I didn’t make it.  All of the pent up pressure (much of it self-imposed), all of the uncertainties, the burn out I was feeling over ministry at the time – despite the best efforts of one of the best pastors I’ve ever worked with – pulled some sort of trigger somewhere and everything fell apart.  Or more to the point, I fell apart while everyone else kept on going.

I was just finishing a sermon when it all came crashing down.  Not my sermon.  Me.  I came crashing down.

I remember the moment exactly.  Sunday morning, Parkerville Baptist Church, 2005.  It was the morning of the church open day.  It was a hive of activity.  A buzz.  Marquees, tents, food, drinks, performances.  And me, standing there like a zombie in the midst of it all.

I was wrapping up my sermon.  Encouraging God’s people to keep going until the last day.  I was making reference to a great bloke I know sitting at the back of Parkerville Baptist Church who had become a Christian in the recent past. And I remember what I was saying.  I was saying how one day Jesus will look at my mate Max and say “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  

And then I heard the crack.  An audible snap like an elastic band.  Okay I don’t know if I actually heard it, but I felt like I heard it.  Did anyone else hear it?  It seemed so loud, so final, so brittle. One thing is for sure, I knew it had gone.  Knew I had gone. The ping of something finally letting go inside me.  There was a pause, a moment of still, then the whole lot came slithering down and crash, bang walloped into the pit of my diaphragm.

I staggered off the stage, blind with tears.  Not even sure if anyone noticed.   I sat in the front row and heaved and heaved and heaved, but couldn’t feel like I was getting any breath.  And the tears started to flow.  And kept on flowing for about a week.

I thought I was going to make it.  In the weeks leading up to this I  felt like Homer Simpson going across Springfield Gorge on Bart’s skateboard.  You know the classic episode.

I didn’t make it.  All of the pent up pressure (much of it self-imposed), all of the uncertainties, the burn out I was feeling over ministry at the time – despite the best efforts of one of the best pastors I’ve ever worked with – pulled some sort of trigger somewhere and everything fell apart.  Or more to the point, I fell apart while everyone else kept on going.

Even on that Sunday, as everyone rushed off to sort out the church open day, and people make coffee and tea, I could sense things going on around me, while I looked out of me – or at least the shell of me – in what my friend – a psychiatrist – called a “catatonic state’.

In fact it was that friend who noticed it, who led me like the blinded Saul by the hand to my office where all I could do was sit and cry.  And cry.  And cry.   Jill came in.  My lovely wife, a clinical psychologist.  Concerned and upset all at once.  And on I cried.

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