4th Sunday in Lent Mental Health Focus March 19th, 2023
During these last two weeks of March, Faith Lilac Way is talking about mental health. Many churches struggle to talk about mental health and mental illness, but it is an important topic, nonetheless. According to NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, in any given year 1 in 5 adults (20%), will face a mental health challenge. With statistics like these it is likely that we have members in our congregation and community who face mental health challenges. You may have a member in your family, a friend, or a colleague who struggles with mental health. Perhaps you have had challenges with your mental health before.
Mental health is also a topic that I am passionate about and as we begin the conversation, I would like to share some of my own mental health journey with you today, as well as where I found God along the way. I believe in the power of sharing stories, and I am at a point in my life now where I can share my experiences. I can even say now that I am thankful for these experiences, though it took a long time to reach this point. At the same time though, it can be a difficult story to share and to hear, so at any time if you feel triggered or need to take a break from listening, it is okay to step out of the room. Self-care is important, so please do what is best for you as I share my story.
I had my first panic attack when I was 6 years old. I was in kindergarten and had the day off from school, so my mom was taking me to a friend’s house. We were driving down the interstate in the family van when we got into a minor car accident. The damage consisted of a dented bumper and some leaked fluid. There were no injuries, and I didn’t even know what had happened at first. But standing on the side of the road and looking at the dented bumper and dripping coolant, something happened to me.
I felt like I was dying, and I really thought I could be. My heart raced and felt like heart palpitations. A deep sense of dread and terror fell upon me, and the world was closing in. My body felt tight and heavy, and I was shaking. I was dizzy and felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t stop crying. I kept trying to scream but it was hard to breathe. No one could console me. I even remember the confusion and fear on the face of the other driver as she and my mom helplessly watched me panic. It was awful.
Unfortunately, as the years went on the panic attacks continued, became more frequent and even more intense. The feeling of dread lived in the pit of my stomach as a part of my daily life, to the point that I often felt physically sick. I would have panic attacks over things such as the weather, being lost, unfamiliar places, or not being able to control something. I could never, ever be left home alone, and even in middle school I would take and hide my mom’s car keys so she couldn’t go anywhere without my knowing. I would have panic attacks at school terrified that no one would be there to pick me up, even though that had never happened before.
My anxiety consumed my life and restricted the life of my family. I couldn’t turn it off or hold it in no matter how hard I tried (and believe me, I really did try!). I would pray constantly asking God to take my fear away, but the anxiety continued, nevertheless. My family couldn’t go out to places like concerts in the park, nor could my mom go out for an evening with friends. My mom tried hard to help me and sometimes she got frustrated, wanting to fix things and not knowing how. Sometimes my sister would get angry at me if we couldn’t do something because of me, and I had fights with friends who didn’t understand why I was afraid. I carried so much guilt and shame. I was in 5th grade the first time I seriously contemplated suicide. I just wanted to make it stop, and I wanted to stop hurting the people around me. I believed that it would be better for the people I loved if I wasn’t around to burden them.
In that way, I think I can relate to the blind man in our gospel today. As a blind person in that day and age, he had no opportunities for work and no way to provide for himself. He had to rely on the charity of others, and he was an economic drain on his friends and family. He had no dignity or agency, and to add to his stress he also had to carry the social stigma of being a disabled person, as it was common in that time—as pointed out by the disciples—to believe that disability or illness was the result of sin. I wonder if he believed that too, if he carried the guilt and shame wondering what he had done to deserve this lot in life. I know I struggled with those kinds of thoughts with my own anxiety and depression. I wonder if, like me, he ever wondered if it was better for him to have never been born. Where was God, and why would God allow him to suffer in this way? I asked those same questions. Maybe, I thought, God had just given up on both of us.
Well, it took many long years of patience, therapy, and medication for me to reach a place of mental stability. In high school I finally started to feel a little more normal. My anxiety and depression were still there, but I was able to better cope.
It was in 10th grade that I became friends with a girl at school that I will call Nicole. Nicole was kind, bubbly and enjoyed talking and laughing. She was a great person and fun to be around. But then, halfway through the school year, Nicole drastically changed. She became reserved and quiet, actively withdrawing from her friends and pushing them away. She began failing classes, ate lunch alone every day and wouldn’t talk to anyone as if everyone was invisible.
Hurt and confused, after a few weeks our friends gave up trying and left her alone. I wanted to give up too, but something in me kept trying. She wouldn’t talk to me but I would talk to her, and I would sit at her lunch table even when she got up and moved away. I just kept trying. It was in Spanish class one day that her sleeve rolled up just enough to expose the cuts she had been carving into her arm. I didn’t know why, but I knew my friend was deeply hurting. She needed help, and she needed to know that she was not alone.
During study hall the next day I confronted her about the cuts on her arms. I told her that I knew something was seriously wrong, and whatever it was I didn’t want her to go through it alone. I cared about her, even if she didn’t want me to. She wasn’t going to scare me away. She was silent but for once she didn’t get up and move away from me. So I sat there doing my homework and just waiting. And finally, after twenty minutes or so of awkward but persistent silence, she told me what was happening. She confided in me that she had been sexually assaulted at the school. She felt ashamed and was too afraid to tell anyone, and she was afraid when she saw the person who had hurt her in the halls. She was cutting her arms daily and told me she wanted to die. She needed the hurt to stop.
I couldn’t relate to Nicole’s circumstances, but I could relate to the pain she felt because I carried pain of my own. I shared with her my own experiences with anxiety, depression and suicide. I told her that she was not alone, her life mattered and things could get better. I promised to support her, and together we went to the school counselor to report what had happened to her and get her some help.
Nicole spent three weeks in an inpatient psychiatric program getting therapy, medication, and learning new and healthier ways to cope. She was finally released from the hospital and able to come back to school, but her recovery wasn’t over. It took months of hard work, social and professional support for her symptoms to improve, but bit by bit she was getting better and finding her new normal. Over that time, she and I had many, many conversations about mental health, our experiences and even about God and faith in the midst of it all.
A year later Nicole invited me to her 16th birthday party. She was back to laughing and telling stories, enjoying the day and her friends. It was great to see her happy. And later as the party came to an end, Nicole pulled me aside and handed me a small box from her pocket. She gave it to me and inside was a small sunshine necklace. With tears in her eyes, she thanked me for playing a big part in saving her life. Wow—I was incredibly humbled. All I had done was present and share my story, and it had made a bigger difference in her life than I had realized.
In our gospel today the disciples ask Jesus if the man had been born blind because of his sin, and Jesus tells them no. The man was not born blind because of sin, because God does not choose to punish people in that way. I want to be very clear in saying that God does not choose to inflict people with disabilities, illnesses or disabilities. God does not cause this suffering—we just happen to live in an imperfect and sometimes broken world. Bad and difficult things can happen to us, and there isn’t always a reason why.
But Jesus continues in his answer. This man, though blind, can still reflect God’s love and promises to the world. Even this perceived disability cannot stop God. God can and does still work in and through broken people and situations. There is still hope for healing and new life, even in situations that seem hopeless. God did not heal the blind man because the blind man was broken, but rather to open the man’s eyes to his value. When the world told the blind man that he was broken, Jesus reminded the blind man that his life mattered, no exceptions. The life of that blind man, the life of the person with mental illness, the life of the homeless person down the street—all our lives—all of us matter and have hope and purpose in God. That is the kind of God we worship, and I am gosh darn thankful for that.
During my periods of deepest depression and anxiety, I was blind to God’s grace and presence. I believed that nothing good could come from what I was experiencing, but now after my experience with Nicole, I give thanks all the more for God’s grace and promises because I have experienced them first hand. God took my brokenness, my most painful and vulnerable parts, and used them to bring new life and hope to someone else. God can and does use all of me, just as God can use every part of you. There is nothing and no one that is too far from God’s grace, and nothing that can separate us from God’s loving hope.
It is in that hope that I share my story with you today. In my story I hope that you hear that you are loved and never alone. I hope that you hear in a new way that mental health matters. I hope you hear that there are people who care and that God is faithfully at work even in the most difficult of circumstances. I still have to be careful to take care of my mental health, and I still have times when I struggle, but I do have hope in God’s presence in the midst of it. I hope you hear that you can trust in God’s promises and look to see where God is present in your story. We all have stories to tell of God’s hope and we certainly live in a world that is in need of that hope, so may God use us and our stories—even our broken parts—to bring hope and new life. Thanks be to God, Amen.