“You may be right. I may be crazy. Hey, but it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for.”

From You May Be Right by Billy Joel.

“Hmmm. Something seems to be happening. I’m definitely noticing a quickening of the breath, a pounding of the heart, racing thoughts, and I believe…yes, the feeling of an elephant sitting on my chest. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is one of those elusive "panic attacks" I’ve heard so much about.”

From The Onion, “So This Is A Panic Attack, Eh?” by T. Eric Mayhew.

Three months ago I wrote a post about my misadventures with GAD, General Anxiety Disorder. It was not a funny post. Perhaps if I had a funnier hook like, “Cracking up cracks me up” or “Daggum is I mug GAD,” I would have got more laughs. I did appreciate the sympathy and also the discovery that many of you are as crazy as I am, if not more so. The good news is that I’ve managed to kick one of the medications completely. Clonezepam is a nasty bugger. It’s certainly good for relaxation. But forget to take it and your brain starts thinking that something scary is going on. And it tends to turn you into a napping-in-the morning geriatric.

I went cold-turkey on Monday and I’m still standing! Withdrawal symptoms aren’t too extreme although worrying about going off the pills has made me slightly anxious… My next goal is to get off the Citalopram. None of these drugs has kept me from getting my work done. In fact, I’m just as insanely busy as ever, even though many people think I don’t do anything since I enjoy my work so much.

I’ve realized through this experience that it’s not nice to make fun of depressed or neurotic people. Someday you might be one. Or perhaps you already are one but nobody has told you yet. Maybe the reason I’m telling you this is so that you realize that missionaries are more human than heroic. The Gladys Aylwards and David Livingstones are out there. And they’re the ones that have inspirational biographies written about them. But I think there are just as many Mary Moffats hitting the bottle, and Dorothy Careys going quietly crazy behind closed doors while living overseas. Maybe that’s why most missionaries I know love the unflattering depiction of the missionary family in The Poisonwood Bible. We recognize ourselves in the naive assumptions, disappointed hopes and unexpected conversions that fill that book. Incarnational living requires “going native” before the mystery of the gospel is fully revealed. Maybe that’s why in Nyungwe, crazy people are called, Wana wa Mulungu, children of God.