Fight Club

I am quite literally in a fight with my brain this morning. This has got to be exactly what St. Paul meant when he said, “take every thought captive,” (2 Cor 10:5) because everything I’m reading, doing, or thinking is pissing me off or making me cry or both. This is a sure sign of my headlong plunge into depression. I know this sounds creepy, but it’s like I’ve been taken over and I hate it. All the usual remedies are not working. I’ve tried leaning into it. I want to leave the house, but it’s cold and I don’t have the car. I tried getting on to Facebook, but that was a really bad idea.

I clearly needed a complete game changer. I knew I should get off Facebook, because it usually does nothing but rile me up, but I just couldn’t stop myself from answering one more reply to my status update about being irritable, and looking at my notifications just one.more.time.

But this time, I was glad I did, because I found a post by my internet “friend” Calah. She had been at sixes and sevens yesterday over a new video by Italy’s singing nun, Sister Cristina, who is covering, for her first single, Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” I didn’t watch the video yesterday. First, because I decided to leave the house, and second, because I thought it would be stupid. I’m not usually a fan of covers and all I could think of was “train wreck in a habit.” Not good.

So, when Calah posted about it this morning, I decided to see what she had written. Interestingly, she had linked to another blogger and so I went ahead and followed, because whenever Calah says something makes her cry, it’s worth it.

The blogger opened her post by insisting that we probably wouldn’t understand her opinion if we hadn’t seen the video. So, reluctantly, I clicked it.

[su_youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0e8Uve7cJU”]

Wow. Big surprise. Like I said on Facebook, whether you find a nun singing Madonna creepy or cool, the video is visually amazing. The cinematography is stunning, and Sister’s version of this song was beautiful. She clearly means every single word she’s saying, applies it to Jesus, and yet doesn’t come off as a “religious nut-job,” even though she is in a habit

It was exactly the game changing moment I needed.

This doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it works wonders. It has to be a big, dramatic event, like when the SWAT team finally came and shut down the meth lab in our neighborhood. And then, it’s like a computer reboot for my brain. I haven’t found a way to manufacture experiences like this or I would.

I certainly couldn’t have predicted that it would have been this video.