From Despair into Healing: Workbook for Spiritual Change

By Pauline E. Doty

Pauline Doty presents her story and faith, sharing hope and the power of transforming love. This kind of faith leads to transformed lives and transformed communities. Doty shares questions and answers that have been a part of her journey with faith, mental illness, #metoo grief, and losses. This book will renew your personal faith in a loving God, and grow your loving relationships with yourself and others.
Doty connects with an audience that includes all believers and all who live with doubts and questions. All seekers for peace, hope, and truth in our divided America will find stimulating and helpful dialogue with the hard questions. She lends confidence that God (by many names and revelations) goes with and before us, all ways and always.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781665550116

Pauline E. Doty

Pauline Doty grew up in rural Crown Point, Indiana. She is oldest of seven children. In sophomore year of college, she suffered a mental breakdown and was able to get the help she needed. In the next year, she made gains in her healing and recovery journey, and her vocation goals changed from nursing to pastoral care and counseling. At Anderson University (Anderson, Indiana), Chicago Theological Seminary (MDiv), and Columbia Theological Seminary (ThM), she studied theology, philosophy, pastoral care, and counseling, integrating her work as chaplain with her own psychotherapy and healing journey. Pauline has been a certified Pastoral Care Specialist with American Association of Pastoral Counselors. She is retired member of the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education. (AAPC merged with ACPE in 2019). Her graduate thesis was completed for Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia, 1987: Responding to Persons in Despair; A Process Theology of Hope for Pastoral Care and Counseling. Attentive to faith issues and questions in the midst of crisis, loss, illness, tragedy, and mental health issues, Pauline has served in counseling and service programs, hospitals, hospice, homes, and homeless shelters. She is committed to overcoming divisions and prejudice caused by racism, mental illness, poverty, and homophobia. She has been a member of Church of God (Anderson, IN), Presbyterian, USA, and United Methodist congregations. Pauline is a certified NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Connections and Peer to Peer facilitator. She leads Forgiveness/Spirituality groups, NAMI Connections support groups, and provides peer counseling. Pauline lives in Columbia, South Carolina with her cat, Majesty.

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From Despair

Into Healing

Workbook for Spiritual Change

Pauline E. Doty

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and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/31/2022

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5017-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-5011-6 (e)

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Unless otherwise designated, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised

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Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Dedication

I dedicate this book to my nieces and nephews: Jennifer, Glenn, Melissa, Stephanie, Nathan, Zach, Angela, Andrew, Joel, Zach, Stephen, Grace, Ben, Faith, Tim, and Charity. The world is changing fast, and so much can make you fearful and question if there is a loving God or faith community to believe in, to invest in. This book is my gift to you: keep searching, keep loving – yourself and others. God is with you, guiding you into the mystery and to deep experiences of faith, compassion, healing, joy, and peace as you share your gifts with the world.

I am deeply grateful for all Rev. John Jeffrey Auer, III, gave to me, sharing with me his faith, affirmations, and loving friendship. He knew about pushing on through physical and emotional pain and loss with the transforming power of love, faith, and forgiveness. He always believed I could write one more book. Now from heaven, he is a guiding angel.

PRAISE FOR FROM DESPAIR INTO HEALING:

Workbook for Spiritual Change

Pauline Doty surprised me with a book that is able to reach both theologians, readers with Biblical foundations, and also seekers who are trying to make sense of a world that frequently jumps off the tracks. Traveling with trouble darkens the way we see the highway ahead of us. Pauline’s early years ditched her hope for good mental health. A healthy theology taught her how to swim with the Gators. Her book, however, is a genuine revelation of the faith that is guiding her from trouble into a life that lifts the present into a promising future. She weaves sensitive life experiences with our own personal and global issues that leave us with a tapestry torn and in need of repair. Thinkers like Tutu, Whitehead, and Nouwen undergird her life’s view which can stand on its own. Choosing to follow Pauline’s thoughtful guidance will close the gap between brokenness and forgiveness. What an encouraging book! At last, someone is giving us clear Biblical theology to help us love one another."

–Bob Walkup, Author, Presbyterian Minister, Adventurer

Pauline Doty invites the reader into the innermost parts of her life journey. I am so impressed with her transparency and truth in sharing her story. It is a truth that is so seldom shared. It brings hope to those who have suffered from deep hopelessness and despair. All too often folks who have experienced mental illness feel the isolation that they are the only ones. Her writing reaches out with arms of welcoming love and care to all who have suffered. Doty’s willingness to speak honestly about her life experience coupled with her astute scholarship provide a rich reading experience for scholar and novice alike. As an added benefit, Doty poses searching questions for reader’s reflection. This book provides inspiration, Hope, and a rare opportunity for spiritual formation in the midst of hopelessness, loss, and darkness.

–Robby Carroll, MDiv, LMFT

Shallowford Family Counseling Center, Atlanta, Georgia

Pauline Doty’s story and theology is an important contribution to persons in despair, dealing with mental health issues, and for all who are finding their way through loss and times of transition and recovery. Her healing vision for individuals, relationships, systems, and governments will give hope to many in our divided America. The pages of this book offer healing, consolation, and hope to all readers thereof.

–Peggy Ann Griffin, EdD

Author, Christian Educator, Civil Rights Advocate, Chicago, Illinois

Having been classmates of Pauline’s, I and others were expecting that she would do wonderful things in her life. She did not disappoint. I’ve twice read this and her first book. Her courage, tenacity, and ability show through in both works. I’ll be purchasing a copy for my church’s library. Wonderful!

–Terry Paarlberg

For the past five years, Pauline Doty’s amazing and priceless friendship and gentle guidance have gotten me into the habit of recalling pertinent and often healing and encouraging Scripture verses that apply to my current situation. Her prayers and loving support have often come at just the right time. Today I had the courage to venture out for a bike ride by myself. I have seldom done this, even on this seemingly safe route due to my experiencing PTSD related symptoms in the past. Today I feel so hopeful for the future, and I hope and pray that all of you will read this book with an open mind, knowing that God is good, and God has tremendous things in store for your life. You will find Pauline’s testimony and wisdom for the healing and recovery journey a tremendous help. Release yourself to the Lord, surrender. God is working for the good in every detail.

–Agnes Vargo, Retired Teacher, Entomologist, Disaster Preparedness Coordinator, Childhood Healthy Living (CHL) – Sleep Specialist, Grandma, Friend, Columbia, SC

This is a very frank and candid book by Pauline. What she has experienced in her life can only help people with suffering and mental illness! Her reflections give the reader a way to work through their own mental illness. For people who do not suffer from illnesses of this kind, her book gives insight into these conditions so that family and friends can better understand symptoms. As she says, life is a journey. Hers inspires us!

–Mark Holloway, NAMI, Peer to Peer Support

Mt. Vernon, Washington

Note: On February 6, 2022, three weeks after Mark sent this endorsement, he died following a brief illness, at age 52. His death was very unexpected and so hard to hear. I grieve and give thanks for our dear friendship. I’m very grateful for his support for this book and my first book. Mark’s legacy of courage and loving advocacy lives on. He is now a part of my cloud of witnesses helping me to continue the work of my healing and recovery, sharing and teaching Transforming Love, building Beloved Community.

I am impressed by the sensitivity of her presentation of the ideas of Whitehead and others in his ‘process’ tradition. She represents this position with scholarly accuracy but also with literary skill and personal appropriation. Hence her work is of value not only to scholars but also more widely to a lay audience.

–John B. Cobb, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology

Contents

1:     Introduction To My Story

2:     Overcoming Despair

3:     Transforming Fear Into Faith

4:     My Journey – Whispers Of Love

5:     God And Evil

6:     My Journey – Amazing Grace

7:     Everlastingness And Life After Death

8:     My Journey – Echoes Of Mercy

9:     Bringing Hope To Our Future

10:   Loving Others, Loving Ourselves

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION TO MY STORY

A year ago, I wrote in my journal as I reflected on my words to some classmates from high school. I had shared a longer post on Facebook.

(9/14/20) I was working on chapters for my new book. I had more sadness and depression last evening and this morning. I’m not sure what it all means. Taking time for more journaling, some right food, some exercises, some shopping.

With you from CPHS, I confess I can make comparisons, and feel less than even though I have two graduate degrees, and in many ways my life has had so much blessing and good fortune. In Crown Point years, our family of nine lived in a very small house that I was ashamed of. And I never felt good enough to be with the in crowd, even when my grades were good enough to be accepted into the National Honor Society. In my senior year, I gained so much weight.

Someone wrote a few days ago how the challenges for dialogue and conversation now don’t respond to our best efforts, and concluded: we are up shit creek with a rubber paddle.

Yes, I agree with the shit creek, but I do think we have more than rubber paddles. Even though on many days we have to do some intentional work, and spend time building our collaboration in our communities of support, to be able to Jump into Hope. Even to see Hope. As Valarie Kaur has asked: Is this the darkness of the tomb? Or is it the darkness of the Womb? And it is both!

About my life journey? Yes, I’ve had a lot of shit creeks to be in the middle of, to paddle through. And I thank God that in every year, with every loss or crisis, I’ve had some right paddles to help me keep on moving through. My paddles were/are: a faith in God of redeeming love, caring family, pastors, very special friendships with women and men, church communities for meaningful worship and activities, music/gospel songs, counseling with expert therapists often, always studying and learning, and overall good physical health. I have so much to be grateful for. Even though on some mornings/days, I’m too good at complaining.

A year later, and a book now ready for publishing, I want to write about my Hope. It has been another year of much learning, hours still of grieving and processing old losses, remembering the shit creeks of my life. I have more peace, more ability to move into my gratitude. I’m clear about my life and my calling. I’m clear about the purpose of writing this book.

Like most can say in the mix of COVID, and so much that distresses me in the news, sometimes there is resistance in me to focus on the positives, even though I know how much brain help and spiritual value there is to practice and meditate on Gratitude. However, this day I can affirm: my life and my testimony are shared in this book with conviction that the love, gratitude, and truth expressed in my story will support profound healing and transforming Love.

I share my journey with faith and forgiving, with prayers of gratitude for how God has brought me through all my 73 years. I join with all who work to bring forward peacemaking collaborations and healing paths for Truth and Reconciliation processes and commissions in our communities. We pray to reimagine a new America, a new world. I celebrate Valarie Kaur with the Revolutionary Love Project and Learning Hub. Rev. Jonathan Tremaine Thomas with Civil Righteousness. And Rev. William J. Barber, II, with Repairers of the Breach and the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Many urgently work for an America where racism ends and Beloved Community thrives for all.

Brian W. Grant was Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy at Christian Theological Seminary, Indianapolis, Indiana, and he published Schizophrenia, A Source of Social Insight.¹ I found this book after my acute mental illness and hospitalization. It helped me to put my illness and my spiritual searching in perspective. Grant’s interpretation affirmed my experience. He proposed his theory: many ideas present in the illness show up and often are crucial problems needing attention in society, in families, in our theology, and faith interpretations.

Grant concluded that acute mental illness is the person’s mental and spiritual attempt to find and make solutions. Often religious faith plays in the symbols and messages of the person’s delusions, visions, hallucinations, obsessions, and altered state of reality. This was true for me at twenty years old in the Spring of 1969.

In my psychotic state, I had visions of Jesus, and I thought I was a part of God’s plan to fix the world and help bring humankind to a time of peace. In that year our country was fighting a terrible war in Vietnam.

For sure our Christian theology teaches, yes, all of us are part of the answer. We are called to surrender to God’s will, to seek guidance for our vocation, and to make a difference in the world for good. We are called to be peacemakers and children of the light.

However, as we take on our work for making a difference in the world, we often see that our brokenness keeps us vulnerable. We pray and struggle to keep our confidence and peace, face to face with the presence of evil, loss, brokenness in relationships, despair, mental health issues, and mistakes.

When I began studying theology and philosophy, my personal suffering and mental illness experience were at the heart of my inquiry. I needed answers, and I wanted to find and be a part of the answer: How to provide hope for the world, and hope for persons suffering with acute mental illness and all the pain and tragedy – the reality of this much evil and violence in the world, this much evil in my world.

It is almost fifty-three years now since I bottomed out with acute mental illness, brain illness. My tears come again as I pray with a friend, and thank God for the Grace that has helped me to heal, recover, and forgive in all these years. Yes, my story is in the category of miracle, when I consider where I was at twenty. I can claim and share my testimony of so much Amazing Grace and so much healing in my recovery.

In January 2020, we could not have imagined we would come to this Very Different time in our United States and world history. We are in the middle of the Coronavirus Pandemic, now with a new COVID variant, and there have been many protests around mask mandates, vaccines, and tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and others. The passions and themes of my life – personal and relationship healing, forgiveness, peacemaking, mental health issues, and Christian faith – are very relevant to these crises of COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, mass shootings, immigration, camping at borders, racism, and police department reform.

I am a believer in Jesus the Christ who taught us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves and to put down our swords. I share stories from my life with my journey of forgiving and being forgiven. I pray for everyone to make and keep commitments to your own healing process, to nonviolence, and Revolutionary Love.² I invite you to join the path of reimagining and creating a world free from all forms of violence. I write to express confidence in the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the power of the resurrection to bring Healing and Hope.

The Blessing Prayer of Rev. Barnes

In the fall of 1948, Mother and Dad were anticipating my birth. Rev. W. E. Barnes from Havana, Cuba, visited my parents while traveling through the States and getting acquainted with Church of God congregations. Upon his return, he wrote my parents a very thoughtful letter expressing appreciation for the time he shared with them. He wrote a special blessing prayer for me. I have saved that original letter that my mother saved. I found it one day in the bottom drawer of her dresser where she saved important papers. I was born October 17, 1948, and named for both of my grandmothers, Pauline, Paulina, and Elisabeth or Lizzie.

Rev. Barnes wrote: (I’ve copied the capital letters and underlining as he typed the letter.)

November 24, 1948

My Dear Brother and Sister Doty:

The pleasure is mine this evening to GREET you from Cuba, in the Precious Name of Jesus Christ, our Blessed Lord and Savior. And I pray God’s Divine grace ever be your PORTION all through life.

God Bless dear little Pauline. God bless her dear parents, and may it please our Gracious Father in heaven to bestow His blessings for all time upon this dear baby, the baby I believe with all my heart that will be consecrated to our Lord, for SERVICE. And I pray in like manner that it will please God to grant to give the needed wisdom to guide this dear child so that in the after years, parents and others may look back to this time and thank God for such a baby. So many rejoiced here and I want you to know dear Christian friends, that many prayers have been offered for parents and child. I hope baby and mother, are doing nicely at this time. And I do share the joy with you. Praise God. May it grow in the NURTURE and ADMONITION of the Lord.³

It feels special now to hold this letter, typed 73 years ago, on a typewriter in Cuba, and to read this blessing message and prayer from Pastor Barnes. He typed a long letter reflecting on his visit to the States and made this comment on race, racism, and Jim Crow realities – how things were in 1948:

I know I shall be profited here by the inspiration gained in America. Of course, I saw things and conditions I did not like—and I suppose you too, have seen so much you do not like BUT summing up everything we just have to say there are some things that none of us could ever hope to set right. God Himself understands about such so we should do and act as He told, What is that to thee, follow thou Me. That should be our goal, regardless of how people may act and do, ours to follow the Lord Jesus Christ all the way. By the grace of God I shall do that and do commend you dear ones to the same.⁴

I thank God for all the prayers and love that have been shared with me in every year of my life. I go back to this letter and feel that Rev. Barnes’ visit and his blessing prayers and letter were part of the loving grace on my birth, childhood, and my life, giving me strength and courage when I endured abuse, mental illness, #metoo, and unjust terminations.

This gift of a black minister in Cuba praying for me even before I was born was my touch of Beloved Community embracing me. It connects with how I would grow up and move to Gary, Indiana, then to Chicago, then to Atlanta, and share in the worship, work, ministry, and gifts of multi-racial churches and communities. My Beloved Community would keep growing and provide colleague support and precious friendships. I participated in the civil rights movement in Chicago at Operation PUSH in rallies, marches, and weekly Saturday meetings. I learned the stories of African Americans as I listened in long conversations. The depth of trust I was privileged to receive and share gave me spiritual sisters and brothers wherever I lived.

I believe God is Love, who saves, creates, re-creates, and incarnates herself—himself—in every moment of the world’s and persons’ becoming. Love is the fundamental meaning of Jesus the Christ in the world, as we struggle with challenges for personal faith, as we grieve losses, and experience transformation and healing in the mix of tragedies, illness, and brokenness in relationships.

In the spring of 1975, I was a student at Chicago Theological Seminary working to complete the Master of Divinity degree. I took the required Position Paper Seminar and finally completed and handed in the required Position Paper. In framing my position for ministry, I wrote about my experience of going through and overcoming my time of acute mental illness just six years earlier. As I reflected on my life and my intended ministry, I knew I had a very heart-felt connection with the wonderful gospel song, Amazing Grace. "I once was lost,