A photograph reveals God's love for me

by Marja Bergen

I had spent two years doing photography part-time for the community newspaper when I came up with the idea for a project. At the school my son attended, physically and mentally challenged children had been integrated with healthy ones. I noticed how some of the able-bodied students went out of their way to befriend those with disabilities. My neighbor even told me how one young girl drew pictures and wrote poems for one of them on a regular basis.

With permission of the school board, the principal and parents, I spent several lunch hours in the playground documenting the relationships among the children. I had to carry out my work with care, not letting the children suspect why I was taking pictures. Although most news photographs are set up, the pictures I was looking for had to be candid and truthful authentic expressions of love.

Towards the end of my third lunch hour, I took a break to chat with the principal. That's when the moment I had been looking for came. A few feet away, a young girl bent over a boy in a wheelchair. With an expression of love, she gave full attention to the boy. The cerebral-palsied child could only make gurgling sounds. This did not stop the two from communicating. The girl repeated similar sounds back to him, and in this way they talked. Real words were not needed to express their friendship. After a while, she straightened up, squeezed his hand and smiled down at him with a look of encouragement before running off to play with other friends.

Fortunately, my camera was ready. I stopped my conversation mid-sentence and moved forward a few steps, quickly capturing several frames of this intimate exchange. I hadn't dreamed I would be able to capture images so exquisite or meaningful! When I developed the pictures and saw they had turned out well, I was ecstatic. The school board used them in a newsletter to city residents, and the newspaper used some others taken during those days. Both publications ran stories with the photos. That series of pictures did something to me. For a long time I didn't know what it was. In the months following, I gave a number of presentations about my work to groups of photographers. As I did so, I discussed my enlarged prints, each one in turn, explaining why I took the picture and what it meant to me. This was easy. I was never at a loss for words when talking about my pictures. But each time I came to the images of the girl and boy in the schoolyard, I couldn't speak. Instead, tears welled up in my eyes, and I was left mumbling something unintelligible.

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Around this time, I began to search for God. I was doing a lot of photography that surprised and overwhelmed me. This elevated me into a manic state. I had trouble staying together. My mind and body could not find rest. I had survived many periods of mental anguish, but this time I wished for more help than medications and personal willpower could offer. I was exhausted and wanted very much to let go instead of holding on.

I gradually decided to re-evaluate my resistance to God. Was there something to this Christian faith after all? Wouldn't it be wonderful if it were all true! I wanted to find out. I needed the kind of help they said God could give. I needed an end to the turmoil in my head. I wanted peace.

What made me so interested in discovering expressions of love in that playground? Why did those pictures move me so? I can now see that through those pictures and others I took around that time, Christ revealed himself to me. He was knocking on my door. In that girl's face, I found the love of Jesus. And subconsciously I saw myself as the child in the wheelchair.

Today I realize I don't make my photographs solely by my own efforts. When I seek God daily with an open and sincere heart, God's spirit is present in all my creative work. (Excerpt from her latest book 'A Firm Place to Stand')

Marja Bergen has lived with bipolar disorder for over forty years. Her mission is to dispel the lingering stigma attached to mental health conditions and to encourage people to lovingly welcome the sufferers into congregations by understanding them better and supporting them in practical ways. She is the author of Riding the Roller Coaster (Northstone, 1999) and a just-released book, A Firm Place to Stand: Finding Meaning in a Life with Bipolar Disorder (Word Alive). Marja is the founder of the growing faith-based support group, Living Room (http://www.livingroomsupport.org). Check her website at http://www.marjabergen.com.

August 28/2008