Attachments by Tim Clinton

Author:Tim Clinton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

9

TAMING EMOTIONAL STORMS

Conquering Depression, Anxiety, Anger, and Grief

Love can be angry . . . with a kind of anger in which there is no gall, like the dove’s and not the raven’s.

—SAINT AUGUSTINE

Joe was at the pinnacle of his career. Just one year ago, at age fifty-five, he had become the CEO of a prestigious insurance company. His children were grown and married, and he and his wife had five beautiful grandchildren who loved to come and spend the night on weekends. His wife was a lovely, gracious woman who loved him and supported his every effort. They owned a stately colonial home near his work and also had a glorious lake house in the mountains where they retreated with family and friends every month or so. Joe had always walked closely to the Lord and was very active in a local Presbyterian church. But recently Joe sat in a miserable, nervous heap on our floral sofa, barely able to make eye contact with either of us.

About a year after landing his new job, Joe became riddled with panic attacks. He had tried a number of medications but was overly sensitive to the side effects. His wife had urged him (in fact, she had insisted) that he see a therapist.

Joe’s story was a tragic one. He had grown up on a dairy farm in Indiana. He remembers his dad as a hardworking man, devoted to his family and the farm, always putting in no less than fifteen-hour days every day of the week, even Sundays. But he always made some time for his kids too. Then when Joe was nine years old, his dad had died of a heart attack right in front of Joe while stacking hay in the barn. He was fifty-five years old.

Joe was left feeling helpless and was never able to grieve because he inherited much of the responsibility of the farm. He spent the rest of his life trying to forget what had happened. But he lived in the spirit of his father’s footsteps: hard work, devotion to a cause, and love of the family.

Five years ago, Joe’s mother had also died of a heart attack. He remembers being in the hospital room with her, alone, waiting for the rest of the family to arrive. She had undergone relatively minor surgery, and the doctors expected her to recover rapidly and return home in a couple of days. She was a bit drowsy from the pain medication but was able to talk. Then suddenly she became sick to her stomach and started to vomit. Joe called for a nurse, and within a few minutes his mother was unconscious. The nurses asked him to leave, and while he was in the waiting room he could hear on the overhead speaker, “Code blue, post-op recovery. Code blue, post-op recovery.”

“I just remember standing there in that little waiting room,” he told us. “My head was spinning with confusion. It felt like I wasn’t there, like I was standing outside myself, looking at myself and the room around me.

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