Blogger and former psychiatrist Adrian Warnock is hosting a “broad conversation about faith and mental illness” and last week I responded to his question about the way my own faith community has historically viewed mental illness, and how my own faith shapes my views of it. This week Warnock touches on the very sensitive subject of suicide.

Research suggests that religious faith protects against suicide. Why do you think that is in light of how your community responds to suicide? How can we tread the fine line of discouraging suicide while not making the grief of family members worse?

In my 20+ years as a believer, I have found it very difficult to nail down what Christians truly believe about salvation, let alone suicide. There are Christians who believe in “once saved always saved” theology – there is nothing you can do to lose your salvation, short of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and even fewer Christians seem to know what that means. There is another set of Christians who believe that if you renounce your faith and walk away from God, you absolutely can lose your faith. I can only assume that ending your life – which, if you believe in Christ, is no longer yours but His – would fit into the category of renouncing your faith and walking away from God to this particular group of Christians.

I don’t believe religious faith protects against suicide in every case. Certainly, for many it does. But mental illness isn’t really about faith, and that’s why this conversation is happening and why this blog exists in the first place. Wow, don’t you wish you could just believe yourself out of faulty brain? Lots of people seem to think you can – ha, if only!

My official stance on this issue is simple: I’d rather not find out. But God knows the difference between someone who just decides to abandon Truth and someone who is truly afflicted with mental illness and can’t choose.

Here in Christian America, we love telling people that God has a “wonderful purpose” for their lives.
We gloss over the parts of the Bible where it says, “Things on earth are going to be really crappy. Hang in there.” It’s easier to witness to people that way. People want to hear how wonderful things are going to be. It’s harder to win souls by saying, “You will be miserable sometimes, and God doesn’t always seem to answer prayer, but He loves you so much.” So we highlight the balloons and rainbows and pretend everything is great, until reality happens. Then we struggle with a good answer because we insisted on giving a bogus one at the beginning.

On my deepest, darkest days I have never wanted a slap on the back and a promise that God has great things for me.
I want acknowledgement that things suck. I want someone to admit they don’t have the answers to my questions. It doesn’t make life seem hopeless to me, it makes it seem tangible. It lets me know that I am not alone and that I am not the only person who is not pooping Skittles right now. I want to hear “I love you” and I want someone to sit with me in the quiet. Paint a picture for me of how lives would change for the worse if I took my own. Make me laugh. Read the Word to me. God never promised an easy life, but there are so many beautiful promises in that book. Remind me of them.

That’s how you discourage suicide AND comfort a grieving family.
And you tell those people that God knows… God knows a broken mind and a troubled heart, and His grace is big enough to cover and forgive both.

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Mothers Day is a touchy holiday for some people. I know it was for me.
I didn’t always get along with my mother and, actually, there was a time in my life when I wanted to disappear without a trace because I was sick of all the fighting and painful feelings. But that was many years ago and now I have a pretty good relationship with Mom. It’s not perfect, but no relationship is. I’m just happy that we are friends and as my mother ages, my instinct is to draw closer rather than run away.

When I told my parents that I’d been diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, I knew it wasn’t going to go well. I knew the conversation was going to tank. I thought about not telling them at all, but it seemed like such a big thing to skip over. I didn’t want one of them to read about it before I told them about it, either. As I expected, they didn’t believe it at first. They didn’t even believe that BP was a real disease. You pulled yourself up by the bootstraps and dealt with life, you didn’t give it a scientific-sounding name and take a pill for it – that was for weaklings! For years, the topic would never have come up had I not brought it up myself, and when I did, my mother did everything she could to steer the conversation in another direction.

I’ve never wanted to be a mental health evangelist, believe it or not. I believe the Lord tried very hard for many years to get me to write and speak about it, but I wanted nothing to do with it. I especially didn’t want to be the mental health evangelist in my family because it was so frustrating and disheartening. I just wanted my family to understand it and have my back, and I wasn’t sure that would ever happen. Ah, but relationships are about compromise, aren’t they? If you go into any relationship thinking you can change somebody, you will be sorely disappointed.

Sometimes, you have to trade understanding for acceptance. That’s what has happened in my family. I’m not holding out for my 70-something parents to become mental health experts. I know that when my mother hears depression in my voice, she’s going to tell me to smile and “cheer up” even though I can’t. It’s irritating sometimes, but I can handle it because they don’t pretend that nothing is wrong anymore. They actually use the words “Bipolar Disorder” now. It’s not just “my problem” or “my ups and downs.” No more arguments over the necessity of medication, either.

I’m sure so many of you have been in my position – you have a family that doesn’t get it and I’m sure a lot of them have no intention of opening their minds. That sucks, and I understand how you feel. I want to encourage you to be brave and to be willing to talk about your illness, but I also understand that sometimes it’s too exhausting. Being misunderstood and dismissed doesn’t help mental illness. So, if you’re in a good place and you’re feeling strong enough, be open about your struggles. Consider acceptance a blessing, and don’t plunge yourself into a darker place by insisting that everyone understand it as well as you do.

If there are people in your life who refuse to open their minds, don’t lose yours trying to convert them. Your prayers are stronger than your words, and sometimes the best way to drive home the point that you are legitimately ill is to back away during “sick times.”

As I get older, I realize more and more that the word “family” has many definitions. Sometimes you must build your own. You must find people that rally around you and embrace you for every bit of who you are. It’s not about your loved ones “getting it” – it’s about their willingness to try to.

Incidentally, that’s what I want for the Church, too. Churches doesn’t have to be full-service psychiatric care centers, they just have to be filled with people who are trying to understand and want to make a difference.

Find a group of caring, open ears and be honest about who you are.
If you don’t find it on the first try, pack up and set your circus down elsewhere. God will never leave you an orphan.

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Woman refusing to listen image available from Shutterstock.

The Mental Health Grace Alliance published a blog post last week entitled 3 Frustrations of Mental Health and the Church; 3 Ways to Re:Think Church.

The post covers:

Spiritual Stigma
unfortunately, pastoral staff members grow frustrated when they don’t understand why their ministry methods are not working.  In response, they unknowingly go into “religious default” mode, which places the blame on the individual, rather than the ministry. Like Job’s friends, it’s assumed that this hardship/ problem is due to the individual’s sin, weak faith, or demonic oppression.  Then, the church often backs away.  One pastor was dealing with a person diagnosed with a mood disorder.  When the pastor didn’t see it go away, he said, “It’s because the sin issues of his youth are finally catching up with him … he just needs to will himself into better choices.”

This is the “biggie” that so many of us deal with. Sometimes it prevents us from seeking help because we already know what the reaction from others is going to be. In my case, these were things I believed about myself, but I didn’t realize other Christians would accuse me of them. How I was naive enough not to think that I will never understand. I have come to realize that I was never accused of deliberate sin or of being a bad person; when someone takes this angle with me, it implies that I have not surrendered my all to God. There is something I must be holding back from Him, and that is why I continue to struggle with emotional problems.

Spiritual Fix or Miracles … often times pastoral support will prescribe biblical counseling and intense discipleship to “overcome” or see “breakthrough”. Some will even insist on “deliverance” ministry or an intensive “inner-healing” ministry designed for immediate breakthrough. The idea is to have the individual do more constructive bible study, prayer, and intensive ministry for an immediate “breakthrough” to “overcome” … to “fix” everything. It forces the individual to “pray” or “believe” harder for a miracle breakthrough. We believe God can do the impossible, not us. For many this method doesn’t work and, in fact, it can make things worse. I helped one person with a debilitating anxiety disorder move away from a popular devotional that implied working hard to “overcome” would fix problems and produce positive results.  The devotional warned, “If you fret you deserve what you get”.

This is where the author of this post and I part ways in our beliefs, albeit momentarily.
Inner-healing ministries can be incredibly effective tools for helping someone with emotional problems. Here is my reasoning:

1. You can be mentally ill and have other issues that need to be addressed. A broken or abused childhood, family addiction, lies you have come to believe about yourself (i.e., you are worthless, hopeless, beyond God’s redemption), and those are things that can sometimes be remedied through the help of these types of ministries.

2. The Bible tells us to pray for healing, to believe in healing, and pray without ceasing. We must be careful not to assume that if God doesn’t cure us of mental illness that our prayers are ineffective. We must also be careful not to merely survive with mental illness without seeking or hoping for God’s healing.

3. Just like people with mental illness can greatly benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy – which essentially teaches you how to retrain your thoughts and react to things in a healthier way – these ministries can help people retrain their thoughts on God, on who they are IN God, and can give them to tools to respond in a more God-honoring way to temptation and stimuli.

Warning: It’s really important for people who support someone with mental illness to make sure they are entering the right type of ministry and that they are working with the right types of people. Our church, for example, runs an inner-healing ministry, but it acknowledges mental illness and the importance of proper medication management and professional mental health support. Run, do not walk, the person away from a ministry that does not. Similarly, we need to be wary of ministry leaders who themselves encourage others to stop following doctor’s orders when it comes to mental health treatment. That is a disaster (and a lawsuit) waiting to happen.

Spiritual Steps … along the spiritual fix and miracles it is often viewed that this can be accomplished by a series of ministry “steps”. These are excellent ministry tools to address many emotional issues, BUT with someone with a mental health difficulty dealing with intense symptoms, unfortunately these inner-healing, or counseling, “steps” bring more confusion coupled with self-doubt. Many are left feeling they have failed the church and God. I’ve heard this from many, “I’m so frustrated with my church and God, I’m thinking of completely giving up on both”.

Again, this is why we have to be careful about ministry leaders. Celebrate Recovery – a Christian 12-step recovery group I have mentioned here before – utilizes “spiritual steps” but the ministry itself also acknowledged mental illness and the importance of correct treatment. Rick Warren, one of the group’s founders, lost a son to mental illness recently and would tell you himself how important it is to connect the two. But CR doesn’t really keep tabs on their leaders, per-se’, so the wrong leader with the wrong ideas can easily lead members down the wrong path. Having said that, someone who is confident in the fact that mental illness is really an illness and not a spiritual or personality flaw that needs to be fixed can get a great deal of useful information and support from these ministries.

REST vs. WORKS … instead of looking for fault and prescribing lots of work, let’s lead struggling individuals to rest. It is out of REST that we find comfort and strength. It is from REST we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, not vice versa (Philippians 4.13). We focus on validating their condition and take a simple approach that affirms their identity and recognizes key characteristics of God’s comfort and compassion. When we suffer, God doesn’t say, “Work harder and try to find Me … and if you do enough I will come to you”. Jesus came to us and He says, “Come to me … I will give you REST for your soul” all the while reaffirming gentleness and ease (Matthew 11.28-30).

But let us also support those who WANT to take steps to find out if this is really ALL mental illness, or if there are other issues at work that need to be resolved. We must be ready to support AND guide those we love who have mental illness in their journey, whatever that might look like. We must never assume that because God has not healed something now, that means he doesn’t want to heal it in the future.

What are your thoughts? Drop me an email or discuss on Twitter.

Old white church photo available from Shutterstock

My friend, Amy Simpson, passed this along to me and today I want to pass it along to all of you.

From blogger and former psychiatrist Adrian Warnock:

The people who run Patheos have asked me to host a broad conversation about Mental Health including bloggers from across Patheos and beyond. You are invited to contribute by answering the question below any time this week. There are also two more questions which will follow.

Bloggers are asked to join in the discussion and answer the questions as they are posted. The first question is:

How has your religious community historically seen mental illness? – And how does your faith, today, shape the way you see mental illness?

Christians don’t have a good track record when it comes to mental illness. We used to assume that mental illness was nothing more than demon possession, and we banned people from church attendance and treated them like the devil itself. In all fairness, humanity, in general, does not have a great track record when it comes to mental illness. People fear what they don’t understand. But the fact that Christians’ reaction to people exhibiting confusing behavior was to treat them like yesterday’s trash is heart-wrenching and pathetic.

Understanding and acceptance has been a slow process for the Christian church. It still seems that while there have been major steps forward in most of society, the church continues to lag behind. Old habits die hard, old fears even harder. There are concepts in the Bible that have been twisted used to push mentally ill believers away (driving a herd of demon-filled pigs off of a cliff does not mean that’s how we should all respond to people with schizophrenia, and hopefully if you’re reading this you don’t believe that.)

My own church is a wonderful place that is on-board with modern-day medicine. They run a theophostic prayer ministry that I attended for some time, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover they believed not only in the existence of mental illness, but in treatment. No pigs careening off a cliff for me. My church believes in the healing power of the Holy Spirit, but also believe that healing takes many forms.

This, of course, does not mean that every single member of the congregation falls in line. There is still backwards thinking and there are still people who are afraid to let go of their death-grip on the belief that a saved heart is a perpetually happy heart, and that anyone who lacks joy or self-control is a spiritual weenie. They mean well, they’re just wrong. That’s the problem with churches – there’s always someone around to make it imperfect. I’m hoping that years from now, those people will really be the exception and not the rule. I’m praying that enough of us will speak up and insist on education and understanding that we will start driving those ideas out of the pews. Rome wasn’t build in a day, though.

But those people were not the reason I accepted Jesus as my Savior. It was the persistent kindness of Christians who loved me that drew me in and convinced me that this Christ was good and loving, never harsh or demanding. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned those people ran a ministry for people with mental illness, but when I found out it said so much to me… That was how Jesus was, and that’s how I wanted to be.

I am a woman who has made many mistakes in life, some of them because of my Bipolar Disorder. I never sensed that God got impatient with me, or was ready to give up on me because I couldn’t be happy enough, or because I was manic and couldn’t always think sensibly. What kind of God tells His believers that if they don’t hurry up and be happy, He’s leaving? We’re not toddlers sitting in front of a pile of green beans that we refuse to eat.

The God I serve sometimes heals the sick and other times sustains them, but there is nowhere in the Bible where He holds a disease against one of His children. He lifts them up with gentleness and mercy. That’s exactly what I believe that we, as Christians, need to do for people with mental illness. So I suppose my view of a gentle Jesus has given me a gentle view of mental illness, and suffering with mental illness has given me a gentle view of Jesus.

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Many praying photo available from Shutterstock

Sorry for the week-long break, guys. I was not feeling well most of last week, so a hope round-up is a great way to start a fresh blogging cycle! First up…

Study: Believing in God Helps Treat Mental Health Disorders
I love it when science proves something I already know. A study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders says that people who believe in a “higher power” were more likely to see positive results from treatment. Researchers studied people with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety and other disorders and found that “those who expressed believing in God between “moderate” and “high” had better chances of responding well to treatment, while those who said the do not believe in God or only believe in him slightly had a doubled risk of not responding to treatment.”

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It’s a little late for Wednesday’s Hope Round-Up, but this story gave me a lot of hope: Rick Warren wants what we all want – to urge educators, lawmakers, healthcare professionals, and church congregations to raise the awareness and lower the stigma of mental illness … and support the families that deal with mental illness on a daily basis.

As you may know, Rick Warren’s son, Matthew, committed suicide on April 5 after a long battle with mental illness. Anytime someone uses their personal pain to ease the pain of others, its a reason to celebrate and have hope.

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Me, Linda (my friend & Shaunti’s staff director), and Shaunti

Keep reading – I’m giving someone a free copy of For Women Only by Shaunti Feldhahn at the end of this post.

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I’m sitting here listening to the season’s first thunderstorm, and I have all of my windows open because I can’t get enough of the sweet-smelling breeze that’s brushing my face. The power is flickering on and off, so I wanted to post a few items of interest before I have to rummage for my candles and my internet gets zapped.

I’ve decided to start a weekly list of helpful and encouraging links, and since it’s Wednesday and that’s as good a day as any to make a list, I’m going to call it Wednesday’s Hope Round-Up! This first list is a great one, I have to say.

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This afternoon I found out that Pastor Rick Warren’s youngest son committed suicide and my heart just broke. (Rick Warren is one of the founders of Celebrate Recovery, a Christ-centered 12-step group I mentioned in my last post.) I was struck by the contrast between the joy I felt earlier in the day and the despair that young man must have felt in his last moments.

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Everyone found out about the sexual abuse on my birthday.

A handful of energetic fifth-graders had gathered at my house for a slumber party. Man, my parents always hated those. Probably every parent who has ever experienced a sleep-over can understand why. The rented movies went unwatched; the girls were more interested in playing Truth or Dare. At some point, my mother said it was time to be quiet and go to sleep, but we never did that. We just giggled as quietly as we could inside our sleeping bags.

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