Lord, Now lettest now thy servant depart in peace. . .

For mine eyes have seen your salvation.

Inner peace is the realization that salvation is past tense.  It is the realization that what once had been merely a matter of hope, is accomplished, and continues to shape a new reality of life.  That battle has been won, now is a time of living into the victory.

Fear.  I must admit that over the last five and a half years fear has been a companion.  Fear of losing all that we had.  This journey began in all hopefulness.  Conversations with my church  council resulted in our mutually agreeing that I would continue serving til retirement, and in that light they offered me the opportunity to buy a house.  We did.

There was a backlash that erupted in the congregation.  The negative voices, long dormant, came to the surface.  Anger resulted.  Rage, actually.  And my world collapsed.  I've told the story before.  Six weeks after moving into our new home I was hospitalized for chemical dependency treatment, and for depression.  What followed was a disability determination, a resignation from my call, and the daunting challenge of meeting the mortgage payments with all my income now diminished and in question.  Then a loss of disability benefits.  A new job at a fraction of what I had been paid.  Etc.

The bottom line is I feared losing everything.  And in the end, lost nothing.  Not a payment has been missed.  Things have stabilized.  For every challenge faced, there has been a solution offered. 

Now is a time of peace.  At Peace.  Lutheran that is.  At least I hope it is.  The next couple of months will probably see an extension of a Call to permanent service there.  My work at the cabinet shop continues.  I'm hopeful.  Through a combination of efforts we have replaced much of the lost income.  And the home which I feared losing, has appreciated in value at the rate of about $2,000 a month.  Not a bad investment.

But the financial realities are minimal in comparison to the peace that is being experienced.  There is nothing to prove, just an invitation to remain faithful.  Trusting.  Hopeful.  And assured.

I continue to see a psychiatrist to monitor my meds, and a psychologist to monitor my moods.  But as I told my psychiatrist this last week, I basically am just keeping them on a retainer in case I need them in the future.  I don't want to be without access to them even though my current needs for therapy are minimal.

Peace.  I am in the process of evaluating options for retirement.  When can I retire from what?  Likely our move into retirement will be a step by step process, and not a definite date.  Some benefits may be started next year.  Others will wait. 

Options exist.  We'll be alright. 

It is with a certain amount of trepidation that I venture to say life is good.  Karla is in seventh heaven being able to be a homemaker again, and especially, caring for our  grandchild Jasper on a daily basis.  I am doing two things I love, pastoral ministry and woodworking.  And, I dare say, stress is low compared to other times in my life. 

Inner peace is the realization that salvation is past tense.

What I mean by that is that there was a time that with every fiber of my being I prayed that God would get me through this crisis.  And then, there is a wakening when one realizes that indeed, God has accomplished that.  The crisis is past.  "Salvation" has already happened.

But what is it about our makeup, my makeup, that holds on to the trepidation?  That is always waiting for the other shoe to fall?  "Lift me up when ever I fall, and never let me fade from the grace filled light of your own sight, and turns my night to day."  Words of my personal prayer.  A prayer that has been answered. 

I think the boldness of my hope at this point, and the source of my peace, is the recognition that though I have fallen numerous times, God has always 'lifted me up" and that has been sufficient. 

Sufficient.  Quite a concept.  It is enough.  We tend to always want more.  And don't always get it.  Sufficient is enough. 

It's not that there aren't hopes to experience some of the things we haven't yet had the opportunity to experience.  One day I hope to have the opportunity to build furniture unencumbered by the restraints of 'business'.  I'd like build what I want to build, utilizing all my creativity, without being limited by what I can sell.  To be able to do it for the pure joy of doing it.  That may happen.  Time will tell.

I hope that Peace Lutheran will turn the corner and start to grow again.  But ministry in the next few decades will likely be different than it has been.  One dimension of that is that I used to be able to see all the people I was preaching to.  Now, I have developed a cyber congregation.  There may be only a couple dozen in worship at Peace, but through the web as many as 350 people a week are reading the sermons.  Is that the shape of the church of the future?  It is not dissimilar to Baker, MT where our congregation broadcasted over the radio station and far more people heard the word via radio than were present in the pews.

There is freedom is being able to say "That is God's problem.  Not mine."

Just be at peace.  This is the life you have the opportunity to live.  Live it.

61, And miles to go before I sleep. . .

61.  "There comes a point in life when you realize that when people talk about the youth in America, they are not talking about you."  Yea, well, that point came and went a long time ago.

I think about aging, in part because of the death of my father this last year.  To age gracefully seems like a good goal.  I feel two things:  One, that there is not an abundance of time left.  And two, that there are many things left that I still look forward to. 

I've set my sights on retirement, but not until I'm 70.  Don't know if that will work out, but that seems most logical at this point.  Choosing a timeline for retirement when one doesn't have a lot of resources is a bit of a conundrum.  If you retire too early you may not have the funds to live as you would like to live.  If you wait to long to retire you may not have the health and opportunity to do that which you've been looking forward to doing throughout your life. 

I still long for a significant vocational engagement to cap off my working career.  Perhaps, I've found it already.  Perhaps the door has yet to open.  What I am aware of is that if there is to be a change, the window of opportunity is now.  Although, 60 is the new 40, right?  Plenty of fuel left in the tank.  Hopefully, the opportunities to go with that. 

The bucket list.

I have longed for the day to be able to create 'masterpieces' in my shop apart from the restraints of what I could sell.  I'd like to leave a legacy of work that will be cherished by my children, and their children for years to come.  Will I have the resources to purchase the wood to do that?  One example of the challenge:  I shared with the kids that prior to selling my CNC I'd like to make them all a dining set.  Currently, though, none of them are in a house or at a point in life that the dining set would be really useful.  You got to have a dining room first.  That will come with time.  Can't afford the wood now, anyway.

I'd love to create something extraordinary, utilizing all my skills as a woodworker.  A house.  A boat.  One of my long term plans was that during the first years of retirement I would build Karla and I a house, which by doing it myself, would greatly benefit us financially throughout our retirement years.  The biggest obstacle to that is whether my aging body is up to that challenge.

A boat.  Truth be told, spending my final years building a beautiful boat only makes sense if the kids desire to have a boat throughout their lives.  Boats have a tendency to be either a prized possession or an albatros.  It has been said that the happiest two days in the life of a boat owner are the day you get the boat, and the day you sell it. 

And then there is ministry.  I don't know what the future holds, but I'm deeply convinced that I'm not done yet.  Part of that is purely personal.  Throughout the twenty five years that I was under a full time call, I struggled with being bipolar, though it hadn't been diagnosed, and in the later years with alcoholism.  I now am being successfully treated for my bipolar disorder, and have over five years of sobriety under my belt.  I am convinced that in the right situation, I am better suited for ministry than I've ever been.  I hope for the opportunity to prove that.

I love the life Karla and I have together.  We can be doting grandparents, especially Karla as she has the opportunity to spend a lot of time with Jasper.  How much does that opportunity to live in the same community as two of our kids and to have the opportunity to be involved daily with our grandchild play into the decisions we will make regarding the next ten years?  This is a question of vocation.  We are called to be parents and grandparents.  I feel called to the ministry.  Will one have to be sacrificed for the sake of the other?  Or will an opportunity to devote ourselves to both materialize? 

Hope abounds.  As I turn 61 today I have a lot of hope for the future.  Many things to look forward to.  I am not yet at the point of saying that my best years are behind me.  I still envision that the best is yet to come. 

Talked with my pastor yesterday, in part about the way we evaluate our situations.  It's easy to get into 'future tripping',  totally caught up in thinking five to ten years down the line.  I'm content with life today, sort of.  What I can say is that today I'm up to the task.  Each morning I begin with the conviction that "Yes, I can do this today".  Where I struggle is in answering the question "Can I do this for the next ten years?"

Perhaps a more important question is what role I can play in shaping the future for the next ten years.  Bucket lists don't get done if you simply live in the moment.  "Find your passion, and take the first step today."  That's how we create a tomorrow that meets our hopes and expectations.  And don't miss the fact that simply to have hopes and expectations is to truly be blessed. 

Making a difference.

One of the problems associated with being bipolar is that one's thought patterns are, uh, bipolar.  They tend to come from the two ends of the spectrum.  At one end of the spectrum is unbridled optimism that sees no limits and craves the opportunity to transform the world.  At the other end of the spectrum is debilitating resignation to what is.

During one of my  more pronounced manic phases I hatched a plan to transform and empower the Church's ministry.  It was based on my experience developing Luther Park at Sandpoint, our congregation's senior housing ministry.  I proposed using this model as a means of fueling Church growth across the nation.  Elements of the plan included:

1. Initiating a new ministry based on the development of Senior Housing in conjunction with a new congregational start.
2. Operating the "not for profit" senior housing, as a "for profit" enterprise, and using the revenue generated by the senior housing to support first, the new congregational start, and second, further expansion of the Church's ministry elsewhere.  The proforma developed for the proposed new ministry in the Boise area projected a total of 225 units to be developed, and would in short order, when leased up, produce about a million dollars annually of positive cash flow.  A significant amount.
3. In addition, I envisioned a day care for the children of staff and the community to be developed as part of the ministry.  It was conceived of as a quality of life issue, surrounding seniors with children, and children with seniors, and providing day care for the many staff members that would need it.
4. The hopes also included a nucleus of multicultural ministry, as many of the staff would likely come from the Hispanic population in the area. 
5. And finally, and most importantly, I envisioned this model as being capable of duplication throughout the country and offering to the Church a means of self supporting mission expansion.

This entrepreneurial approach to ministry had its merits.  I was able to sell the idea to the powers that be, enough so to get the Church to purchase the land for the development.

What went wrong?

The damn economy collapsed.  Non-recourse financing, upon which the project was conceived, ceased to be available.  Projects that used to be financeable based on their own merits now required considerable 'skin in the game' by the parent organization, including both collateral and the ability to back the loan.  And the market shrank for senior housing with the collapse of the housing bubble.  Thankfully, the millions of dollars that were spent will in time, be recoverable.  At least I hope so.

At the other end of the spectrum one can get locked into a depressed resignation to the way life is and become convinced that nothing can be done to change the outcome.  Depression.  Pessimism.  

There is a danger of falling victim to that in my current call.  The congregation I'm serving has, for a variety of reasons, experienced a decline in membership and  worship attendance over the last few decades.  It is at the point that if we lose a member, the budget needs to be reworked.  We're that close to the line.  

What can we do?  I fight the tendency to resign myself to a belief that there is nothing we can do.  We are victims of the drift in our society toward a secularism that excludes involvement with the Church, and that social trend is not going to be reversed by any effort on our part.  OK, so is that depression or honesty that results in such thoughts?l

The truth is that the sociological and demographic shifts in our country are real and profound.  It's not just one congregation that is declining.  Across every denomination in the country the experience is being shared by congregation after congregation.  As much as I'd like to believe otherwise, posting my sermons on Facebook and boosting them throughout the community is not likely to alter the current trend in our nation.  Would that I be so profound and gifted to do that.  I'd write a book and retire.  

Unbridled optimism.  Depressed resignation.  Polar opposites.  Bipolar thought patterns.

Somewhere in the middle there is a balance that represents a healthy, realistic, world view.

Every journey begins with one step.  Current trends will not continue forever.  

Perhaps the healthy balance is to forge a middle ground between 'you can change the world', and 'there's nothing you can do', toward an outlook that simply affirms that 'you can make a difference'.  

I think that is what I currently desire more than anything else.  Simply to make a difference.  This happens one person at a time.  Tom Cable of the Seattle Seahawks made the observation regarding Thomas Rawls, one of the Seahawk's running backs that "you can't become a thousand yard rusher on a single play".  Success as a running back involves slogging it out a few yards at a time.  And repeating that.

Pentecost was a miracle.  Three thousand baptisms in one day.  Billy Graham would have been proud.  We have had one adult baptism this last year in our congregation.  One person who was adopted through baptism as a child of God.  That's one person more than no persons.  One step in the right direction.

I have found hope, and I believe a healthy balance, in the agricultural images for the life cycle of the Church.  There is a time for tilling.  A time for planting.  A season of growth. And a time of harvest.  

Now this is the thing.  If you try to harvest the corn on the 4th of July you are going to be disappointed.  "Knee high by the 4th of July" means, among other things, that there will not be any cobbs until later.  I have come to believe deeply that we are at a time of tilling and planting in the Church, not a time of harvest.  "It's springtime in America" is not a pessimistic statement.  But springtime is not harvest time.  

In the midst of all this a bipolar person does well to retrain those thought patterns.  Life is lived best in the middle ground between the polar opposites.  Sober optimism.  Realistic hope.  Achievable ambition.  Making peace with the tension between mania and depression.  This is not a lukewarm existence.  It is neither static nor explosive.  It is not a lifeless equilibrium.  

You can change the world make a difference.  

And making a difference, however small, is sufficient.

On Hope and Healing

Early in the morning I sit in the blessed silence of this new year, reflecting on what has been and wondering what is yet to be.  Life is good.  For a bipolar person this is an accomplishment.  Treatment has been successful, though is always an ongoing process.  There is no cure, only effective management.  Take your meds and don't write checks for more than a million dollars without consulting others first!

As I continue to live into recovery I am struck by one reality that continues to define my life, and perhaps lies at the root of an unsettledness about my existence.  It has to do with my vocation and calling.

Since successfully going through chemical dependency treatment, and being diagnosed as being bipolar and treated for the same, there has been a caution exhibited regarding my capabilities.  This has resulted in myself, my family, my health team and the church being extremely careful and concerned about the situation in which I serve, lest I experience triggers that might bring on a relapse or set back.  What I find ironic is that I had no restrictions when I was a drunk manic depressive, but now that I'm sober and enjoying the greatest mood stability of my life, the restrictions, formal and informal still are in place.

Lets just say that there is a degree of caution that all of us, aware of my situation, exhibit, and perhaps it's warranted.  No one, including myself, wants to see a recurrence and that does affect our attitudes. 

And yet my deepest desire is to be able to 'fly' again, this time sober and stable.

I find myself assessing my health with the dawn of a new year.

• Depression, which was disabling, is gone now, hopefully forever.  Better living through chemicals.  
• Anxiety is at an all time low.  The uncertainty about my future, our financial stability, etc., would normally have produced great anxiety.  Amazingly this is not so.  It will work out is the living conviction.  
• Mania, that exuberant friend and foe, has not been present for a little over 4 years now.  That's a good sign.
• Sleep is another matter.  In general I get sufficient sleep. My life and work schedule have me sleeping at non-typical hours, going to bed early, waking even earlier.  I would wish for a more normal pattern and extended sleep without the constant arousal and waking.  But I'm functioning.
• I haven't tried to save the world recently.
• I have been working on the ability to 'not engage' in matters that really are not my problem.
• I see more light than darkness.

In general I feel good.

It's not that life doesn't have its ups and downs.  I currently serve a small parish with only about 20 in worship on a Sunday morning.  During my 'up times' I'm optimistic that we can right the ship, and with new development coming in the community grow as a congregation.  During my 'down times' I fear that a small congregation like this just does not have the critical mass necessary to attract new members.  And yet these highs and lows are moderate, within a normal range.  

I do find myself contemplating the future and what it holds.  I'll be honest, I really desire the opportunity to be fully engaged in ministry and to be able to test my wings now that I'm sober and stable.  Whether that happens within the context of this call, or in a new call, or not at all is the question.

I'm personally torn between a piety that says "God will place me exactly where I need to be" and a sense that I need to be proactive in seeking out that which will be fulfilling.  Its probably a little bit of both.  

This internal debate becomes a bipolar issue when it manifests itself as either fatalistic resignation or a conquest.  Depression or mania.  

Dare to dream the dream.  

Kennon Callahan, a church consultant, once said that one of the most critical questions for a congregation is whether they see their best  years as being behind them, or still yet to come.  This is my question now.  Have I already experienced the apex of my ministry, or is the best yet to come?

What is difficult is that the answer to that question is somewhat out of my control.  That's where faith comes in.  We live by faith.  It's not just a resignation, but a conviction.  We tend to the task at hand, we stand ready to respond to a new day, and we remain steadfast in our belief that in the end, God is in charge.  I'm reminded of the experience during my early morning commutes to Hayden.  There are those occasions where the weather leaves the road obscure and I find myself following the taillights in front of me.  There is a significant amount of faith involved in trusting that if you just follow those lights, and those who have gone before you, that you will be fine.

2018.  Hope.  But no certainty.  Life is an ambiguous journey.  And that may have to suffice. 

Sacred Vocation or a Fool's Pastime

There is a bipolar nature to ministry itself.  An ebb and flow from the heights to the depths.  At one end of the spectrum is a conviction that this vocation is a most sacred calling.  At the other end of the spectrum is a depressing thought that perhaps ministry itself is but a fool's pastime.  As a sacred calling ministry taps into the manic side of our existence.  As a fool's pastime there is nothing but despair and an overwhelming sense of irrelevance.

And it all hinges on the question of life, truth, and that which is of ultimate importance.  And it is a question of faith.

God either is, or is not.

The Gospel either is a matter of ultimate importance, or it is not.

These questions confront us more and more as the culture in which we live drifts toward an increasingly secular society where faith in God is either non-existent, or a matter of little importance.  "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"  (Luke 18:8)

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, "Do you also wish to go away?" Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God."  (John 6:66-69)

This is the thing about ministry.  We are caught between these two poles.  At one end of the spectrum we are confronted with a world that increasingly has no faith.  At the other are those who cling to our words as the way of eternal life.  The ministry we share as the Church is either the highest of callings, or a pitiful excuse of a way to live.

At times of deep depression, when faith eludes me, I sometimes view myself and my life as that of a modern day medicine man, leading the tribe in the ritual of the Ghost Dance, clothing them in the Ghost Shirts in the vain effort to protect them from all evil, and yet, unable to stop the bullets from penetrating.

At times of deep faith there is a sense of walking with my people from the cradle to the gates of heaven.  In these sacred moments there is a recognition that this ministry we share is an integral part of God's redemptive work for all creation.  That the Word we are called to proclaim has the same power as the Word God spoke at the beginning of time-- the power to call forth life itself.

What is truth?

It is either one or the other.  There is no in between.  The faith we hold dear is not just an icing on the cake, a sweet topping to make life more palatable.  Either God is or is not.  And that makes a difference.  It makes a difference in the way we live.  It makes a difference in what is of ultimate importance.  Or it is a fool's pastime.

What song shall we sing?

The Risk of Flying Solo

An opportunity has presented itself to me in my ministry at Peace in Otis Orchards.  Later this summer there will be a training event to equip pastors for redevelopment work, something my congregation is desperately in need of having happen.  This plays right into my goals and aspirations with respect to the ministry there.  The truth is that I am more committed to the redevelopment of that congregation that probably anyone else I've encountered, within the congregation or without.

Part of my drive stems from my experience early in my adult years when my wife and I were part of the development of a  new congregation in Gig Harbor, WA.  Agnus Dei Lutheran Church was just the right place at just the right time for my wife and I.  When I entered seminary one of my major goals was to be a mission developer pastor and perhaps recreate that experience for others.

And so an opportunity presents itself late in my career to do redevelopment work in Otis Orchards.  

One of the struggles is that there is little if any support available to cover the cost of the training event.  The congregation has limited means.  There is no support available from the national Church.  And our Synod is dealing with the reality of limited resources as well.  The question put forward to me last night was whether I had the personal commitment level to fund the training myself.  This would involve the cost of the training, airfare to Denver, lodging and some of the meals while there, and losing a week's salary from  my secular employment.  All this taken into consideration, there remains a cost/benefit analysis to do regarding the opportunity.  If having the training does in fact give me the tools to successfully redevelop the congregation, then its all worth it.  If  not, it's merely throwing money at the wind.

What I struggle most with, as a bipolar person, is evaluating such an opportunity and discerning whether this is an opportunity and call coming from the Holy Spirit, or whether it simply plays into the symptoms of my disease.

Manic thought patterns make one prone to careless spending habits, grandiose schemes, and high risk business ventures, just to name a few.  And this is the thing, any consideration of such an 'investment' has to be tempered with serious caution as to whether this is a good as it seems.  When I'm in a full blown manic episode I can make a good case for selling ice to an Eskimo.  Personal discernment is not a strong suit for a bipolar person.  That's the problem.

It is especially a problem when I'm left to my own discernment.  

One of my most successful efforts in ministry was also the result of one of my most manic episodes, the development of Luther Park at Sandpoint, an 87 unit senior housing project.  When the dust settled on that one my biggest disappointment was that in the end the congregation did not see Luther Park as its ministry, but rather as my baby.  That's the danger of flying solo.  It can all be about fulfilling personal dreams and aspirations with little buy in from the larger community.

Where I'm at in my discernment and thought processes this morning is that pursuing this opportunity cannot be simply a individual quest of my own.  There has to be some buy in from the Church, the local congregation, the Synod, and/or the national Church.  If those three do not see the value of such an endeavor, then I must seriously question whether the value I see is genuine, or fantasy.  

This is what I'm learning as I continue to work on managing my disease.  Every aspect of discernment has to be, simply has to be, confirmed by others.  

The "Being" and the "Doing"

One of the hardest lessons I learned in my first parish was the difference between "being" the pastor, and "doing" pastoral ministry.  I was the first full time pastor in Thompson Falls.  They had built a parsonage for  us.  We received a joyous welcome.  And I set about my work.

I interpreted that their investments toward attaining a full time pastor were all about their desire to receive full time pastoral ministry.  And I set about trying to fulfill that goal.  My goal was to fill the church's calendar with programs and activities, and so to justify my position.

What I learned from them was that it was actually more important that I simply be seen around town, at the post office, in the grocery store, walking my dog.  As for all my  programmatic activity, it largely failed.  They were simply concerned that I would "be" their pastor.  They were not nearly so concerned about what I did.  Yes, there were moments of intense pastoral ministry.  But for the most part, I was paid to be there when needed, and the rest of the time simply to be the pastor.  

I realize now that after nearly three decades in ministry I'm in the same situation again.  The only things on our calendar are Sunday morning worship, and an adult ed class afterwards.  Aside from that, the boy scouts meet weekly, and the council meets monthly.  I do some visitation, but not a lot.  And this seems to be more my need than theirs.  We decorated the church for Christmas, and had a potluck.  We will go caroling.

But for hour after hour I sit in my office and wonder what am I doing to justify receiving a generous salary package.  The answer is, I am "being" their pastor.  Its as though they are saying to me "Do whatever you feel a need to do, that's fine with us, just be our pastor."

The manic side of me is just not content to master the art of "being".  I want a quest.  I'm a bit like a border collie in that regard.  Either give me work to do, or I'll make up my own.  

Two things I'm "doing".  First, I'm trying to see if I can get an AA meeting starting here in Otis Orchards.  There isn't one now.  The biggest challenge is where and how do you connect with people who are part of an organization that values above all else, anonymity.  Secondly, I am exploring how to use Facebook and my blogs as a means of evangelism, and an extension of my ministry here.

I've had 9,000 pageviews on this blog, and nearly 6,000 on my other blog, Wanderingsthroughtheword.com.  What amazes me is that I've had pageviews from every single continent, except Antartica.

Writing and posting is what satisfied my sense of calling while I was not in a parish.  Now, it fulfills my sense of call by giving me something to "do" in a parish whose primary need is for me to simply "be" their pastor.

That said, I find myself wrestling with the question of whether my drive to be doing something is symptomatic of my bipolar disease, or part of a genuine sense of call.  My bishop would probably say, "Well, yes, both."

I leave it at that for today, and get back to the holy work of being.

694

I was blown out of the water this morning.  As I opened up my other blog page, wanderingsthroughtheword.com the statistics on the home page surprised me.  Over 700 page views this week.  A little research and I discovered that 694 of those were from the nation of Israel.  

I had written a post about Psalm 137.  Perhaps that's what stimulated the surge in readers.  I don't know.  I wonder though.  My mind races.  And I am ever conscious of my own manic tendency toward a 'savior' mentality, and/or 'grandiose' thoughts.  

This is the way that works.  A simple fact that there were 694 page views from Israel.  It could be that something I wrote simply was picked up by the Google search engine, and resulted in the hits.  Did 694 people in Israel do a Google search on Psalm 137 and my post came up?  Could be that simple.  

But then I begin to wonder who those 694 people are.  Are they Christians, Jewish, or Muslim?  And is what I'm writing resonating with them.  From that my mind moves toward the question of ministry.  Have I stumbled into a new calling?  Has my blog become a platform for my own foreign missionary work?  Most of my page views come from the USA.  A sizable amount have come from Israel, and almost as many have come from the Ukraine.  
And then I wonder how I might make a significant difference.  My mind races. . .

Rein it in, Dave, rein it in.

I am not Israel's savior.  I am not destined to be the next Billy Graham.  

And then the verses come to mind, shared with me many years ago by a patient I came to know when I was serving as a hospital chaplain:

So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

Isaiah 55:11

This is the thing.  Amid all the concerns that I might be headed in the direction of mania, there is this hope that to the extent I am a minister of the Gospel, God's Word, not mine, might have an impact in the lives of those who hear it.  I am not the savior (as my manic side would like to believe), but at the same time there is a Savior, and of him we bear witness.  

One final thought:  Could it be that God harnesses and uses the gifts of bipolar people for the sake of a bold witness to the world?  Can it be that this disease that could destroy me, might also be a gift to empower me?

A second 'final' thought:  Coming out of depression does not necessarily mean that a manic episode is imminent.  It's quite possible that an extended period of mood stability and a healthy balance is actually what is being experienced.  That would be alright.