“And I write,” I added to the nurse on the phone. So began a surprisingly rapid cascade of phone calls, tests, and appointments.

I’ll back up a bit. A few days ago, I told my mom about a problem that’s been frustrating me for quite a while. I spend most of my days either reading or writing, and, over the last year or so, I’ve been making odd mistakes. It started with a slow decline in my ability to spell. I had basically stopped reading fiction when it started, so I chalked it up to that; however, as I added more and more reading to my day, my spelling problems didn’t improve.

Next came the omissions. I started to notice that I’d skip words as I wrote longhand. I mentioned it to a couple people, and they said it wasn’t unusual when you’re trying to write quickly. Then, I started leaving out letters in the middle of words. This I tended to catch as I did it – don’t ask how many erasers I’ve gone through lately. All those things were fairly easy to dismiss as either an aging brain or a medication side-effect. What began to change frustration into worry was when I started using the wrong letters for the right sound. For example, I would write “gnowledge” instead of “knowledge,” or “wright” instead of “right.”

All of what I described above was puzzling and frustrating, but nothing I felt deserved mentioning to anyone. What happened three days ago seemed unusual enough that I did end up telling my mom. Because of some residual memory problems from ECT 11 years ago, I use several “hacks” to help me remember day-to-day things. Last Tuesday, I noticed the downstairs bathroom needed toilet paper. When I’m trying to remember to do something in the next minute or two, I repeat a word representing the task over and over again until I do it. But instead of repeating, “toilet paper, toilet paper,” I thought, “tape, tape.” Maybe it snagged my attention more than other times I’ve done the same thing because I repeated the word. Maybe it’s that all my other problems with words were only obvious when I was writing. Either way, I had a concrete example to share.

My mom knows just as well as I my tendencies toward hypochondriasis (the impressive medical way of saying “hypochondria”), so it was surprising when the first thing she said was, “You need to call your doctor.” Luckily (I guess everything does have a silver lining), I already have a neurologist, so I was able to speak to his nurse directly and immediately. And thus began the stream of phone calls. My doctor wanted me to do several tests before seeing him in the office. As I bought cat food and then walked around Target, I spoke with my neurologist’s nurse, with the imaging company to schedule a brain MRI, and back and forth with the neurologist’s assistant about the details of scheduling neuropsychiatric memory testing. Add to this my most recent standard labs revealing a mild anemia, and I was just… overwhelmed.

Today, I’ve been trying to shut out the voice in the back of my head whispering, “You know nothing will be wrong – it’s all just anxiety and mental weakness. What a waste of resources….” I’m ashamed to admit that a part of me hopes something does show up on these tests. Who does that? I would love to be healthy – to not have days when I feel like I’m walking through water, and to never dread another depressive episode after every bad day. Living with a chronic illness has caused me a lot of distress over the last 14 years. If some kind of pathology showed up on a medical test, not only would there be something to treat, I’d also be validated that the symptoms I have are real, not just in my head. (Yes, I see the irony.)

As I suppose you can see if you’re reading this, I can write just fine, even though I’m giving the Word auto-correct feature a heavy workload. It’s why, on the first phone call with my neurologist’s nurse, I felt the need to add “and I write” to the end of my problem list. I’ve been an excellent speller and facile with words for my whole life, so all these changes are only visible to me. But for someone whose passion and talent lie in her writing, all those little detriments jump off the page.

So, here I am at my desk, hoping my MRI will show some kind of pathology in my brain. Because, for all I speak and write about mental illness being a physical disease like any other, deep in my heart I’m still conflicted. I may accept others’ mental illnesses as valid medical problems, but, when I’m honest with myself, I see many of my symptoms as evidence of only personal weakness. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if bipolar was visible on an MRI? Then I could point to a physical picture and say, “See, right there – that’s why I’m unemployed and taking so much medication,” instead of whispering to myself, “If you were just stronger, less lazy and afraid, things would be different.” But God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. If I am unable to embrace the weakness of my mind as well as that of my brain, there will be no room for the empowering strength of the Lord.

My writing has always been more than just a way to process my feelings or express my ideas. I’ve found, over the years, that I cannot write anything worthwhile if God has not decided he wants to teach me something through it. I even go back and read old blog entries sometimes, to refresh my memory of what he created through me. But it’s not just a refusal to admit personal weakness that has slowed my writing to a trickle, and it’s certainly not because my first drafts are full of uncharacteristic errors.

It is through the writing process that I’ve noticed most clearly that submission to God’s inspiration can’t coexist with a pattern of submitting to something else. Sad as it may be, it has taken a God-imposed writer’s block for me to realize the cost of a string of the same daily “little” sins. All the Greek lessons and Bible reading in the world cannot erase that ledger. The Lord’s grace covers every repented sin, no matter how often you confess it, but true repentance always includes, “I’m done with that, God. I’ve stepped out of that pattern and back to you.” And, unlike an MRI, God sees every lie. I thank the Lord today for the mercy of his forgiveness and for the grace that allows me to properly express my humble gratitude.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

James 1:17