Being WISE: Mental Health and the Church

 I have been meaning to get back to this blog for a year now. I guess a sermon is as good of a place to start as any. Sermon, testimony, confession, call to hope. It begins with John Roedel's poem that caught my attention a few weeks ago and is fed by my work with the UCC Mental Health Network's initiative fostering welcoming, inclusive, supportive, and engaged (WISE) concern for mental health within the church. 

Being WISE: Mental Health and the Church

August 18, 2024 – Community Church of Durham

 

“Patchwork Heart”

Vulnerability doesn’t mean telling others what happened to us

from across a cafe table or from behind a microphone

     and then going home from the experience

feeling just as alone as you did before

vulnerability means allowing your human heart blanket

to get sewn to other heart blankets

it’s about connection

we don’t share for status

we do it for synergy

we don’t confess for clout

we do it to build community

we tell our tale

to invite others

to tell theirs

it’s the sacred cycle

of storytelling

we gather in a circle of trust and

say “here is my journey”

then we listen to

the other journeys

that are shared

we take space

then we give space

we pour

then we absorb

we speak

then we listen

we are storytellers

then we are witnesses

vulnerability isn’t just about

grave digging in our past

to expose our skeletons

it’s about sewing quilts

here is my patch

here is your patch

here is their patch

here is us

     here is our story

--John Roedel

 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When I was 4 years old and in half day Lutheran kindergarten, my teacher and classmates never heard me utter a single word the entire year. The other kids were convinced I could not speak. My parents recorded me at home on a cassette player and then sent it to kindergarten with me for the teacher to play so the other students could hear me laughing, singing, and talking like any other kid.

Apparently the school told my parents that I could not come back without speaking the next year. I suspect that is an over simplification, but it’s how the story I was told over the years goes. My entire class was invited to my summertime 5^th birthday party which was well-attended – I figured it is because it was a pool party, but my sister who was 11 at the time said they were all whispering and waiting to see if I’d talk or act differently at home.

Somewhere in there I was taken to the local psychiatrist – just once, I think – who told my parents that there was nothing wrong with me that a little discipline with expectations and consequences wouldn’t fix. I spent some time confined to my room for not saying “thank you” when someone gave me something or not speaking when I was expected to speak. And yet, I physically could not make myself say the words despite repeating them over and over in my head. Even just the expectation would paralyze me.

Over the next few years, I would gradually move from whispering in public to short answers when called upon to finally being able to hold conversations with mild effort. I still had moments I would lose my voice when I had to speak to a group – twice – once in high school and once in college – I had to hand off a paper to a classmate to read for me when my voice locked up so badly that I could no longer continue.  I have joked – but, of course, it really wasn’t a joke – that it was like a Fear Factor choice going into my senior year between throwing my GPA so that I wouldn’t have to give the valedictorian speech in front of 1000 people, or continuing to strive forward with straight As in my honors and AP courses because how in the world could I do less than that. Either way was a hell-filled basket of anxiety. And it wasn’t just speaking, of course. Anxiety colored every thought, every decision, often leading to paralysis.

What even that debilitating anxiety could not account for, however, was the shame that accompanied it. I overheard my parents telling an aunt about the psychiatrist visit when I was nine. I had no memory of it. The whole idea of needing to go to a psychiatrist made me feel like something must be very wrong with me, more than I’d already thought.

What broke life-saving chinks in my fear was finding avenues in which I did not feel alone…in which I could share who I was authentically – all that I perceived as bad with all that I hoped was good – to discover I was loved and valued just as I was. That place happened to be the Southern Baptist church where I had grown up. When I was 13, it moved from being a place where I dreaded going with all of the people I would have to face to being a place I was at every time the doors were opened for whatever youth gathering was being held.

It was relationship and faith that saved me. That there was a God who saw all of me, who listened to my prayers, and valued me, and a youth minister who saw potential in me that I could not and encouraged me to find and develop gifts. I gave the youth sermon as a 14 year old on youth Sunday, and my voice did not shake once. I found that when I spoke my truth and felt I had a purpose, my voice was surprisingly strong.

Mental illness, such as debilitating anxiety, does not just disappear though. I would sit on the bed at Brian’s parents’ house as a 22 year old one Sunday night and weep as I watched a 60 minutes episode on Selective Mutism and finally had a name to put with the disabling condition I thought belonged only to me and my weirdness some 18 years earlier. During that period of early adulthood, I started having panic attacks that coincided with a developmentally appropriate crisis of faith, but I didn’t know how to tell people what was going on because they would see me differently!  The faith that had been so grounding for me previously suddenly had come apart in uncertainty, and there was panic. I begin to see the bigger world with all of the uncertainty it held.

I would show up at a Cooperative Baptist church in Charleston, SC, a couple of years later, confessing to the pastor that I wasn’t sure I believed there was a God anymore, that I had more questions than answers, and yet that I could not shake off this call to go to seminary and be a minister despite the fact that my denomination did not believe I was worthy to preach.

He did not tell me I was crazy; instead, he told me answers were overrated and my questions were welcome. Somehow I ended up serving as their youth minister for two years before they would send me off to divinity school. That community loved Brian and me…love in the form of action.

They also challenged me. It was there that I had to wrestle with the long shame I’d associated with therapy as they pointed me in the direction of someone in whose office I could sit and work through so many of the issues that had been binding my voice and fettering my feet. It would take another several years for me to be willing to try out medication that could help address the physiological responses in my body, passed down – I learned as I looked at family stories and lineages –  both genetically and epigenetically. The stigma of weakness, of incompetence somehow associated with needing help, can be very powerful at locking us within our own prison.

Why share this story so publicly and in a sermon, no less? When we destigmatize mental illness, when we name it, we reclaim power that frees. When we share our stories as John Roedel poeticizes so perfectly in “Patchwork Heart”, we normalize human experiences which paralyze us and allow ourselves to receive the support of community that helps us act courageously in the face of our illness…support that empowers us to contribute meaningfully to the world at large. And just as crucially, we empower others, as he says, for “synergy” and to “build community”.

“We take space/then we give space.”

“We are storytellers/we are witnesses”.

 As Brene Brown has so wonderfully disseminated into recent popular culture  -- “vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experience.”

It doesn’t have to be behind a podium, but in conversation as we munch cookies over the fellowship table or in small group sharing of Koinonia as we hear one another and validate experiences shared from that week, stimulated by the reading and discussion – celebrations and disappointments, fears and joys that mark our days.

When my mother died last year, I had a few weeks in which the fog of grief and memories felt like it was binding up my voice and body again, and the community of my Koinonia group was life-giving in grounding me, in reminding me to breathe with our ritual of quiet prayer, in holding a greater story in which I could locate myself. I imagine you too have those stories in which community has been a tether of hope and life when your own mental health has been challenged.

We are currently embarking on the process as a church of becoming WISE certified through the UCC Mental Health Network. WISE stands for Welcoming, Inclusive, Supportive, and Engaged concern about mental health. The current WISE team has had just four members until recently, but we are in the process of growing our numbers as we move forward this year. Our team recently zoomed with our national UCC mentor provided to us through the UCC Mental Health Network and WISE program.

We had previously shared with her all that our church is doing and has done recently – offering grief support groups, providing a home for Friends in Action, this remarkable group of adults with developmental disabilities so that they can engage in meaningful activities together that provide friendship and mental health wellness; Koinonia groups for spiritual growth and community building and mental health wellness; a welcoming place for all siblings who are LGBTQ+ that celebrates who they are—who WE are – and fosters mental health wellness where there has been too much rejection and shame-casting…and on and on we shared with her what we have been doing.

She praised our church’s intentional work and said that to become more WISE and to eventually write a covenant that would reflect our intention of creating a safe space for those in our midst who struggle with mental illness – that what we most need to work on in the coming year is to NAME mental health and to NAME what we do not only in spiritual terms which is good and right, of course, but also in terms of mental health.

Literally using those words – mental health – so that they become comfortable and roll off the tongue for more than just the psychologists, counselors, and social workers sitting among us here.

The stigma of mental health is still so strong not just in our culture but in so many cultures around the world. Somehow we associate any brokenness in mental well-being as weak, unreliable, shameful. And yet, according to the CDC, more than 1 in 5 adults live with a mental illness– a full 20% at any given time. One in 25 live day in and day out with a debilitating chronic mental illness such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, generalized anxiety disorder, or major depression. More than 1 in 5 youth between age 13 and 18 have or will deal with a seriously debilitating mental illness in their lifetime.

We are one another’s neighbors, one another’s pew sharers, one another’s family members and friends, and – while we may know that in a casual passing way – it takes intentional effort to separate out that reality from the shame and the silence we have culturally inherited and attached to it.

It also begs the question – what exactly is the church’s role in mental health? We know that there are churches out there who steer members away from medical treatment, inflicting even more shame and guilt that if you just pray hard enough, read the Bible enough, and live right enough, that you will be healed. But that’s not us – not our church!

On the other hand, some churches draw a sharp line between what is spiritual health and what is mental health, expecting those struggling with mental illness to find a therapist and get the needed treatment outside their doors. Again, not us. Certainly this gets the message right that medication and professional help is good and helpful and that being able to make referrals to the right community resources is essential and life-giving, but is that really all we can do?

I think most of us believe there is a third path – one in which we recognize that the long-held Western idea that psychological development is about the individuation of “Self” as the highest goal, the summit being autonomy and self-sufficiency, is false.  

The gift of women’s studies, specifically Jean Miller and Carol Gilligan’s works and those who followed in their footsteps, has been to offer a psychology of connection. It offers an understanding of mental illness evolving not only from genetics but also those cultural pressures and biases that create or add to mental health unwellness – from rejection of differences, whether that be how we treat the immigrant or the non-gender conforming or the autistic or the homeless person who disrupts our sense of what’s acceptable or whatever group we “other” to those on the margins economically and socially. This psychology of connection then necessitates that what we need is not just to “fix the self”, but to “connect” in ways that are mutual and life-giving.

We are social creatures, even the most introverted among us. We are created for connection, autonomy balanced with interconnectedness. At our healthiest, we need mirroring and reflection, honest listening and places we can receive loving, honest feedback, and places where our gifts and offerings are valued and utilized. When we are struggling with mental health, we need these just as much or more. All of these.

We need to know especially that what we bring to the table, in our struggle and vulnerability, is valued and utilized, even when we fear we have nothing to offer except our brokenness. We may need guidance in where our gifts can best be used at a given time, but that our gifts are welcome is essential.

That is what we celebrate every time we show up with and for one another as the Church. It is not just a sport that we love that binds us or a common affinity for a hobby or practice. There are plenty of groups out there that bring people together for a common purpose. What makes us different is that as a sacred spiritual community, we call out and we name the divine image that we see in one another. We challenge one another to live into that incarnate purpose that the Giver of Life has created in us. In every single one of us.

We, as a community, declare that no one is without value and worth and purpose, no matter what condition they show up in.

This sounds good – like something we can all believe in. But it’s a lot harder to figure out how to implement it when challenges arise, when the homeless person walks in the door, when addiction is part of the equation, when behaviors disrupt status quo, when you are just standing there trying to figure out how to help the person in front of you. And so that’s also what we will be discussing this year as we move through the WISE process. What does it look like to continue creating a place of welcome where we destigmatize mental health issues while providing boundaries that are safe and healthy.

In the excerpt from his letter to the Corinthians which we heard earlier, Paul is speaking to a fairly new congregation that he founded that has been having some struggles in identity, so he spends a lot of time coaching them on disagreements they have been having around whose leadership they belong to and what proper behavior is when they gather and how to actually care for one another with all of these questions.

What I’d like us to consider – don’t you think there were some folks in their midst, adding to the mix, who had mental health issues? It’s impossible there wasn’t, right? It’s not like it’s a new thing, no matter how anachronistically we ascribe it. And yet Paul wades into these discussions and what he says to them is:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable, we bestow the greater honor.

Then he says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

And so what I want to say to us today – to the one suffering right now in our midst with mental illness – you are just as needed and valuable to this community as the one you think has most “got it together.” It doesn’t matter what you think we don’t know. Nothing can change that truth. We need you. We are not the full body without you. You have gifts that only you can give.

And you are not alone. On any given day, one in four of us sitting with you is one who suffers too. Where there is hurt, we want to hurt with you. When there is a moment of health that is hard-won or grace-given or both, we want to rejoice with you.

This is what the church has to offer.  Thanks be to God that we need every single one of us to be the body we are meant to be. It is the truth that gave me hope so many years ago – that you and I – we are not alone. We are loved. We have purpose and make a difference in our world just as we are, as crazy as we feel or think we are or just are.

Amen and Ashe.