Battling Spiritual Discipline - My Trip to India

"I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn’t resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing a saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes. After that I liked jazz music. Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn’t resolve. But that was before any of this happened." - Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz

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Head pounding, mouth dry, throat tied in knots; a knot to hold back tears, but also a knot to hold back my own vomit. I hadn't slept a wink in three days, and I'd been wearing sunglasses for two of them just so the lights wouldn't be so bright. I was sick as a dog, especially since I had made it back to Oklahoma (no thanks to John Jameson).

"Did you have fun?!"

"Did you have an AMAZING trip?!"

"Do you think you'll ever go back?!"

All of these questions pounded into my ears like guilty cannons of disappointment, anger, heartbreak, and confusion. Friendly church-goers meant well with so much love, but every inquisition drove me closer and closer to the edge of spiritual, mental, and physical insanity. Everything I thought I knew about life, love, and spirituality had come to a screeching halt, yet at the same time it wouldn't stop moving at full speed ahead.

"How the hell did I end up here?" is all I could think. I was angry at God, angry at my friends, angry at the church, the world, myself, and my throbbing hangover.

The front row seat of the church's sanctuary felt colder than rock bottom. Staring bitterly into the eyes of an infinite God was horrifying. Right before the moment of breaking, four leaders in my church approached me in between services. Immediately after sitting down, this wonderful man of God, Justin, asked me a question.

"What's wrong, brother?"

Three words. I could only say three words before the wall I was building around myself came crashing to the ground.

"I need help."

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I had been in India for three or four days, if I remember correctly. Somewhere in the slums of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, I stepped my dizzied little body out of the car and into the dusty, hot, soggy night air. The sun had just set for the evening but my day wasn't close to over.

We weaved our way through the alleys, past buildings stacked atop buildings, up three flights of stairs, and into a space smaller than my bedroom where a group of women and children were congregated. We had church. We had church because that's what church is. We had church in a small place where sweat was dripping from my forehead, and every prayer was a cry of desperation for at least a fragment of hope in life.

Other than the natural effects of jet lag, and the weak stomach I had been filling with completely foreign food, I had been doing well up to this point. Tired? Exhausted. Still emotionally stable? Absolutely. Would I remain that way for long? If 30 minutes is a long time, then you got it.

Once the service ended, we prayed for all the church members. Being the young buck I am, I was involuntarily nominated as the minister to pray over all the children who needed it. As I came before The Lord and began to talk to Him about the two kids in front of me, my heart wandered down into a deep cavern I don't often go. I can't exactly point my finger on what that place is, but it's somewhere my mind, heart, and spirit go to be painfully disciplined.

It was there I sat face to face with an infinite God, majestic in all ways, worthy of all reverence and sacrifice. I looked at the children - weak, vulnerable, broken - then I looked back at God, with holy fire burning in His eyes, and tears began to well up in mine.

"Father... Ten years from now, these children won't remember me or my prayers for a moment. Ten years from now, where will they be? Ten years from now, will they even know who You are?"

"Son, ten years from now, I will remember everything you bring to me. Even them, even you, even your prayers."

Suddenly I whirled back into the realm of physical reality and finished my prayers for each child that came forward. The service had ended for the evening, but as I've said before, my day wasn't close to over.

We went on our merry way, down the three flights of stairs, and back into the cluttered streets. Even though I had felt a spiritual weight for the entire nation since the moment we arrived in India, I found it becoming heavier; I found the weight descending onto my heart just like the stairs I was descending myself.

This was the moment that was burned into my mind with searing, unforgettable vividness.

An elderly woman came limping towards us, grabbing onto any surface that could be used as a temporary crutch to get her joyful little self farther along. With a big smile on her face, she greeted us, praised The Lord, and shook our hands. After we were introduced, I was told that this woman has a very bad case of Parkinson's disease. She could no longer walk and spent most of her time crawling on her hands and knees. The people on the team I was with proceeded to tell me that she lives less than a block from the church we just came from, and that she attends every service, taking over an hour each trip just to crawl her way there.

A woman so broken, with so much less than I will ever have, had more hope than I have ever known.

To think that I have, even once, groaned about the fact that I "had to go to church" early on a Sunday morning made me sick. The fact that, for most of my life, I have given God nothing but a half-assed sacrifice began lumping up in my throat.

Finally, lyrics to a song by Joe Day forcefully made their way into my mind, as if the floodgates of spiritual discipline had come crashing down.

"Oh my soul, Oh my Jesus. Judas sold you for thirty, I’d have done it for less. Oh my soul, Oh my Savior. Peter denied you three times, I have denied you more."

The woman gave me a smile with authentic joy stretching from ear to ear, and I returned the gesture with a smile a half size too small. I had to walk away. I had to.

We made our way to the car, went to dinner, and went back to the house to sleep. There weren't many words out of my mouth for the rest of the night, nor did I sleep many hours. Every time I shut my eyes, I could only see the faces of children who had nothing, the woman helplessly crawling her way to church, the smile stretching from ear to ear.

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We had so many experiences while in India, I could write blog after blog after blog about them. We met three young men from Burma who attended the Bible college we worked in for a few days. They traveled on foot for fifteen days to get to Chennai, just to be taught about The Lord. They had a passion to be equipped, know more about God's goodness, and then walk fifteen days back to Burma to plant churches.

I had the opportunity to teach worship songs to orphans in a remote village outside of Vijayawada. They had so much joy in their hearts. Even though they had no father, they were content because they had been adopted by the true Father.

Leading worship was what I did most there. Twenty-one times in the first seven days of the trip, to be exact. By the end of the first week, my voice was getting weaker and weaker.

We prayed for people who were sick, people who were hurt, and people who were oppressed by demons. We saw incredible things happen, we saw demons flee, and we saw faith that transcended anything I've ever seen here in America.

We spent days in a village called Thonglong. It rests peacefully in the mountains of Manipur, and it is populated by people with the kindest hearts you'll ever meet.

We spent days in Delhi, where we visited churches in the slums again. The same heart-wrenching things I experienced in Chennai were there as well. Yet the same hope I saw in the woman with Parkinson's, I saw in the children as we told them about Christ.

Hope is rising in India. Revival is shaking the ground.

In the midst of the incredible ways God was proving Himself, I was sinking deeper into depression than I had in a long time. My anxiety problems caused me to get sick, motion sickness overwhelmed me every single time we got in the car, the lack of sleep tore me down every day, and the spiritual weight of the entire nation was getting heavier. I am very sensitive to the emotional, spiritual, and physical pain of others. Sometimes to a point that it affects my physical body by feeling the pain they feel, or by getting wildly sick in less than a minute.

For those of you who don't know me very well, or have never heard my testimony, I have been battling deep depression since childhood.

For those of you who have the spiritual gift of discernment, you probably have an idea of what kind of spiritual weight I was feeling.

The majority of people in India are Hindu. Their religion consists of hundreds of deities that they worship, some of them being big rocks in the middle of their villages. The people of India have been under an incredible amount of spiritual oppression for longer than your mind can even begin to imagine.

The weight became heavier. It opened old wounds. Something inside of me died.

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Think about Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. As a child, and as a man, he sees things no man should ever have to see; he experiences things no child should ever have to go through. But without those things, he would have never become the man that he is. Batman would not exist. Lives wouldn't be saved. Lives wouldn't be changed.

I've told a few of my close friends about how I feel as if something inside of me died in India. They ask what, and I can't seem to point my finger on it. All I know is that, whatever it was, it's going to help me become the man I was made to be. Even though it hurts, the old phrase still rings true: What doesn't kill you makes your stronger.

On my fifth day in India, I wrote a journal entry that reads: God, I never asked for this. I never wanted to come here. All I want to do is go home.

I remember everything about writing that. I remember the anger inside of me, the hopelessness, the apathy, the exhaustion. I was mad because I had a life back home. I was involved in leadership at my church, I had a girlfriend, I had an awesome group of friends, I was genuinely enjoying my life for the first time since I was a child. I had a spoken word ministry that was finally getting off the ground. It was all about my own selfish ambitions. Part of it was genuine because I never had a heart for overseas missions, and I was frustrated because God was using me back home and I felt uselessly depressed in India. Frustration, confusion, and selfishness don't mix well, my friends.

In Delhi, the last destination of our trip, I spent two of the three days in bed or on the toilet. I became very depressed while I was there, and I got so sick that I had to come back to the US a week early.

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I was staring at a small screen less than two feet away from my face for over twenty hours. Many of those I spent crying, for many reasons I didn't even know. I just couldn't stop. I couldn't stop crying in the same way life wouldn't stop moving forward, and in the same way the plane home wouldn't stop flying.

I watched some of my favorite movies, like Monster's University and 500 Days of Summer. The latter probably wasn't the best choice, seeing as I was already an emotional wreck.

I could go into detail about the flight home and the terminals and what not, but there's nothing interesting about airport security.

We landed in Dallas, TX on October 18th. My dad and I met my mom and my girlfriend in the airport, and I couldn't have been happier to be home. The first thing I had to do was eat a cheeseburger.

We made it back to my hometown by the time the sun had gone down. I got my bags, got my car, and headed back to Oklahoma City. I couldn't wait to see those city lights.

Before I even made it out of Pauls Valley (my hometown), my girlfriend broke it off. Like, hey, if India wasn't hard enough, here's a kick in the face to make it all better.

The weight became heavier. It opened old wounds. Something inside of me died.

Anger welled up inside of me, stronger than it had in years. The word "anger" doesn't even begin to do justice to the wreaking hatred that infected everything inside of me. I was enraged with God, my girlfriend, myself, India, America, Oklahoma, and life.

I wrote a piece called "Eyes" while processing through some of these things. They read: The doubt of a Creator, and the anger towards a Savior drive me to the bottle that makes me wish I could save her.

I wanted to doubt God, but I couldn't. Something kept drawing me back to center saying that maybe God is the author of this. Maybe I'm supposed to go through this to grow up. Because I needed to grow up. I needed to quit being the child I refused to die to.

I made it to my house and had a surprisingly good night. I hung out with my brother and my cousin. We watched Bob's Burgers (my favorite cartoon), talked, laughed, and just had a good time. I spent the night forgetting. Most of the night, at least.

By 2:30 AM, my mind and I were the only two still awake. I began to cry again, so I went outside. I started to pray. My prayer started to get angry. I threw a chair across the yard and broke it. I yelled at God. I yelled at myself. I was backsliding into my old habits of self-harm that I battled for four years during high school.

To quote my prayer verbatim, I'll use the eerily similar line from The Lion King: You said you'd always be there for me! But you're not. It's because of me. It's my fault. It's my fault.

Feeling depressed, unworthy, and abandoned, I blamed it all on myself instead of trusting that God had a plan.

The rest of the night is a blur. At some point, which I don't remember, I made the decision to drink an impressive amount of alcohol. I remember that I couldn't really see anymore. The fact that I found my way to the bathroom was a miracle in itself.

At about 4:00 AM, my brother found me in the kitchen floor, slobbering drunk, playing my guitar and singing.

I remember a few of the conversations we had while I was throwing up, but even though I'm being honest with you guys, those conversations will remain in that bathroom for the rest of my life.

I passed out around 6:00 AM and woke up a few hours later, still drunk and incredibly hungover. I tried to call some friends to see if someone would hang out with me, but I couldn't get a hold of anybody. I didn't need to be alone in my house.

Early that afternoon, a couple of friends came by and picked me up. We went to their house, carved pumpkins, talked, laughed, and had a great time. Even though I was miserably sick, I had a great day.

To end it, The Lord punched me in the spiritual face and we watched The Lion King.

I so badly want to go into detail about how The Lord spoke to me that night, but my words will fall short. Instead, I'll have you watch the clip from The Lion King that God used to wreck my already broken world:

I had forgotten who I was in God, and in that, I had completely forgotten God.

"Oh yes, the past can hurt. But the from way I see it, you can either run from it, or... learn from it."

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Here we are, back in the opening scene.

Head pounding, mouth dry, throat tied in knots; a knot to hold back tears, but also a knot to hold back my own vomit. I hadn't slept a wink in three days, and I'd been wearing sunglasses for two of them just so the lights wouldn't be so bright. I was sick as a dog, especially since I had made it back to Oklahoma (no thanks to John Jameson).

"Did you have fun?!"

"Did you have an AMAZING trip?!"

"Do you think you'll ever go back?!"

All of these questions pounded into my ears like guilty cannons of disappointment, anger, heartbreak, and confusion. Friendly church-goers meant well with so much love, but every inquisition drove me closer and closer to the edge of spiritual, mental, and physical insanity. Everything I thought I knew about life, love, and spirituality had come to a screeching halt, yet at the same time it wouldn't stop moving at full speed ahead.

"How the hell did I end up here?" is all I could think. I was angry at God, angry at my friends, angry at the church, the world, myself, and my throbbing hangover.

The front row seat of the church's sanctuary felt colder than rock bottom. Staring bitterly into the eyes of an infinite God was horrifying. Right before the moment of breaking, four leaders in my church approached me in between services. Immediately after sitting down, this wonderful man of God, Justin, asked me a question.

"What's wrong, brother?"

Three words. I could only say three words before the wall I was building around myself came crashing to the ground.

"I need help."

And help is what I got.

For two weeks after that, I battled the thought of suicide for the first time in months. I smoked cigarettes like there was no tomorrow. I was incredibly bitter about everything. But the most important thing is, I didn't go about it alone.

One of the biggest misconceptions we have as Christians is that all we need is God. This is true to and extent. God is all we need for salvation. God is all we need for eternal life. God where we find our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. But God is not all we need in this life. To say that is not only wrong, but a slap in God's face. We need people. God has blessed us with community, friends, brothers. Why would we ever take such a thing for granted?

The people in my life, the people in my church, showed me a beautiful picture of Christ-like love. When I opened up to them about everything, and I mean everything, they could have pushed me away. But that's not a Christian. That's a group of people claiming to walk in the steps of Jesus, but condemn the people who need Him most. They were Christians, because Christians are like Christ. They helped me through my depression and my anxiety. They helped me find a job. They found a new counselor for me. They reached out to me when I wouldn't reach out to them. They found a new place for me to live. They told me that I wasn't alone. They showed me that I wasn't alone. They helped me regain clarity in my identity. I am a son of God. They helped me realize that God is the author of all things, even the hard stuff. Not to hurt me in a malicious way, but so that I could become a better man. Just like Job went through horrific things, but came out of them as one of the most honorable men of God who ever lived.

In light of India, I think every Christian should experience missions overseas. I don't think it's a sin if you don't do it, by any means. But I think that your faith will be radically transformed if you do. I saw an incredible image of brotherhood while I was there, and it only continued when I came home.

The weight became lighter. Old wounds began to heal. Something inside of me came to life.

- Dylan Black

"Sometimes I tell myself not to think about you, Lord, or even mention your name. But your message burns in my heart and bones, and I cannot keep silent." (Jeremiah 20:9)