I have not been around much since spring break some of you have noticed.   Alot has been going on with me and I thought I would give you a quick update.

This will be a bit weighty so beware!  8 years ago, life came crashing down for me while living in East Asia.  While living in a small apartment in the middle of the most populated country on earth, I did not know it at the time, but i started having panic attacks .  Life unraveled in fear, loneliness, despair and pain in such a horrific way that it is both hard to even remember and certainly hard to put into words.  Many of you have heard me tell the stories over the years so i won’t belabor you more now.

Over the ensuing 8 years, life hasn’t been perfect, but it has been manageable.  I have been on a medication for anxiety/depression that has helped for the most part.  Some of you that know me well know that still, every semester, there are several times when i get hit with some weird symptoms that i can only explain as extreme exhaustion, even flu-like, but they always coincide with some sort of major stress overload in my environment, heart and mind.  This past fall it got quite frequent.  Every 2 or 3 weeks i was sidelined in bed for 2-3 days feeling miserable, depressed and scared as to what was happening to me.  After some thinking, praying and getting some advice, i decided to stop the medication that i had been taking for 7 years…or at least slowly wean off.  (these things take time to get out of your system if you were not aware)  It took me about 3 months of slowly cutting dosages to be completely off.  They were three months of hell starting last October.  However, if those months were hell….then the 6 weeks that have ensued after being off the medication have been purgatory….(not sure about the analogy, but sufficed to say it has been even worse!)

At this point i have been diagnosed with something called ‘adrenaline fatigue’.  It seems that i have lived at such a high level of stress and performance for so long- all the things i do on campus, 3 kids, running marathons, being a constant thinker and ‘type A’ personality- and then getting off a major medication which stressed my body again….my body has essentially said “enough! you need to take a break and figure things out….and I am going to make you by making you feel so crappy you can’t do anything…. ” (if my body could talk….or more likely, that is what God has said to me).  Anyways, when your body runs on stress it produces adrenaline all the time.  Finally your adrenal system can get ‘maxed’ out and shut down and not provide the energy hormones that you need to live healthily….that is what has happened.  My blood pressure is way down, my testosterone level is 25% of what it should be, my core temperature is low, i have headaches every single day and i am fatigued all the time.

I need to make some changes!  Obviously.  And i am now doing so.  So back to me not being around….since spring break and for the rest of the current semester i am taking a leave of absence.  i have canceled most everything that i do with the intent of resting and getting to health.  I am seeing a counselor to help me understand more about the ways that i process stress.  I am on a ridiculously healthy diet.  I am taking mouth fulls of vitamins and supplements ever day.  I am sleeping, reading, fishing and getting massages every week!  Sounds like it is a more fun and enjoyable process than it is believe me!  The doctor says she will have me feeling normal again in within three months.  That has been a word of hope that i have needed in the midst of despair.  However, like i said, i need to make some changes.  She can get my body back on track, but it will all come crashing down again unless i head this great roadblock of God’s painful grace in my life.

Performance, size, impact, growth, big, powerful, fast- these are all words that consume me being in the forefront of my mind constantly in every area of my life. They are the first words i think about when it comes to my part in what i want to happen at UNC and in general in my life.  I have at times been intollerant and frustrated with the antithesis of those words.  Small, slow, weak, regression- those words and indeed personality types are a bane to me if i am honest.  And yet, that is where/who i find myself to be at present.  Helpless, slow, weak, small- would all characterize my present emotions and in many ways my present impact laying in bed at home.

I am being challenged in a book that i am presently reading called ‘Margins’.  Why is bigger better?  Why is faster more desirable?  Why is power better than weakness.  I have been honest with you over the years that in marriage those opposites between Emme and I have caused conflict.  I have tried to force her to settle more comfortably into my mold and do things faster, bigger, more powerfully….  She has not acquiesced and i am thankful to God for a model of one who is so different than me and has so much health in those differences!

Yes, progress is desirable at some level.  Reaching more students at UNC is better than less at some level.  But at what expense?  What are true signs of health and growth.  Just because a ministry is large or growing does not guarantee its ‘goodness’.  There are some very suspect large ministries in the world that are like i said ‘suspect’ at best and outright dangerous at worse.  So in our culture, why is big always better?  Why is powerful always promoted?  Why is up-front better than behind?

These are just questions that i find myself asking presently as i work through the 2nd hardest period of my life to date.  If you would commit to pray for me, i would be very grateful.  I am being taught by the Lord to be needy and not self-sufficient and asking for help is not easy for me.  Pray that God would give me deep rest of the soul.  I need  to find a deeper quiet place connected more healthily to him from which to live life, lead a ministry, love my family and be at peace.  Thanks for those of you that labored to read to the end.

blessings, miles