Four Miracles!

Pregnancy and bipolar disorder can be like gasoline and matches. My wife's post-partums became increasingly difficult with David (b. Jul 1989), Alyssa (b. Feb 1994), Jonathan (b. Jul 1996), and Jordan (b Jul 1999). Jonathan's post-partum was the worst because it was accompanied by prolonged psychosis. It was the “perfect storm” Our home remained full of strife, contention, and physical violence for two years! A neighbor asked me at church, “What’s going on in your home? The Lord woke me up at 3 AM several months ago and told me,

“You need to pray for the Reeds. Terrible things are going on in their home!”

At the time I knew nothing about mental illness or spiritual warfare. All I knew was that I dreaded coming home from work each evening! My children felt it too. Sometimes they would say that the worst part of their day was "Mom." Getting through an evening with my spouse was often more than I could manage. On a bad day I would set the timer on my watch to ring every hour or every 30 minutes. That was as long as I could go without a "safety break," when I would go outside the house and spend a few quiet moments alone to "decompress." (When you are the only glue holding your family together, you can't allow yourself to become "unglued!") I was emotionally exhausted! Divorce was not an option for me. But neither was living with a madwoman.

Prolonged stress can lead a person to make bad decisions. So, one night after yet another bipolar rage (at that time I didn't know what they were) I decided to quit. I decided that I would rather be with Jesus. Understand that I have absolutely no fear of death; I know where I'm going. So, I took my shotgun down to the garage. My only concern was from my backslid Catholic upbringing. They taught me that people who commit suicide go to Hell. When I wondered whether they were correct, God calmly said,

“You can do that if you want. And you will be with Me. But you will not be at my Face, where you will want to be. I will have to put you way, way at my Back for a long, long time. Because I gave you a job to do (my family!).”

He talked to me for quite a while about myself, our marriage, and our children. He showed me the spiritual warfare over our family. I didn't know which was more surprising: that so many demons had been assigned to take me out (suicide is a spirit!) or that so many angels had been sent to defend me!

I spent the next few days trying to understand why I had been so miserable for so long. I found five reasons. I was certain that these were the root causes of my misery. But I didn't know how to fix any of them.

1. My life was a continual roller coaster ride of ups and downs.
2. I had low self-esteem
3. I felt manipulated, taken advantage of.
4. I felt unappreciated.
5. My emotions were no longer my own; they were controlled by my spouse.

These things have absolutely no hold on me now. However, at the time they seemed insurmountable. In hindsight I can connect the dots. Item 1 was associated with my spouse's cyclical bipolar mood swings. The remaining four items were all because I had centered my life around my spouse instead of around God. At this point you may be thinking, "How foolish to center your life around someone with bipolar disorder!" But my spouse was healthy when I made that decision at the start of our marriage. The early years of our marriage were wonderful! Others envied what we had! Nevertheless, centering your life around someone other than God is always a bad decision - no matter how awesome your spouse is.

MY 1st MIRACLE!
Resuming the story, a co-worker who knew nothing about my situation casually invited me to his Pentecostal church in Nashville. This was my first miracle! I am so thankful for people who are sensitive to the leading of the Holy Spirit! The worship music was great, but I didn’t like the sermon at all. It was about the consequences of failing to place God first in your life. I thought that the young preacher was cocky and arrogant because he had such specific lists of consequences for each failure mode. It went like this:

"Here’s what happens when you put money first in your life.” Then he rattled off a list of 4 or 5 specific consequences of that decision.

“Here’s what happens when you put your career first in your life,” . . . . followed by another list of specific consequences.

I was getting more annoyed by the minute. I inwardly thought, “How can he be so sure of himself? People are different! There's no way that the consequences can be so specific and predictable for everyone! This is a waste of time. Maybe I should get up and leave now."

But my opinion changed when he said, “Here’s what happens when you put your children first in your life.” The specific consequences that he enumerated were precisely the things that my wife complained about!!! That was no coincidence! I was no longer a skeptic! I also remember thinking,

My wife has been blaming her unhappiness and discontent on all the wrong things - and particularly on me. If only she could see the truth! She would be so much happier with her life!!!”

MY 2nd MIRACLE!
I was totally unprepared for what came next.

“And here’s what happens when you put your spouse first in your life.”

To my amazement he named every specific item on my list! Talk about a paradigm shift!!!!! The people sitting next to me could not understand why I burst into tears. When I walked into that church building I had no hope. Now I had hope! I thanked God for showing me that there was a way out of my misery!

For years I had accused God of being a million miles away while our marriage and family were being torn apart. I felt abandoned! But now I realized that He had always been with me! I just couldn’t see Him in the middle of the storm. Can you relate to this?

The young preacher ended his sermon with a closing comment that seemed to be just for me: “I am sooooo tired of hearing people say, ‘My spouse is ruining my life! My spouse is ruining my life!’ If your relationship with God is right, your spouse can’t ruin your life! They can’t even ruin your day!”

One of my favortie verses in the Bible is Luke 2:19 (NIV), "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." I relate to Mary because that's what we INFJ introverts do. In quiet moments we take our memories out of the mental "treasure chest" where they are carefully stored and ponder them in our heart. Sometimes we simply experience them again. Other times we gain deeper understanding or discover new connections between things that we were previously unaware of. While I was pondering over the remarkable events of the past week, the Lord began speaking to my heart, "connecting some of the dots" for me.

"The reason you’re so miserable has very little to do with your wife.
It’s because you haven’t put Me first in your life.
And the reason you keep getting into trouble is because you don’t take My Word seriously.”

MY 3rd MIRACLE!
The amazing thing about "crash and burn" - the thing that makes it so powerfull and holy - is that it forces us to become completely honest with ourselves and with God. And that's a place where miracles can happen! (Can you relate to this?)

According to what God said, I needed two keys to unlock my prison door. One key involved my head and the other key involved my heart. (How interesting! He's working on both parts of me!) Taking His Word more seriously was the "Head" part, simple and direct. All it required was a logical decision and the self-discipline to follow it through. I knew how to do this part. But putting God first in my life was a matter of the heart, the center of my emotions. And emotions are complicated, sometimes surprising, and not at all easy to manage. I didn't know how to do this part. I told God . . .

"Taking Your Word more seriously is easy. I know how to do that.
But how can I put You first in my heart? I don't even know who You are!"

I knew that I couldn't truly give God first place in my lukewarm heart unless He changed it. I was totally dependent on Him to make that change. And that's what He did! That was my 3rd and biggest miracle!!!

MY 4th MIRACLE!
The continual turmoil in our home had an unexpected and wonderful consequence: After I "crashed and burned" I got baptized in the Spirit! This was a total “game changer!” It was the best thing ever! God became very real to me. The Bible became more alive to me. Praise & worship became an awesome experience. I routinely heard Holy Spirit speaking to my spirit – not just at crucial “911” times. I prayed in the Spirit and at times was able to discern evil spirits when they attempted to bring contention and strife back into our home. I’m a kinder, more pleasant person than I used to be. I'm a better listener. Even my sense of humor is better. A normal wife would’ve been totally thrilled with this change! It’s like getting a free version 2.0 plus-up of your husband! If there was a line in church where this "plus-up" operation was being performed on the men, every wife would push her husband into that line! But my spouse was angry at what God had done.

“I don’t know what you’ve got, and I don’t want any of it!!!”
I was astonished and protested to God,
“She should be happy about this, not angry. Why is she saying this?!!!”

"She’s speaking the truth. She doesn’t know what you’ve got. And she doesn’t want any of it.""

Baptism in the Spirit doesn’t knock all the nonsense out of a person. We all struggle with sin for as long as our heart continues to beat. Spirit-filled people have bad days too. But the Baptism of the Spirit definitely takes your relationship with God to a new level. I've talked with many Spirit-filled people and we all agree: It happens only when you stop playing church and really make Jesus Lord of your life. One way to get there is to crash and burn like I did. There may be an easier way to get there. But all (100%) of the Spirit-filled people whom I have ever met got there the hard way - by going through a very stressful time of trial. If you got there the easy way, please let the rest of us know. You would be a very interesting data point! In the technical jargon of statistics, you would be an "outlier" - an unusual data point that is very far from the average!

How strange that so many denominations deny the supernatural gifts of God! All I can say is,

Just because the tracks don’t go by your house doesn’t mean there’s no train!