Cohabitation is sustainable personhood.

Have you heard what happened on June 24th last year? I was healed of depression. Don’t roll your eyes at me buster, this time it’s for real! Look at the date today, March 3, 2014. Yup, no depression for over nine months; No, I was not “self diagnosed.” My first visits to a psychiatrist started at age 10. There were regular weekly visits and medications for about 3 years. Then a new therapist when I was 14. On and off throughout my life. Diagnosed with various forms of depression, lived with depression. Dysthymia and Bi-polarII are a couple diagnoses I remember.

Hey, I have had several times in my life when I swore that I was being healed and I worked myself off of meds. My wife has been amazingly strong and patient as I found that it was not the case time and time again. But my hopes and my reality are now conjoined! I received a fully complete healing!

As I’ve walked this out for the past several months it has occurred to me that being “positioned” for healing was a critical component. I’ve held onto the hope that I can live depression free and I’ve learned to live with intentionality towards that hope. One component that is now in place in my life is the nurturing that is lived out in my inner self. I know that this nurturing gives the healing sustainability. This nurturing began to be realized about 3 ½ years ago as I processed through who I am, who God is, and who we are together. Because it is in place that amazing day that I walked out of depression is a day that I walked into newly developed personhood.

Here’s what I mean about nurture.

I am well taken care of by the Lord, and, in turn, I can nurture my soul by living from my spirit first. I am a spiritual man first and foremost.  My most important and most intimate relationship is not with my wife (sorry Lila) not with myself, but with the Holy Spirit.

He (Holy Spirit) resides in me. This is not a relationship that is conversational only, not just a “working relationship” but it is the most intimate relationship I can have. He is the only person who can dwell inside my life at the same time that I live in my life.  Talk about “cohabitation”! My relationship with the Holy Spirit is dynamic.  It is deeply personal.  It is life giving. It is active by nature.  This relationship undergirds all that I am.  Notice that I didn’t say that it undergirds all that I do. I am before anything else in my life.  I am in relationship with God before anything else in my life.

You can’t get anymore intimate than that.  When I think about the most intimate relationship I have with another human being it is the relationship I have with my wife. She knows more about me than any other human. I know more about her than any other human. We are connected in ways where we can communicate very clearly non-verbally and know what each other is saying. We honestly have experienced more about each other both emotionally and physically than any other person in our lives.  We have shared and experienced life together, being there at the same time and going through the same experience more than with any other person in the world.

We know each other more intimately than we know any other human on this planet. We have entrance in each other’s lives to bring comfort, to correct, to be completely honest. To laugh together and to share the most intimate and private times only with each other; we know each other in a deeply intimate way like we know no other human. I can say it a dozen different ways. But, as much as we intimately know each other, we do not have the connection to be as deeply intimate with each other as we were created to be until we are living intimately with God.

We reside with our spouse in a home.  We share our life with our spouse as much as we can.  But there are still times that we are physically apart.  There are still times when we are emotionally apart.  There are still times when we have hidden recesses in our heart that we have not revealed to our spouse. We cannot be within close proximity with our spouse all the time in all areas- spiritual, emotional, physical. But this relationship is still the most intimate we have with another human.

There are two people who we can always be with.  Two people who will be there with us at all times. Because we have the opportunity to be with the two at all the times then we also have the opportunity to be deeply intimate with them. 

Who are they?

One is myself!  You take yourself everywhere with you. Wherever you go…. You are there.  Whatever you do… you have to do it with you.  Whatever you experience on any level…. You experience it with you- right there tagging along. It is something to think about. If I am going to spend all my time with one person then I think need to really like that person.  I need to really be accepting of that person.  I really need to be honest and caring towards that person. Do I do that with me? Do I really like me? Do I really accept me- right now, right as I am today? Do I really care for and am honest with me? 

This is where it starts.  This is where it ends too.  Sometimes I can’t stand myself, but then I can’t get away from myself either. So intimacy begins with the relationship I have with myself- in a healthy way.

The name of the other person I can always be with is Holy Spirit. Part of understanding this relationship with Holy Spirit is getting past his name. After all, “Holy Spirit” is a weird name for a person, but that is exactly what he is, a person, a person of the Godhead; A person who, when you or I became a Christian, took up residence in our life.  Yeah, in your and mine lives. And he is patient. In fact, patience is one of his best attributes. Patience is a fruit of his life. This other person, Holy Spirit, to name him, is there in your life, my life, to become intimate.

So, your life, yeah, your life (and my life), is really not just your life. Not anymore. You have another person living inside of you.  You have a person who is the best mentor ever to live on this earth since… Since Jesus was here; a mentor, a friend, and a companion who is deeply, deeply committed to you and asks that you be deeply intimate with him.

There’s an upside to this, a big upside. He, Holy Spirit, is a nurturer. He has always been a nurturer. He’s never been anything else and he has never been any better at it than right now.  Right now he is at his best.  He is at peak performance.  He is so good at being who he is that he cannot get any better! He wants you and me to be intimate with him. 

That’s the purest form of mentoring, when the mentor has such a deep relationship that he nurtures in all the areas that need it. A good mentor can sniff out those areas. A great mentor can find those areas that need nurturing that even you and I at times have no clue about until our mentor, Holy Spirit, intimately shows those areas to us. He is “scary good” at this. Yeah, it can sometimes scare me.

How does he know? Did I mention that he is the best at being who he is and doing what he is living to do? Nurture and intimacy go hand it hand. Nurture brings strength of spirit. Nurture brings mentoring so that you and I as spirit beings are trained up to nurture too. Don’t get stopped by the term “spirit beings”. This is not a hyper-spiritual term.  It is the best way to place focus on one of the three parts of life that make up being a human. Humans, You and I are one part spiritual, one part physical, and one part soul. We have three threads that make up who we are; three components that complete the whole person. Some components are readily seen, some components are readily felt and some components are readily…. misunderstood.

It’s the misunderstood component, our spirit, which is the foundation for all the others. He is seen by how the other two components are living. His voice many times, is heard through the other two, his actions are seen by what the other two are doing, his strength is seen by how the other two are living over the long haul of life. But this component, the spirit of a human, is the most important part of life to nurture.  When the spirit of a man is nurtured by Holy Spirit then the spirit of a man can nurture the soul and body components.  That can become his greatest function, which can become the stabilizer of a person’s entire life. For this guy, this nurtured life is what stabilizes and sustains who I am.