WE CAN BELIEVE

October 21, 2007

            In her own words, Alice writes “I would love to be able to raise public awareness, but there’s one big stumbling block.  Each time I try to talk to groups about my daughter’s fifteen-year struggle with schizophrenia, I cry.  I cry most every night before I go to sleep.  I cry when I see street people.  I cry when I think that even if a ‘miracle’ drug is produced, Stephanie will still have lost a part of her life.  I cry when I think she’s never gone to a dance with a boy; that she’ll never marry; never be a mother; never experience life in the way others do.  I cry when my older daughter gets to travel the world as a representative of her law firm while Stephanie sits on her bed and rocks.  I cry when my middle daughter publishes articles in our local newspaper and Stephanie smokes and listens to her ‘voices.’  I cry… those of us who have lost children to mental illness (and Stephanie is lost even though she is alive) experience what one father aptly described as ‘a funeral that never ends.’”*

            Do we understand her tears?  Will we listen to her sadness?  Can we walk with her in her pain?  The truth is mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, partners and friends are crying as the ones they love face the devastation that can come with mental illness. People in our families, in our congregation, in our community, are crying today and we, in the faith community, must hear those cries and respond with compassion and with hope.  We must move beyond quiet whispering behind a half closed door.  We must step beyond the fear or shame or misunderstanding of a diagnosis. We must move away from blame.  We must reach out in love.

This morning, through the leadership of the Health Ministries Team of our church, we are focusing our attention on mental health.  When you have your coffee and donut following worship there will be resources available in the Fellowship Hall that bring hope, support and healing for individuals and families dealing with mental health issues.  I am grateful to the Health Ministries Team for providing these resources to us and for calling on us to recognize today as Mental Health Sunday.  I encourage us all to take advantage of the health providers who are sharing their expertise and their concern with us this morning.

Many of you might be asking why we, as a community of faith, should be concerned about mental health issues since mental illness certainly couldn’t affect anyone here.  But in reality, many of us here are affected by mental illness.  Many of us could raise our hands, acknowledging that either we ourselves, or someone we love is searching for answers when it comes to mental health issues. For you see, despite the growing body of knowledge, a tremendous gap still exists between what the experts know about brain-related illnesses and what the public understands.  Fighting to correct the myths, the misconceptions, and the stereotypes, the National Alliance on Mental Illness shares these important truths **…

·        Mental illness affects 1 in 5 families in our country.  6% or 1 in 17 people in the United States today suffer from a serious mental illness.

·        Mental illnesses are biologically based brain disorders that disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others, and daily functioning.  They are not a result of personal weakness. They cannot be overcome through “will power” and are not related to a person’s “character” or intelligence. 

·        Mental illnesses can affect persons of any race, religion, or income.  They are not a result of a poor upbringing.

·        Mental illnesses usually strike individuals in the prime of their lives, often during adolescence and young adulthood.  All ages are susceptible, but the young and the old are especially vulnerable.

·        Mental illnesses are treatable.  Between 70 and 90 percent of individuals who receive treatment have significant reduction of symptoms and improved quality of life.  Without treatment, the consequences of mental illness for the individual and society are staggering – unnecessary disability, unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness, inappropriate incarceration, suicide, and wasted lives.

·        Negative perceptions and the stigma that comes with those perceptions erodes confidence that mental illnesses are real, treatable health conditions.  These negative perceptions contribute to a sense hopelessness with attitudes and obstacles that stand in the way of effective treatment and recovery.

If these truths about the reality of mental illness are not enough to convince us of the need for our congregation to raise awareness of the importance of facing mental illness openly and seeking mental health for ourselves and those we love, listen to these words of a young woman dealing with the realities of her illness as she speaks from her heart to her church family.  She writes:

If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can I go to cry?

If this is not a place where my spirit can take wing, where can I fly?

If this is not a place where my questions can be asked, where can I go to

    seek?

If this is not a place where my heart-cries can be heard, where can I go to

    speak?

If this is not a place where tears are understood, where can I go to cry?***

            Are we willing for this to be a place where tears are understood?  Are we willing for this to be a place where heart-cries can be heard?  If we are serious about the call to follow Christ, this must be that kind of place.

Think for a moment, about the passage from Mark’s Gospel that Will (Nia) just read.  As was his custom, Jesus was teaching on the Sabbath when he was interrupted by a man who was deeply disturbed, most likely suffering with a mental illness.  Reading this passage today we must understand that in Jesus’ day, with their limited medical knowledge, it was believed that such a person was possessed by an unclean spirit.  The prevalence of myths and misconceptions… of fears and false assumptions about persons living with illnesses of all kinds was the norm in Jesus’ day.  Accused of bringing the illness on themselves through their own wrongdoing or told that they were suffering from the “sins of their fathers” and forced to live on the outside of the community, people with illnesses were invisible and therefore ignored.  What is amazing in this passage from Mark’s Gospel is that Jesus, without any hesitation, confronts this unclean spirit, calling it out of the man.  And, according to the passage, “The afflicting spirit threw the man into spasms, protesting loudly – and got out.”

Here, in the very first chapter, at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, in the very first Gospel recorded, Jesus hears the cries of a person whose life was being torn apart by his mental illness and responds in love and with understanding.  Can we who call ourselves followers of Jesus Christ do anything less?

I am willing to guess that there is nobody here that would claim to be a “faith healer” but we all have the ability to participate in faithful healing.  There are no easy answers when it comes to the many serious mental health issues that we might face in our lives, but one thing I know for sure is this, we can reach out in love to any and all who are experiencing the sometimes devastating consequences of mental illness.  We can choose to educate ourselves instead of allowing the misconceptions of the past to continue.  We can join our voices, advocating for the changes necessary in order to provide adequate care for those facing mental health crises.  We can listen without judging.  We can offer prayerful support and genuine friendship.  We can be a strong and constant presence in the life of someone living with mental illness in their own life or the life of one they love.  We can follow Christ’s lead reaching out with understanding and love.

            In closing, I want to share with you a story that I read several years ago in the book We Are All the Same by news correspondent, Jim Wooten.  It is the extraordinary yet haunting story of Nkosi, a young South African boy who was infected with the HIV virus in the womb and the love of his foster mother, Gail.  While I do not want us to confuse mental illnesses with HIV AIDS, there are certainly some similarities in how we, as a community and a culture, respond to those struggling with such devastating illnesses.  Stigma – negative perceptions and misunderstandings – abound. In the story, Gail Nkosi’s foster mother speak of her “day-to-day struggle to not only keep him alive but to enhance his life…” She recalls, “This will sound a bit odd, I’m sure, but there were times when I thought I believed I could somehow do what no one else had ever done, which was to change the outcome of his infection.”  In telling their story, Wooten writes, “She thought she believed: an interesting if illogical paradigm, constructed as much for her own benefit as for the boy’s.  She understood that ahead of both of them lay mountains of considerable pain and anguish, yet by persuading herself that there was a worthwhile objective, she thought she believed she could bear it herself, thought she believed she could help him endure it as well.”  Gail reports that “the truth, of course, is that I was never really and truly convinced that in the long run I could save him or cure him.  I only acted as though I could, and that kept me going.”****

            As people of faith… as followers of Christ… we must think we can believe that we can change the outcome of the lives of those we love, supporting their mental health.  A world full of people struggling and striving to find health for their bodies, minds and spirits,  need us to think we can believe.  And we can believe.  We can all believe.  We must all believe that we can, as people of faith, through our understanding, our compassion, and our hope, help bring healing to so many in our world in search of wholeness.  We can believe that this will be a place where tears are understood… where heart-cries can be heard.  We can believe.  We must believe.

*From Helping Someone with Mental Illness by Rosalynn Carter, pages 6-7.

** From “What is Mental Illness: Mental Illness Facts” published by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, www.nami.org.

*** From “The Bent Over Woman” by Tiffany Koehler in an email to her friends on September 15, 2007

****From We Are All the Same by Jim Wooten, pages 108-109.