Extreme Makeover: Bipolar Edition
A guy from my church gave me a set of DVDs on Sunday. He said that when he saw them it made him think about me. Since I went back to work this week I haven’t had time to sit down and watch them until now… and I guess I should’ve waited and watched them on a day when I hadn’t taken hydrocodone. I overdid it at work today and I was in pain when I came home so I took a pill to take the edge off the pain. Those things make me sleepy… so maybe the speaker wasn’t as bad as I thought he was. I was tired (and we all know how cranky I am when I’m tired) and I kept wishing that he would get to a point… any point. It was a struggle to keep my eyes open and I was getting frustrated. Kinda like staff meeting frustrated.
Yet, I really wanted to hear what he had to say because the topic is one of my major passions. He was talking about discovering how God made you so that you could walk effectively according to your “DESIGN.” If you’ve been following my blog for a while you might have read the series I did on “Knowing Your DESIGN.”
My church does this workshop to help you discover how God wired you up by looking at your Desires, Experiences, Spiritual Gifts, Individual Style, Growth Stage, and Natural abilities. That way you don’t waste time spinning your wheels doing things you were never designed to do. I did that workshop and realized that I don’t like working with children. They push all of Bipolar Girl’s buttons and lead to gnarly depressed episodes. Shortly thereafter I quit my job as an elementary school teacher (I’d been a teacher for eleven years), and it was the best thing I’d EVER done. I still teach, but I don’t teach children and I LOVE my job… even when it’s pushing my buttons. Finding out how I was wired changed my life, so I really wanted to hear what this guy had to say even if it took him forever to get to his point.
He started out with an illustration that really had an impact on me. He talked about “Extreme Makeover: Home 
Edition” and how he saw this family’s crummy home go from being a dump to a home designed specifically with each of them and their needs and desires in mind. The home was designed to help them function optimally as a family. He said that God was in the business of doing extreme makeovers and since my life is an extreme makeover in the process, he had me at “Hello.” I wanted to hear more, but my eyes just weren’t cooperating. The speaker wasn’t cooperating either. He just would not get straight to the point. I had to force my eyes to stay open because every now and then he’d slip in something really fascinating.
Like when he said that this makeover took time and that it happened in the church. Not “a” church. He was talking about the Church… the entire body of believers… people living in community, living lives authentically. Since I passionately believe in the subject matter, my passion for the topic overcame my desire to sleep. I watched the video all the way through the first lesson. When I’m not tired I will watch the first lesson again because, despite my issues with long winded people who won’t get to the point, I really want to know what stage of the makeover I’m in so that I can go on to fully walk in the way that God designed me.
Before coming to know Jesus I was a mentally ill woman trapped in a very dark place. I’m intelligent, creative, and talented, but my mental illness stopped me from using those attributes to the fullest. Jesus didn’t just bulldoze the house and start over. He has been in the process of doing an extreme makeover on me for the past 18 years. Over time I went from having some vague unidentified mental illness to being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. From there I went from being a surly loner to being willing to attend church. And it has been through the church… that God has renovated so many parts of my life so that I’m finally at a point where I can participate in community. I want to live my life authentically with other people… but it took people to get me to this point in the first place. The makeover did not happen in isolation. The Bipolar Bubble was not like the Bat Cave. And even when I hid out in my Bipolar Bubble God sent a few brave souls to knock on the door and keep knocking until I let them in.
The point the speaker seemed to be making was that extreme makeovers happen when people put people first. We are designed so that we can use our talents, gifts, and abilities to help transform the lives of other people. He said there were basically three reasons why people like extreme makeovers and when I heard those reasons I thought about my own life and what extreme makeover means to me. There’s four more DVDs so I sense another one of my series coming, so this is a good place to break as any. It’s 9pm and I’m beat. Time to take my lithium and go to bed.
Why We Like Extreme Makeovers:
- We like to see positive change. (People keep coming up to me and telling me how much I’ve changed in the last year).
- We are curious about the skill of the person responsible for the change. (In my case, people are amazed at what God has done in me).
- We all want to have an extreme makeover in some area of our own lives. (God has delivered me from my struggle with Bipolar. Now I want him to deliver me from my struggle with my sexual addiction. I want the door closed on that part of my life for good).
I’m sure there was more in the video that I’ll pick up when I watch it again, but I figure that’s enough for now. I used to think God was NEVER going to change me. Year after year after year I’d beg him to change me, sometimes to the point of being suicidal. It is by the grace of God that I never gave up hope in him or I’d be dead now. No matter how bad it got, there was always the hope that he would hear my prayers and do an extreme makeover in my life. Now that I’ve seen all of the changes that Jesus has made in my life… I have absolutely no doubt that “he who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it.”
