So guys we’ve spent the last few weeks talking about goal setting and making your dreams a reality and over the coming few weeks we are going to be shifting gears. We will be talking more about having a healthy mind, because truthfully you can set all the goals you want, but if your mind isn’t healthy, it makes it harder (not impossible) for you to accomplish the things you want to achieve. So today’s episode was prompted by the recent passing of Pastor Jarrid Wilson, who was the pastor of a megachurch in California, a mental health advocate, and even though he was a man of faith he struggled with depression and ultimately committed suicide. So I want to discuss the misconceptions that many of us have about faith and spirituality and it’s relation to our mental health and so I hope to inspire you to seek help.
Pastor Jarrid Wilson committed suicide earlier this month, September 2019. Hearing the words pastor and suicide in the same sentence is kind of mind boggling to some. But let me inform you, Pastor Jarrid Wilson is NOT the first pastor to commit suicide. Just last year, several pastors committed suicide because of their own various reasons. But it doesn’t stop there. It’s not just pastors who are struggling, as it’s reported that 70% of pastors experience depression symptoms or burnout, but let’s think about the congregation. Every Sunday, millions of people fill churches and yet they are suffering with mental illness. Depression, anxiety, bi-polar symptoms, sadness, grief, and so on. People who believe in God, who have been saved by Jesus, and who serve him daily…have issues. Huh? How can that be? How can it be that people who believe in God have issues, have suicidal thoughts, are anxious, feel extreme sadness. Well, the truth is that even though people believe in God, they are STILL HUMANS IN THIS WORLD! No one is exempt from issues or hard times, not even God’s people. But this belief that if I’m a Christian I shouldn’t have a mental illness is what keeps so many people bound. It stops them from seeking help. It keeps them from telling others the truth about what they are feeling or thinking. Because they believe that as a Christian, I’m not suppose to have THIS struggle.
Here’s what I need for your guys to understand, especially the believers out there. There is a difference between the spirit and the mind. They are too separate things, and often times, they can battle with one another. How many times has your spirit said do one thing, but your mind says do another? There are times when my spirit says I need to go to church, but my mind tells me all the things I need to get done around the house. My spirit says get up and pray, but my mind says girl you’re tired get some extra rest. My spirit says you have so much to be thankful for, but my mind finds something to complain about. Let’s take it a step further. Your spirit says you are healed, but your mind says you should be anxious about what the doctor will say. Your spirit says you can do all things through Christ, but your mind says you’re not good enough to achieve that thing. Your spirit says you are loved, but your mind tells you that no one cares about you. Your spirit says you have a purpose, but your mind says end it, there is no purpose for you here. Yall, having God in your spirit does not make you exempt from the enemy messing with your mind. It does not make you exempt from being effected by the struggles in the world. It does not make you exempt from feeling down and out. What being a Christian means is that you have the power to overcome those things because of Christ! It means that you have someone inside of you who is bigger than all of those things. But far too often we don’t use the tools and resources that God has given us on this earth to overcome these obstacles.
I’ve grown up in the church all of my life and I know that the church is full of people who are hurting and suffering and dealing with various difficult things. Church is where you go to bring your cares to God. Have you ever gone to church and seen someone crying out to God and you can just tell and feel that their cry is about something that is just devastating their life? Like, you can tell its not just a cry of worship, but it’s a cry for help. I’ve seen it all my life in church and often times I would see the same people come Sunday after Sunday crying out, probably about the same issues. We have been taught as Christians that church is where you come to deal with the things that are going on in our life and in our minds, but that is just a part of the resolution. I believe in God and I know that he can do anything, but I also know that sometimes God wants us to do the work in order to overcome, and that is where many Christians fall short. We believe that everything will be solved solely by prayer, and God has made it clear that faith without works is dead. Sometimes he requires you to do more, but when mental health is involved, we have been taught to pray and mostly keep it covered.
Mental illness is hard from many people to understand because it’s something that you can’t see, sometimes it’s even difficult to describe so people often don’t get treatment. They maybe will talk to their pastor about it, ask for prayer, and hope for the best. But yall God has given us resources. There are therapist, psychologist, psychiatrists, and doctors who are here to help with those issues. I often try to describe it like this. If you were having discomfort in your chest and you went to your doctor and he said, you are having heart issues. He instructed you to take medication, work with a trainer weekly, and change your diet in order to life the life you desired would you do it? Or would you just pray to God and talk to your pastor and hope that things change? See it’s my belief that God answered your prayer by telling you what to do, but it’s up to you now to do it. The same goes with mental health. If the therapist says you are suffering from depression and that you need to take the meds prescribed by your doctor, see the therapist weekly, and change some of your habits if you want to live a better life, would you do it? Sometimes the instructions you are given by professionals are the lifeline that God is sending you. You just have to be willing to do the work.
My husband reminded me of a joke he heard from a movie that says I man was stranded in the ocean and he was praying for God to save him. A boat came by, it stopped and asked the man if he needed help. The man said no, God will save me. A short while later another boat came by and asked the man if he needed help, the man said no God will save me. So the boat went on by it’s business. Soon after the man drowned and died. When he got to heaven he asked God “why didn’t you save me?” God said I did! I sent 2 boats to save you, dummy! And that is often us. We pray to God to save us from our thoughts and life issues and he is sending us resources to help us, but we aren’t taking them. We just keep praying, and pleading, and asking for help, but we are not seeing the things he is sending our way. He’s answering our prayers in the form of doctors, therapist, coaches, friends who care, messages, and we are just waving them by, hoping God will just magically cure whatever we are going through. Now don’t get me wrong, God can do this if he wants to, but I know that sometimes he says that he requires more from us so we have to do it.
Here recently, my daughter was pretty sick. She was sick for a few months and I constantly prayed for God to heal her body. And I knew that he would. A part of God’s healing came from he sending us to the right doctors. It came from having the right tests done. It came from being prescribed the right medicine. It required us to do our part to help her get better. What kind of parents would we be if our daughter was sick and all we did was pray. We never took her to the doctor, we never gave her meds, we just prayed. That’s what many us of do with our mental wellness. We just pray about it, when God is saying your healing from me can come through therapy. It can come through medication. It can come through that support group. It can come through you being honest about what you are dealing with. But often times, it is my belief that the enemy wants you to think that as a Christian you don’t need those things. That you should be ashamed that as a Christian you think death would be easier than living. That’s a trick of the enemy to cause you to think that you are alone. That is why I do this podcast, so that you can see that the things you go through, the thought you have are not just exclusive to you. You aren’t some anomaly. Everyone deals with something. I’ve never dealt with depression, but I’ve dealt with anxiety. You may have never dealt with anxiety, but you have dealt with complicated grief. Everyone has something whether it be doubt and fear or manic episodes where you feel out of control. You aren’t alone, so don’t let your mind trick you into thinking that you are.
So as a Christian, how do you deal with mental health issues? Well in addition to praying, going to church, and even talking to your pastor, there are many other ways to help keep your mental wellness in tact. First up, there’s therapy. Yall know how I feel about this. I am a Christian and I am a therapist because I know that it works. And I know that the work I do as a therapist is my God given gift. Just like the work of a doctor to be able to do surgery on your heart is a God given gift, the ability to help you dissect what is going on in your mind and to help you change the narrative that you are having within yourself. For some people in addition to therapy they may need medication. Listen…medication is NOT THE DEVIL! It baffles me how people are willing to take meds for diabetes, high blood pressure, birth control, and other things, but won’t take a medication that will help their mind. Your thoughts are just as important as your physical body. And in some cases therapy won’t be effective unless you are on medication to help stabilize you. It’s not until a person is on the meds that they are able to have a logical conversation. So we have to stop demonizing medication for mental health. It’s important that you work with someone who you trust, someone who will inform you of what is going on, and someone who will listen to your concerns. The best way to start this process with medication is to talk to your doctor first and go from there. It is my opinion that every person who is taking medication for mental health reasons should be in therapy. This is how you 1. Know the medication is working and 2. Work toward getting off of the medication, if that is an option.
The next thing you can do is to read. The Bible of course is a great book to read and you will even find books of the bible when people are going through things just like us that may help provide inspiration. The stories of Job and David are examples of that. There are also scriptures that you can read that will help you when you are going through difficulties. In episode 32 Be Anxious For Nothing, I give you a few of my favorite scriptures to help combat anxiety. You can come up with your own group of scriptures that help you deal with whatever you are going through. In addition to the Bible I love to recommend books such as The Battlefield of the Mind by Joyce Myers and Crash the Chatterbox by Pastor Steven Fertick. These books help provide a spiritual perspective on the mind vs spirit and gives you tools to help overcome some of those issues as a Christian.
The last things that I want to mention that you can do is to share your story. There are so many good things about being a Christian, but because we are humans, we have brought a few troubling habits into our community. Secrecy, shame, and comparison are a few of those things. Sometimes all it takes is for one person to openly say “I’m struggling” to open the flood gates of healing. But far too often Christians keep quiet about their issues because they don’t want to be embarrassed. They don’t want to feel shamed. They don’t want their family to be compared to others. Let’s be honest. Comparison is rampet in the Christian community. It happens every Sunday. We compare outfits. We compare cars in the parking lot. We compare out children’s accomplishments to the next family’s children. We compare church sizes. This is a part of the reason why pastors feel depressed is because they are comparing their church to the next pastors church and it causes them to feel depressed when they feel they are failing or aren’t growing as fast as others. This comparison stops many of us from being transparent. It stops the healing process. It keeps us from being connected with one another. But if we would just be fearless enough to say “I was molested as a child and I’m still dealing with it” boy do you know how many people that would help heal? Sharing is caring yall. And after you share, make sure you care enough to recommend therapy and all the other resources mentioned here.
Yall, as Christians we are God’s chosen people and for now, we have to live in this world. Living here brings it’s own challenges. Trust God enough to acknowledge those issues and get help. Ask God for guidance. Ask him to send you to the right person for help. Don’t just sit on this. Don’t wait until it’s too much to bear. And please know…this isn’t just for those who are dealing with severe issues. This is for anyone who is having thoughts that are contrary to what God put in our spirit. No issue is too small. I have therapy clients who’s issue is simply that they aren’t confident in themselves. Or who need to set more boundaries. No issue is too small to overcome. You were created by God to live a life of wonder, so don’t let negative thought (which I plan to do an entire episode on) stop you from your destiny. Trust God, employ your faith, and put in the work to make sure your spirit and your mind are on one accord with God’s word. Christians are not exempt from struggles, but because we have God on our side, we can overcome anything. Just make sure you have the faith and that you put in the work.
So I hope that you feel inspired to seek help for your mental health needs just like you would for your physical health. To not allow shame and embarrassment to keep you from doing the work necessary to get better. And to remember that faith without work is dead so pray and take the steps necessary to live a healthy life. You are needed here.
So until next time, stay encouraged and inspire someone else along the way.