"On Getting Out of Bed" by Alan Noble. A Review

 

When it comes to family members or friends going through a significant mental crisis, or suffering, we often can feel like we’re fumbling about to help them. Sometimes, we can become like Job’s friends, whom he had to call “miserable comforters” (Job 16:2). But very recently Alan Noble, assistant professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee Oklahoma, and cofounder and editor-in-chief of “Christ and Pop Culture” penned a deeply beautiful 120-page hardback that addresses mental affliction. “On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living” is written for those who struggle with mental affliction, but also pastors, teachers, parents, and loved ones, to “help them understand their loved one’s suffering. It is for anyone who ever struggles to get out of bed” (3). I finished this book earlier this week, and kept finding myself saying, “Finally! Someone gets it!”

Eight chapters fill up this handy manual. They run through several subjects, like not sounding like Job’s friends, the love affair we have with techniques, the sometimes unrealistic expectation that our mental illness or infirmity is a treatable condition, the value of our actions even when we feel burdened by the “monotonous grind of chronic mental suffering” (62), sometimes being in love with our suffering, the important vocation of loving others while walking through mental illness, and the role of the world and devil and flesh as they press in on us in these dark times. But thrumming it’s way through this book like a theme song, are Noble’s words, “If you take away one truth, the one thing in this book I know with certainty, let it be this: your life is a good gift from a loving God, even when subjectively it doesn’t feel good or like a gift, and even when you doubt that God is loving. Please get out of bed anyway” (3).

I could spend pages quoting the author because much of what he describes sounds like it is coming from the heart and life and grief of one who lives inside mental suffering of some sort. It’s real, in the sense of authentic. And it’s not sugarcoated or syrupy. But it also doesn’t wallow in misery. For example, “Remember this: tremendous suffering is the normal experience of being in this world. Beauty and love and joy are normal too, but so is suffering” (27). Or, “Living with mental illness looks a lot like falling into the same hole day after day. It’s mundane and awful and tedious and inexplicable to those around you. It gets old fast” (63).

And yet there is hope aplenty in the work. Gospel hope. “This is not stoicism but an acknowledgment that an essential part of life is bearing with suffering with the knowledge that suffering does not have the final say” (57). And the reason we know that suffering doesn’t have the final say is because the eternal Son of God who became fully human and walked days-on-end through anguish and suffering, defeated that suffering through his death and resurrection, and on the appointed day, will bring us from grief to glory. There is an expiration date on all of our suffering!

For me, personally, the heart of the book is found in it’s center pages. Noble states, “Sometimes the best we can do is make the choice to act as if life is a gift. That honors God. And if we make a practice of it, a practice of defying anxiety and depression by getting out of bed and just giving a few moments of silent prayer of thanks for this life that maybe we loathe – that pleases God. It gives hope to people you don’t even know. In time you’ll start to feel it, too, and if you don’t, at least you did what was right” (60). In my copy of the book, that is underlined numerous times!

Whether you have ever waded through the murky and muddy waters of mental misery or not, “On Getting Out of Bed” is a must read. If you want to be a real help to others, you need this volume. If you’re in over your head now with mental grief, you need to take up this work and read through it. If you have walked through a dark season and are presently on the other side, you will find this volume beautifully beneficial. I seriously and gladly recommend the book.

My thanks to IVP for sending me the review copy of this book, at my request. They made no demands, held no one hostage, harmed no animals. All they asked is for my honest evaluation which I have made and given to you.