah, our church, I have found our church to be very supportive. And they love Arlen, and they love me, and that has been good.

I would hope if and I don't have any reason to disbelieve that if Arlen would lose touch with reality, if he would have another psychotic episode and our family would become chaotic, and I really think that the church should and would get professional help, rescue us, if you will. I don't anticipate that to happen, but there is a time for that. There's a time to say, "The wife needs support. The children need support." Okay.

Well, I think we'll bring this time to a close then and go ahead and talk about next month's talk. Next month, we have "The Power of Gratitude," and that will be a talk given by Janet Martin. And the talk description is, "What is gratitude? Is it something we perfunctorily say when someone does us a favor? Is it listing our blessings when Thanksgiving comes around? Is there a possibility that gratitude is much deeper? Could it affect our spirits, our relationships, and the trajectory of our lives?

Join us as we look at this sometimes overlooked attribute." Okay. Well, we'll have end now with Sue praying for us. And we thank you all for joining us. Thank you for your contributions, each one. And we invite you and welcome you to join us next month for Janet Martin's talk on gratitude. All right, Sue, if you would like to just close us in prayer, that would be very nice. Yes. Heavenly Father, we are very, very thankful that you redeem even hard things in our lives. We thank you for making beauty out of ashes.

Father, today we close with just a prayer. I pray for each person that's listening. Father, you know every situation, every person, and you love each person. We pray that where there is pain, where there is maybe desperation, that you would bring peace, that you would bring comfort, that you would bring strength. And Father, we pray for the marriages of each person that is married here, that you would help us to love our husbands well, to be encouragers.

We pray for the other people in our lives, too, that we could love, that we could be your hands, that we could be your feet to those that we meet, and we ask for your grace in our lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you all. God bless. Walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing him, being fruitful in every good work.