What is OCD?
In his book A Quiet Mind to Suffer With, John Andrew Bryant describes OCD like this:
In telling people what it’s like to have OCD, I often tell them to imagine they had a friend who has seen every moment of their life, who walked every step with them. Who shared all of the tenderness and mystery of it.
And to imagine that friend suddenly began to lie and torture you.
The Siren came alive speaking, as it always did, in tones both intimate and catastrophic. Turning the world into what it isn’t. Telling me things that were very ugly, very secret, very tender. With an urgency and a condemnation that was not possible. With an excruciating, impossible plausibility. Filling me with that kind of dumbstruck, awe-filled dread: the unique devastation of the disorder. (270–71)
What can be done about it? Listen to Christ our life and walk with him as we take his life upon ours.
You have my life. And the only thing that matters is my life. But you do not have it by argument, by feeling, by effort, by circumstance. You can have all of it. And it’s the only real life the is. But you only have it by trust and frailty. (274)
Trust and Frailty
John Andrew Bryant was a six-foot-seven man looking to pastor an Anglican Church when his OCD and invasive thoughts landed him in the psych ward. This book is about his journey through his trial with OCD, possible reason for it, and how he could appreciate life on the other side. But it is more than just some guy’s story. It is his journey with the Christ who never left him. It showcases him learning how “the Lord had not committed Himself to my plans. The Lord had committed Himself to me,” and then for us to learn that the Lord does that for all of us (179).
He learned to do what the disciples should have learned on that dingy boat in the middle of the storm, that storm where Jesus slept while the disciples were being destroyed. “They were supposed to point themselves toward the silent Christ. They were to be changed by the Mercy they waited on. The Mercy who looked at them and said, ‘Don’t you trust me?’” (184).
His lesson that this life is about union with the Christ who is always there walking alongside us.
“Because life is not a bunch of stuff to figure out. Life is not What Should Happen or What Could Happen. It is not the mind’s intimidation or the body’s anticipation. Life is Someone you are with. And I am the Someone you are with” (187).
This book is hard to define. It doesn’t quite move chronologically, so it took me a while to get my bearings. It isn’t “tidy,” so to speak. Why does he have OCD? What is OCD? What does his look like? How did he get better? Did he? These answers come in due time, but the focus isn’t on all the facts—dates, places, churches, etc. rather it’s about a man who lost his mind, his church, and his career, who experienced trauma and spiritual abuse, and yet who clung to Christ (or perhaps more often realized how he was carried by Christ). We are thrown into some of the chaos and mess that Bryant went through. In doing so hopefully you will realize the same thing about your life that he did about his—that his life was just the sort of mess that only Jesus gets to sort out (245).
A Quiet Mind to Suffer With is divided into four parts and comes with a glossary of terms. This glossary is important because Bryant has a lot of terms he gives to what has happened to him. Terms like the siren (Bryant’s OCD), the realm of ceaseless cognition (the network of compulsions serving as a way to deal with the OCD), the howling boy (the soul that has experienced OCD and trauma), and the strangers (what the body, mind, and soul become to us when we suffer) aren’t self-explanatory. You’ll want to refer back to this repeatedly because many of these terms have their own aliases throughout the book.
Recommended?
I know one person who has been diagnosed as having OCD (and not just people who are quirky), but I don’t know what her experience with it has been. If what Bryant describes is even related to what all people with OCD experience, this is an invaluable book for the Christian suffering with their mental illness, as well as being a good way to point unbelievers to Christ.
Memory needs a shepherd. Otherwise it has tremendous power to deform. It has been my experience that only Christ knows what to do with Memory, how to shepherd and consecrate it by His Word. Only He can make it transfigure us. We cannot make these things holy. Christ knows this. Only He can make these horrible things a way that we are seen and safe and fed and become ourselves again. (33)
Lagniappe
- Author: John Andrew Bryant
- Paperback: 293 pages
- Publisher: Lexham Press (September 13, 2023)
Buy it on Amazon or from Lexham Press
Disclosure: I received this book free from Lexham Press. The opinions I have expressed are my own, and I was not required to write a positive review. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_03/16cfr255_03.html.
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