SHRINKS & STORIES [F, 2-6-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Psychology of An Old Man—SHRINKS & STORIES [F, 2-6-26]

 

My therapist, Sharon, told me she was exhausted by the end of each of our sessions. “I have to work harder with you than with all my other patients combined,” she said. I mistook that as a compliment.

Just as I had mistaken Helen’s statement for a compliment when she said, “You have often mystified me, sometimes worried me, and occasionally terrified me, but never bored me.” I didn’t realize that she was really saying, “I like boredom. Please don’t mystify, worry, and terrify me.”

Neither did I understand that Sharon was not complimenting me on my verbal nimbleness in avoiding how I felt about dying, by saying that I was better at hiding than all her other patients combined, but really saying, “WTH? How come I have to work so hard with you? Get with the program. You’re here to deal with stuff, not avoid it.”

Actually, she did say that. She wasn’t as polite as Helen. She got tired of being so tired with me, and so grabbed my feet and dragged them to the fire.

My first oncologist said I’d be dead in a year or two. At least, that’s what I heard. [1] Quite a few people, including the bishop, informed me that our insurance would pay for me to go to a shrink as part of the treatment for cancer. [2] There seemed to be a whole lot of people who wanted me to go to a shrink. They didn’t say it, but there was an implied “at last.”

The problem was that to get ready to die, I had to look at my life, and I didn’t want to do that. Plato said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But what did he know? Little Jack Horner did no self-examination. He sat in a corner all by himself, and he got a plum in his pie. Eating pie is a lot better than examining your life. Sharon didn’t understand that.

 

During the years that I was both surviving cancer and still pastoring a church, I became, by default, a shrink for children, not just children in our church, but in the whole town. I had no training as a child therapist, but people knew I liked kids, and my fee was zero. At one time I was seeing kids in every grade from third through tenth. Oh, and a preschooler when his grandfather was dying.

Pastors are supposed to be counselors of a sort--speaking personal words of encouragement and comfort--and we get enough education in what is called “pastoral care” to be truly dangerous. I wasn’t particularly dangerous, though, because I was so bad at it. If someone said, “My wife doesn’t understand me,” I was inclined to say things like, “That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. What’s to understand? Get over yourself. Stop examining your life and eat some pie.”

It was different with children. They didn’t say stupid things. They told stories to me--stories of monsters and magic plants, by little kids, stories of yearning and anxiety by bigger kids--and I told stories to them. Then we took the stories we had told each other and wrote new stories together.

My first oncologist was wrong about the “one to two years.” I’m now a 36 year cancer survivor. Plato is dead. So is my first oncologist. Sharon has retired, exhausted. And I’m eating pie and telling stories.

That’s what Sharon really did for me; she listened to my stories, and helped me write new ones. It’s only the untold story and the uneaten pie that aren’t worth living.

John Robert McFarland

1] You can read more about this in my NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE.

2] Technically I think “shrink” is reserved for psychiatrists, and Sharon was a psychologist. And I was just a story-teller.