“After you have suffered a little while,” the Scriptures promise us, “the God of all grace . . . will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.” Literally, the promise is that the Lord will mend our broken bones. He will put us back together again.
In our world there are many forms of human brokenness.
Even a short list would include bankruptcies, divorces, imprisonments, lost health, and terminal illnesses. Blindness, lost hearing, and physical handicaps of all sorts would surely belong on the inventory. I would include on the list anything that can break our hearts and crush our spirits. At the top of my list, though, leading my catalog of human brokenness, I would place severe mental illness.
Go with me for a moment into the world of insanity. Feel with me its hurt and horror.
My visit to Unit B that day made my skin crawl.
As I drove out the gates of the state mental hospital and merged with the work hour traffic headed back into town, my mind was a muddle. My adrenalin was still pumping. Conflicting feelings of fear and sympathy and excitement and relief overloaded my circuits and blocked any clear analysis of the experience I had just completed.
“I would like to visit with Elsie Jackson,” I had told the guard at the hospital gate, identifying myself as a local minister.
He ran his forefinger down the roster of patients. “You’ll find her in Unit B,” he said as he handed me a visitor’s pass to display on my car’s windshield. “Have you visited there before?” he asked.
No, I had not visited Unit B ever in my life. So the little man gave me careful instructions to guide me through the unfamiliar maze of narrow streets on the state hospital grounds.
“The door to Unit B will be locked,” he told me. “Press the buzzer and someone will let you in.” The Road To Unit B
As I slowly made my way westward between the rambling assortment of shabby stucco buildings, I wondered what I was about to get into. At church the Sunday before, Elsie’s mother and brother had asked me if I would be willing to visit her. Having just moved to town, with less than six weeks of that ministry under my belt, I had no idea who Elsie was. No details about her sickness. No knowledge of the years of anguish she and her family had been through.
“Elsie’s been at the State Hospital for about six months this time,” they told me. “She doesn’t get much company. They only let the family visit on Saturday afternoons, and we can’t always make it then. They stopped letting her attend the chapel services at the hospital. Your visits would mean a lot to her.” I agreed to drop in on Elsie.
Few things in our society have changed as much in the past four decades as the way we go about caring for those who are mentally ill.
The hospital where Elsie resided was perched on the brink of monumental changes. They were just about to shift from treatment modes adopted in places like Bedlam in the 1800’s to more enlightened therapies of the modern age.
But, when I came to visit that day, they had not made those changes yet. Most of the buildings were ancient. Beyond hope of adequate repair. If you were time-warped back to that hospital campus on that day, you would probably think you had splashed down in some third world country. An inferior one, at that. As I wound my way toward Unit B, I had no idea what awaited me there.
Out on the grassy areas along the road several dozen patients were enjoying the sunshine and the first hints of fall weather. At first you might have mistaken it for a city park. At least until one of the more disturbed patients turned and leered at you as you drove by.
It did not take long for me to see that these folks roaming the grounds inside the high wrought-iron fences were not your everyday normal neighbors. They were very sick people who would not fare well on the other side of those fences. I suppose some of them resented the fences and wished they weren’t there. But for most of these folks the impenetrable barriers were a welcome guarantee of security. Like babies in a playpen, the patients inside these fences were protected from outside dangers they could not cope with and from inner impulses they could not control. One middle-aged couple, both of them seriously retarded, sat smooching on a park bench in front of God and everybody. They were in love, and didn’t care who knew it.
After a wrong turn or two, I found Unit B. In the months that followed I would learn that it was commonly referred to by the staff and patients alike as “the lock-up ward.” Unit B housed the patients who were dangerous to themselves and to others. Elsie Jackson was a patient in Unit B.
Meeting Elsie
As I had been instructed, I pressed the button beside the door and heard a raspy buzzer resonating somewhere deep in the bowels of that awful place. Presently an orderly in a white uniform appeared, read my pass for the longest time, and then let me enter. As soon as I stepped inside, the orderly turned his keys in three locks on the door. I was now locked inside with whatever craziness infested this place. Which turned out to be more than I ever could have imagined.
“Wait here,” the orderly instructed me. “I’ll go find Elsie for you.”
So I waited, in a tiny foyer that contained a miniature sofa and a dilapidated stuffed chair. From where I sat I could see into the semi-darkness of a large commons area. It was an empty room perhaps 35 feet wide and 60 feet long, without a stick of furniture in it. Around its perimeter people were shuffling along. Or standing as if ready to walk. Several stood like frozen statues, textbook cases of catatonic paralysis. Many of the wretched band were in varied stages of undress, some totally nude. Hospital personnel long ago had accepted the fact that nobody could keep clothes on them. One naked old lady, severely stooped by age or maybe by injury, trudged non-stop around the edge of the room. During my visit she crossed my line of vision five or six times. From farther back in the unknown recesses of Unit B came occasional shrieks and moans. Unearthly sounds from pitiful creatures who were restrained for their own protection. Here I was in an almost medieval insane asylum, before the advent of most psycho-therapeutic drugs, in a time when chains and locks and bars were still the only way to control the uncontrollable. I felt as if I had stumbled into some hideous anteroom in Dante’s hell.
“Hi!” a mannish broad-bodied woman with a wider-than-normal smile breezily greeted me. It was Elsie. I was glad to see that she was one of the patients who kept their clothes on. In fact, she was rather neatly dressed. In a clean starched white pinafore crisscrossed with row upon row of tiny blue flowers. Her slightly graying hair was braided tightly atop her head. Two or three missing front teeth broadened her unnatural grin.
Elsie sat in the tattered old chair, fidgeting while I introduced myself. Instantly she accepted me into her weird world like a long-lost friend. And we chit-chatted for quite awhile about the few things we knew we had in common. Her mother. Yes, I knew her mother. Yes, Mom was just fine when I saw her Sunday. And, yes Elsie’s brother had finished patching Mom’s roof that leaked the last time it rained. No, I had never met Elsie’s kids. How many did she have? Three. Where were they? Off in another state with their father. But they would come to see her when school was out. She was sure of that.
Most of the conversation was lucid. At least her part was. When we touched on certain subjects, though, Elsie would get suddenly agitated. She would begin to stutter, or fall silent. Then, as if someone inside her had flipped a switch, she would flash that exaggerated, toothy grin and take off on a totally different subject. Her trolley swapped tracks quite often, with ease. Part of the time I’m not sure it was on a track.
I was not unhappy when the orderly with the keys to that kingdom reappeared. It gave me a cue to say goodbye. Elsie cheerily thanked me for coming and asked me if I would come back tomorrow. Well, not tomorrow. But I would come back, I promised.
And I did. Unit B became a regular stop on my weekly pastoral rounds. And Elsie became my friend.
“It took twelve men to put me to bed last night,” Elsie giggled one afternoon, with a crazy glint dancing in her eyes. She was wilder that day than I had seen her before.
“Twelve men!?” I exclaimed.
“That’s right,” she blustered. And then with a maniacal laugh she proudly explained, “I set fire to the trash can while I was smoking, and it took twelve of them to put out the fire and get me into the straightjacket and tie me onto the bed.” She seemed downright pleased with herself.
By now I had heard Elsie’s mother’s tale about the previous summer when the hospital had sent Elsie home on leave. At first Elsie had been fine. A bit at loose ends. Nervous. And easily angered. But for the most part Elsie had controlled herself. Until the third week when Elsie’s mother spotted the tell-tale signs of Elsie’s insanity returning. “I hid the butcher knife that afternoon,” she told me, “and I stayed awake all night long for fear that Elsie would go berserk and kill us all.” The next day they had taken Elsie back to the hospital.
I thought of this as Elsie boasted of her superhuman strength. I thought, too, of the wild man in Mark’s Gospel, who broke chains when the neighbors tried to restrain him. I wondered what I would do if Elsie came unhinged and turned that muscle loose on me. Sadly I wondered if Elsie had days when she was not proud of her brawn. Days when she was terrified of her own destructive potential. Days when she was ashamed to be a psychotic threat to the people who loved her.
Elsie was elated when they let her out of Unit B. I’ll never forget her excitement. In girlish patter, and with smiles no longer so overdone, she announced to me one day that our next visit would be in an adjacent dorm. Or, if we wanted to, we could go outside and visit on the bench under the trees, because she wouldn’t be locked up anymore. She was ecstatic. This new freedom put her one step closer to going home to her mother’s. One step nearer to being able to care for her own children. This was my first solid clue that Elsie was getting better. She had stopped bragging about her crazy behavior and began to dream out loud about being sane and whole again.
No Right Answers
That day when I first met Elsie Jackson was over thirty years ago. Improvements in health care for the mentally ill have come light-years since then. Dingy, smelly, inhuman asylums have been replaced in civilized countries by modern, clean, comfortable facilities. New behavior-modifying drugs help to control behavior and make normal life possible for some who would have been permanently institutionalized only a few decades ago. In recent months controlled studies of treatment with a new drug called Clozaril have given schizophrenic patients what some of them call “miraculous” release from the symptoms of their illness.
Despite these victories, however, mental illness remains one of the most tragic forms of human brokenness. Loved ones of those with serious mental problems face struggles the rest of us cannot imagine. And the mentally ill themselves contend constantly with handicaps and frustrations beyond our comprehension.
Last week I visited with a mother whose 35-year-old daughter requires almost constant care because of recurring bouts of schizophrenia. The fact that this mother is wealthy and socially prominent does not exempt her from the tears and turbulence that go with this disease. Lovingly she does the best she can to bring some order into the life of her daughter’s child. But her heart aches as she sees her grandchild buffeted and bruised by the unpredictable behavior of a mentally ill mother. “Every day is a new challenge,” this good lady told me, trying to smile. Then as a tear slipped down her cheek, she confessed, “For what we’re dealing with, there are no right answers.” I agreed.
My own brilliant sister graduated from a major university with a 4-point grade average. She has an I.Q. over 140. She has received the highest possible evaluations on every job she has ever held. But time and again through the years she has lost good jobs and today she is unemployed, because mental illness continues to rear its head.
I visited last month with the Christian mother of a young man who borrowed a preacher’s rifle one morning and, sniping from atop a downtown motel, shot seven strangers to death before police subdued him. She will never understand what went haywire in her baby’s brain to make him do that. Last year her husband went to an early grave grieving over the mental illness of their child, who will likely spend the rest of his days behind bars.
Good News for the Afflicted
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,” Jesus himself proclaimed, “because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted.” The Psalmist said, “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” Without such promises to bolster our spirits, unsolvable sorrows such as mental illness would be impossible to bear.
“Bear one another’s burdens,” we are commanded as followers of Christ. When we do so, the Scriptures assure us, we “fulfill the law of Christ.” Jesus bids us to “weep with those who weep.” And we must obey, for it will be hard for our loved ones to make it through the dark days of mental illness even with our support and our understanding and our love.
Elsie Jackson’s family handled her problems wisely. Resisting the natural impulse to suffer silently because of embarrassment and needless shame, they shared their fears and concerns with Christians who loved them. At first I think they were a bit surprised to see that their openness about Elsie’s troubles caused their friends to love them more, not less. In the company of caring believers they found help and healing for their hurting hearts.
Thus, in a situation that seemed so bleak, Elsie’s family discovered through personal experience that Peter knew what he was taking about. “After you have suffered a little while,” Peter promised, “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you.” He’ll put us back together again.