When I first joined the Mental Health America of South Central Kansas, I knew nothing about mental health or mental illness. But I remember sitting in that interview and while I couldn’t tell you much of anything about what was said, I remember very distinctly feeling a passion from the staff members that just emanated from them. It was a passion for the work, it was a passion for the people they served, it was a passion for this mission to our community. And I remember walking out of that building thinking to myself that I NEEDED to come and work at this place.
In the years since, I’ve learned a lot about the impact of mental illness in our community. And probably one of the most important things I’ve learned that although we all live with mental health issues, we all believe somehow that we are the only ones. This year alone, 122,000 people in the Wichita metro area will live with an anxiety disorder. And we think we are the only ones. Over 53,000 people have or will experience a bout of serious depression this year, but we think we’re the only ones.
Suicide is the second-leading cause of death among our children every year, and we think we’re the only ones? This matters to me because I got married about nine years ago. And my wife brought two teenage girls to the marriage. I had never been a parent before, and now suddenly I had two teenage girls. My friends would ask me how old they were, and I told them they are 16 and 13, and they are reallllllly good at it. Because it turns out that teenagers, or at least teenage girls… at least mine… have these things with which I was previously unfamiliar. They’re called emotions. And these emotions are how they express what they are feeling. Which I’m told by my clinical co-workers, is a good thing. But I was not up to speed on the emotions or the situations that teenagers find themselves in these days.
Those of you who are parents probably know what I’m talking about. Nonetheless, I was told by my co-workers in our children’s division that if we don’t provide them orteach them healthy coping mechanisms to deal with whatever is happening in their lives, then these mental health issues of today can turn into mental illnesses 10 or 15 years down the road. Illnesses like anxiety. Like depression. Like substance use disorders. And the truth is that this is not new.
I mention that because I’ve heard people ask where all this comes from. “We didn’t have all this ADHD when I was a kid.” Yeah, you did. You just didn’t know about it, because for many of you, the second that your illness caused you to not fit within the parameters your parents thought you were supposed to live in, you got in trouble. You were grounded, you got spanked, those of you were younger maybe had your phones or computer taken away.
Whatever the punishment, you learned really quickly whatyour community thought was acceptable, and what wasn’t. You didn’t grow up in a more well-adjusted world. You just grew up in a community where you conformed and learned how to hide the pain.
Mental illness is not a recent phenomenon. King Saul, as described in 1 Samuel, and Job, both lived with Major Depressive Disorder. The Apostle Paul probably lived with post-traumatic stress disorder. The prophet Elijah was suicidal. In 1 Kings, chapter 19, he sat down under a bush and openly prayed to God to take his life. King Nebudchadnessar is believed – based on descriptions in the fourth chapter of Daniel – to have lived with schizophrenia.
In all, the website Open Bible quotes over 100 passages in the Bible that reference the topic of mental illness. And yet, even today, 2,000+ years later, very few of us would be able to talk about mental illness in a way that would differ materially from Biblical descriptions of evil spirits and madness. See, I know what causes a broken arm. I know what causes the flu. But I don’t know what causes bi-polar disorder. That lack of knowledge, that uncertainly breeds fear, it breeds contempt, it creates this need that so many people have to separate “us” from “them”.
We describe people as schizophrenic, when we should talk about them as having schizophrenia. And we do that because if we can categorize someone else, if we can label someone else, and if we can do so in such a way that it creates a line between us and them, than it allows “us” to feel better about ourselves.
But brothers and sisters, can I tell you about the God I was raised with? The God I was raised with loves me unconditionally. That means he doesn’t care about the color of my skin. He doesn’t care about the language I speak. He doesn’t care about the country in which I live. He doesn’t care whether I love menor love women. He doesn’t care what level of education I achieve. He doesn’t care about ANY of these arbitrary barriers that we throw up to separate us from them, and that means he doesn’t care whether Ihave schizophrenia, depression, bi-polor disorder, PTSD, anxiety, or a drug addiction either. God just loves me because like you, I am His child.
You think you’re the only one? Every single year in this country, 25% of our population lives with a diagnosable mental illness. 1 in 4. So unless you only know two other people, then every single year, your life is touched by mental illness. It’s the member of your church who joins on-line but doesn’t attend services in-person because of his social phobia. It’s your co-worker who politely brushes aside your offer to grab drinks after work because his father was an alcoholic. It’s your 9-yr old niece who hasn’t told you that she’s losing weight due to anorexia because a girl at school called her fat.
So I have to ask you this morning, not just those of you living with a mental health concern, or those who have such concerns in their families, but for everyone, when have you felt alone? When have you thought that you were the only one? The only person of color. The only person who doesn’t look or actin accordance with their binary gender assignment in school. The only person who didn’t grow up in aparticular town, or hasn’t attended a particular church for the last 20 years, or isn’t keyed-in to aparticular joke. We all feel alone sometimes. It’s part of why minorities of every stripe have a greater tendency to struggle with mental health. Because even in a room filled with people, we can feel alone.
When the thing that isolates us forces us the choose between that isolation or abandoning our very identity, it takes an extraordinary toll on our minds. If I feel left out because I’m the only one who still hasn’t binge-watched a TV show, I can go watch the show. But if I feel shunned because the face that I see in the mirror does not match with the person that my brain tells me I am, I am confounded. If I feel alone because there is no one in my world who shares my experiences, I am confounded. And if I am isolated because the reality into which I wake up every morning is not the reality of any other human being that I see, then I am confounded.
If you have your Bibles with you, turn with me to Psalm 139: verses 7-10.
The text reads:
“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning, And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.”
We may feel isolated, but these verses remind us that there is no where – no where – that we can go where God will not be standing beside us. Whether to Heaven or to Hell or anywhere in-between. And there is no place we can go – mind, body or spirit – that the Lord will not be with us.
You’re not the only one. You’re not the only one who feels alone. You’re not the only one who is struggling. You’re not the only one who hates turning on the news because they are afraid of what theywill hear today. You’re not the only one who knows that this world is not fair, but doesn’t know what to do about it. You’re not the only one.
Say it to your neighbor. Turn to them and say, “You’re not the only one.” If you’re at home alone listening to this right now, say it to yourself. “You’re not the only one.” You’re not alone.
You think you are because this is what the devil whispers to us. He knows that isolation is the enemy of good mental health and so he tries to make us think that we’re the only ones. And what’s amazing – this is how smart the Devil is – is that isolation is both a cause and an effect of mental illness. We are struggling with our mental health, but Satan tells us we are the only ones. So to avoid anyone figuring this out about us, we don’t spend time with other people lest they see our difficulties. We isolate ourselves from being figured out, and that isolation only makes our mental health worse. It’s this horrible cycle that drives us deeper and deeper into a dark world.
We know that God is the light, don’t we? That’s the wonderful gift of our Christian faith. That no matter how dark our world becomes, a single candle can burn brightly in that darkness, and the darkness cannot put it out. Sometimes as I sit in my office, I think about the hurdles that we have to overcome each day just to try to get people to raise their hands and ask for help.
I’m reminded of the man who saw a news report one morning that the river behind his house was flooding and that people along the banks should evacuate. “No, he said. I’m a good man. I pray. I go to church every Sunday. God will protect me.” He went out back and stood on his deck to look at the rising waters and a boat came by. “Sir, we have room in ourboat. Jump in. The river is flooding.” But the man told them, “No. I’m a good man. I pray. I go to church every Sunday. God will protect me.” They moved on and a few minutes later, the water washed out the deck supports and he fell into the rushing river, but grabbed a branch and clung tightly to it, just as a helicopter appeared. They lowered their ladder and implored the man to grab it. But “No, he said. I’m a good man. I pray. I go to church every Sunday. God will protect me.” Not long after, the branch gave way and the man perished. At the pearly gates he demanded an audience with God. “God," he said. "I was a good man. I prayed. I went to church every Sunday. Why didn’t you save me?” God replied, “I sent you a news report, a boat, and a helicopter. What are you doing here?”
Well God provides therapists. He provides Case managers. He provides Psychiatrists and Psychologists. And our need to utilize these resources does not mean that we are broken. It does not mean that we lack faith, or that God has somehow forgotten about us. The Bible is full of stories of people that God used in their areas of greatest need. He didn’t skip over Moses when it was time to tell Pharaoh to let our people go. Moses told God “No. I am not a man of words. I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue. I am of uncircumcised lips.” And this is who God sent to free His people.
David was not a giant. David was a scrawny kid who had done little more in his life at that point that make sure that his father’s sheep didn’t wander away. But when Goliath challenged the entire Israelite army, David was the one who stepped up with a single stone.
Mary herself, the mother of Jesus, was – by all accounts – nothing special. She was not remarkable in any way. And we know this because the Bible tells us virtually nothing about her, other than that shew as betrothed to Joseph. And yet this virginal Jewish girl from Nazareth gave birth to God’s son here on Earth. And through Him, gave birth to the entire faith that gathers us here this morning. A faith that today unites 2 billion people around the globe.
It’s so easy for us to think that we are not special. Easier still perhaps, when we live in fear of other people’s ridicule for our mental illnesses. But brothers and sisters, God used Moses. And David. And Mary. God made us in his likeness. He made us who we are and what we are, and He did it for a reason, and that reason was not to hide our light.
Illness and challenges, whether physical or mental, do not extinguish our light. Sometimes it is our light. I know that because fifteen years ago, my wife asked me for a divorce. At the time, I was taking seminary classes. Specifically, I was taking a class on giving pastoral care. And I went to my professor and told him that I didn’t see how I could give pastoral care. I was prepared to drop the class. Whywould anyone trust me to provide counseling in their lives or in their marriages when I couldn’t even hold my own marriage together. And do you know what he told me? He told me that he could think of no one more qualified to provide pastoral care in a marriage than someone who had had to go through what I was going through at that time. I knew what it looked like when couples didn’t put in the time and effort that their marriage needed, and I knew it in a way that someone who had not been through the darkness of such a difficult time could even pretend to talk about.
My friends, if you have been through a mental illness and emerged on the other side, you too are uniquely qualified to help others in their own journey. And that is a gift! And if you have not yet emerged, you will. And in the meantime, your gifts of leadership. Of humor. Of public speaking. Of critical thinking. Of decision-making. Of singing. Or any of the other millions of gifts that God grants to every person born in this world are still lights that shine brightly within you, and they need to be seen.
And they need to be heard. And they cannot be seen or heard if you continue to hide them in a self-imposed isolation because you still believe that you are the only one!! Church, every single year in Wichita alone, 100,000 people need mental health care. 60,000 will not seek or receive it. Our mission every day at MHA is to just get a few more people to raise their hand. To acknowledge the help they need and be willing to get it. I sincerely hope that today brings you just one small step closer to raising yours.
Amen.