CHAPTER 1
CALL IT BY ITS NAME
A FEW YEARS AGO MY wife, Brett, and I had brunch with a group of friends from our small group at our church in Texas. It was the first time we had gotten together in a while, since kids and babies had started replacing game nights and cocktails.
As we sat there wrangling our children and making ridiculous deals with the toddlers to get them to take one more bite of their food, one of the women broke the news: âWeâre pregnant!â
Cheers went up and hearty congratulations poured out. Iâm not sure I have ever heard so many high-pitched âAhhhhhsâ in my life. Then something interesting happened. After someone asked the inevitable questions of âWhen are you due?â and âDo you know what it is?â a third question quickly followed: âHave you picked out a name?â
The couple had, but they slyly refused to tell us. It drove everyone nuts. We asked if we could guess, and when they said yes, it began a twenty-minute interrogation with every name possible being thrown against the wall to see if it would stick. (Think of a classic version of the game Guess Who breaking out in the middle of a packed restaurant. âDoes this little person start with a D?â) I even went deep into the Bible and threw out Tryphaena and Tryphosa. No dice. Finally, after a few hints we coaxed out of the coupleâs two-year-old, I guessed it: Charlotte. The screams for us figuring out the name were just as loud as when we got the baby news earlier. The tables near us cheered a little too, as by then they had become secretly invested in figuring out the name as well.
So hereâs the question: why is that? Why are we driven, seemingly inherently, to ask about a name? Why do we have to know what something or someone is called? The answer, in true Beauty and the Beast fashion, is as old as time.*
For starters, it gives us control. In ancient Jewish culture, thereâs an idea that if you can name something, you have power over it. Think back to the garden of Eden. After God gave Adam dominion over the earth, Adam took on the task of naming every living thing. By naming them, he was in a position of control over them. When we name something, we own it. We take responsibility for it. We even protect it.
But names have another purpose beyond ownership and control. They allow us to communicate properly about whatever the thing or person is. They allow us to categorize it. They allow us to understand it. Thereâs an exponential level of knowledge that comes with knowing someone or somethingâs name. It can tell us so much. Itâs why our group of friends wanted to know the babyâs name. Knowing her name would open up a whole new world of insight. In this instance, it would lead to a deeper understanding of the parents by then talking about why they chose that name, asking why it was important to them, and discussing things like family heritage.
We see this emphasis on names throughout the Bible. Moses longed to know the name of whom he was talking to in the burning bush. Jacob, while struggling with the stranger on the shore of the Jabbok River, asked for the assailantâs name. The angel gave Mary Jesusâs nameâEmmanuelâwhen he appeared to her and announced the coming of the Son of God. Matthew spends seventeen verses on the names in Jesusâs genealogy, while Luke spends fifteen doing the same thing. Thatâs a lot of names.
We want to name, and we want to know names. Only then, it seems, can we properly appreciate whatever it is. Only then can we understand it. Only then can we face it. The absence of a nameâthe unknownâis not only a powerless place but also a place of deep confusion.
Thatâs how you could categorize a lot of my teen and young adult years. For twenty-seven years of my life, I had no idea what was going on inside of meâI didnât have a name for it. I was confused. I was angry. I was upset. I was frustrated. I had feelings I couldnât put into words. And I could never seem to turn off my mind.
Why do I feel this way? Why canât I stop thinking about this? What am I so worried about? Whatâs the worst that could happen? (Donât answer that!)
My brain always seemed to be racing. Like a dog chasing its tail, it would go around and around and around ⌠and around some more. Only, in those earlier days, I think a dog had a better chance of catching its tail than I did of slowing the exhausting cycle in my head.
My first âepisode,â as I recall it, happened when I was twelve. My mom, one of my sisters, and I were in our white Dodge Caravan pulling up to our country home in Wisconsin. Our house was set back about three hundred yards from the road, and the routine we had for getting the mail looked like Mom stopping at the end of the winding gravel driveway and one of us kids hopping out and walking to the mailbox situated right off the shoulder. Because of the Badger Stateâs perpetual cold, my siblings and I would always argue over who had to make the mail run. On this day, I drew the short straw.
I pulled open the sliding door and ran toward the mailbox. After I grabbed the letters and various magazines, I brought them back and started thumbing through them. As the result of adding my name into some spammy internet pop-up, it wasnât odd for me to come across something with my name on it. But as I surveyed the mail I didnât see anything for me. Thatâs when the thought, like one of those time-lapse videos of a flower opening in the morning, began slowly spreading in my head.
You arenât important. No one seems to care. Youâre not even special enough to receive a piece of junk mail.
I remember it vividly. I can still feel the depths of defeat and woefulness that welled up inside, all over a lack of mail. It all came out of nowhere, like some dark, secret part of my brain had just been unlocked. I can still hear the voices. And I can remember the conversation as those voices traveled from my head to my throat along some invisible highway of lies.
I turned to my sister. âWell, Jenny, it looks like you got something. I didnât. No one seems to care about me. No one seems to think Iâm special enough to even send me something. Whenâs the last time you even got something for me, Mom?â
Where is this coming from? I remember thinking. I had no idea, but it just kept coming. If I close my eyes, I can still see the perplexed looks on both Momâs and Jennyâs faces.
âJonny, what are you talking about?â my mom said.
âWell, I just donât seem to matter to anyone. Sometimes I donât seem to matter to anyone here either,â I replied.
âJonny, stop it,â my mom said somewhat dismissively. That only fueled the thoughts even more.
âIâm serious,â I said. âEveryone else gets things in this family, but everyone forgets about me.â
We pulled up to the house and all got out.
âJonny, you know thatâs not true,â my mom said as she shut the door.
Deep down I did. But by that point it was too late to pull myself out of it. The dog had darted from his kennel and was in full tail-chasing mode. I spent the rest of the night unable to convince myself to stop thinking the thought I didnât want to be thinking. It was that night that I first remember turning to a coping mechanism I would use for years in order to shut off my mind. I imagine youâve probably found some sort of method too.
That mechanism involved a long-held dream of mine. I have always wanted to be in the FBI. The idea of being a federal agent chasing serial killers, criminals, and terrorists still excites me. I even took the FBI entrance exam several years back and passed, and if not for an injury to my shoulder that required surgery, you might not be reading this book right now.
On the night of that first episode, I lay in bed unable to think of anything but the âno one cares about meâ lies in my head. It was exhausting. I was so tired but unable to sleep. Thatâs when I reached into the only part of my brain that didnât seem to be controlled by the uncontrollable thoughts: my future glory with the FBI. To tune everything else out, I started creating a movie in my head where I was the star special agent. Where I mattered. I imagined what it would look like for me to burst through the door of some serial drug dealer and lead a raid that brought him to justice. It granted me the relief I so desperately needed. That sceneâand a few more after itâplayed in my head until I fell asleep. Soon it became one of the only ways for me to find relief at night from my own mind. In other words, the only way to get a reprieve from my racing thoughts was to replace the unwanted ones with others that were just as furious but more palatable. Go figure.
But finding a way to cope was different than understanding what was going on inside of me. From that day on, I remember easily getting fixated on things. A girl, an idea, a thought, a comment from someone else, a fear, and especially a worry. Those thoughts would consume me. I remember looking at classmates in high school who lived more carefree lives than I did and it made me jealous. Not in an âI hate themâ kind of way but in an âI want the relief you seem to haveâ kind of way. Imagine how confusing that was for a young Christian who was always told that if I followed Jesus and did the right things, others would want what I had.
Secretly, I never understood why anyone would want whatever this was.
For twenty-seven years of my life, to varying degrees, that was my reality. I never knew why. I never could figure out why I just couldnât âget over it,â whatever âitâ was. That continued on through the early years of my marriage. Brett would do or say something and I would stew on it, replaying it in my head like some slow-motion, high-definition video and dissecting it into a million little pieces. It was slowly driving a wedge between us as I turned to other coping mechanisms like work, alcohol, and porn to try to find relief from the unceasing thoughts.
Then in 2014, the epiphany happened. It produced a name.
At the time, Brett and I were living in a loft in downtown Dallas. The bottom floor included a hip coffee shop we frequented, complete with reclaimed wood tables, concrete pillars, local art, and a stage in the corner for open mic nights and B-list musical acts. You know the type.
But for everything the coffee shop had going for it, there was one big deficiency. See, I like SweetâN Low in my coffee (the pink stuff), not real sugar, not stevia, and especially not Splenda. The coffee shop stocked the pink packets from time to time but not on a regular basis. It was more of a Splenda place, which to me tastes a little like bitter sock water. I just gagged a little.
On this day, a Saturday I think, we decided to go on a walk around downtown. But first we needed our coffee. Brett took care of the drinks while I ran to the bathroom. I went out of my way to remind her that I wanted SweetâN Low in it. If they didnât have any, I wanted it black. When I returned, I took a sip of the coffee and I almost spit it out. It was disgusting. It was awful. It was full of Splenda. I canât describe what happened in my brain. I didnât get enraged and lose it like a madman. But a rush of anger, disappointment, and âWhy couldnât you do this one simple thing?â flooded over me. I didnât want to feel that way. I remember even telling myself, âThis is not a big deal!â
But it was.*
My wife told me to get over myself. Thatâs always been a trigger for me, so it just made it worse and threw me into a bad cycle, like when my mom told me to just âstop itâ that day in our driveway. I walked out and left her alone in the coffee shop. Our day was ruined. Seriously. For the rest of the day I couldnât get over her putting the wrong sweetener in my coffee and then telling me to get over it. It was awful.
We didnât talk about it for the rest of the day. In fact, we didnât talk at all. The next morning, she expressed how helpless she felt. She was confused and hurt. The term âwalking on eggshellsâ got used a lot as she reminded me this wasnât the first time. There were frustrated tears.
âJon, your reaction was not normal,â she said. She was right. It was my normal, but it shouldnât have to be hers. I apologized and told her I thought I needed to get help. I knew this wasnât right. It wasnât something she should have to endure. There were more tears, not just from her but from me. And even though she forgave me, she made me commit to getting some sort of help.
Thatâs when I called my sister, who I knew had sought help for her mental heal...