Mental Health in the Marketplace | April Bordeau

And I thought about this morning: What do I share? How do I share about this topic, and why don’t we talk about it as Christians? I think I understand the reason why. I was thinking about my own life, and I was like, okay, I can go back to, you know, I’m in my 50s now, and just in the last few years have I even—why are you laughing at me, Gary? That’s older than—it’s younger than it used to be. 50’s young, I know, right?

So, I was raised by a single mom, raised in complete poverty—all the things that accompany that. My mom was a Christian, God-fearing woman, and everything was about “God will provide for us,” “God is here for us,” “God is protecting us,” “God is our comforter,” “God is your Father,” and all the things that God is—and still, things happened. So, I was taught and shown by my mom that God was all these things. And then, as things happened, I started to question because trauma and real-life challenge challenge our theology. When we’re in the middle of a dark night, we start asking the really hard questions of God, don’t we?

• Where are You?
• If You love me, why are You letting this happen?
• If You see everything, didn’t You see what was happening to me?
• If You’re so powerful, how come You didn’t stop it?

So I wonder if, sometimes, as people of faith, we don’t talk about it because we wrestle. When people come and they say, “This is what I’ve experienced, tell me, where is your God right now?” we don’t really have a good answer other than, “Well, He’s present, and He loves you, and He has a plan.” Then we’ll see Him in eternity—we can ask Him in eternity.

And let me tell you, when I’m sitting in my office, and I have people sitting on the couch—they don’t lay, so if you haven’t been to a therapist, there’s no such thing as the laying-on-the-couch thing—but when they’re sitting on the couch and they’re telling me about what has happened to them, I can tell them the scripture, and it touches the head, but it doesn’t heal the heart. We have to show them the love. We have to show them the love.

I think as Christians, maybe we don’t talk about mental health because it’s a big question mark: “Well, if I prayed more, maybe it would go away. If I turned my worship music up a little higher and sung a little louder, then maybe my depression would go away. I’m not supposed to worry, because in Philippians 4, it says, right—what does Philippians 4 say? ‘Don’t be anxious.’ I’m not supposed to feel this way, so something must be wrong with me; maybe my faith isn’t enough.”

So maybe as Christians, we don’t talk about it because we’re really wrestling with it. Growing up in a Christian home and my mom saying, “God is all the things,” and then having life experiences that made me say, “I don’t understand because these don’t match what my mom described as this God.” There was a point in my early adulthood where I had to really do some wrestling with God—like, “God, are You really good? Are You really good?” And that is the core, right?

And the beauty of mental health is that God created our bodies and our brains to be beautiful and complex, and He gave us each giftings to be helpers to each other. So we’re often wounded in relationships, but we’re also healed in relationships. If we, as Christians—if we, as believers—stay to ourselves with these topics related to mental health, if we stay to ourselves with our own struggles, we don’t get to experience the fullness of connection and healing. And so what happens? We struggle silently, and it continues. And then we have kids, and what—what do we do with our unhealed parts when we have kids? We just pass those right along to our kids, and none of us want our kids to experience what we’ve experienced, do we? We don’t want to pass those things off to our kids.

So I’m like, what—what do we do as Christians? How can we address this issue? I’m thinking about that verse in Isaiah—Isaiah 61:3, that talks about binding up the brokenhearted and bringing comfort to those who mourn, and beauty instead of ashes. So, we as a faith community have an opportunity to step into someone’s darkness and to say, “Hey, I don’t have the answers. I can tell you all the scriptures; it’s going to help your thoughts, but in terms of healing, I’m here to walk with you.”

So if we’re in a place of business, if we’re leading a church, we get the opportunity to step into someone’s darkness and say, “Let’s just walk together. I don’t have the answers.” One of the things we often say at Care to Change is, “There’s a gift in being present. I don’t have the answers, but I’m going to sit with you in this, and I’m not going to try to hurry your grief, and I’m not going to try to hurry your healing. I’m just going to sit with you in this.”

So that’s what we, as Christians, get to do that other people don’t, because they don’t have the hope of eternity. And we know it. We might not feel it, but we get to experience it in the context of community. So it’s why we do what we do at Care to Change. We believe it’s different. Mental health affects everyone. We see these numbers everywhere. When I say one in three, I’m actually shocked it’s not more. I know that it’s more because it’s just who has been diagnosed. But at Care to Change, we actually get to sit with someone in their dark night of the soul, and we get to say, “I don’t have all the answers, but I have some tools. I’ve got some tools that are going to help you, and I’m going to walk with you and give you these tools and resources.” And that’s when the healing starts.

Shame dies when it’s spoken in safe places, when stories are told in safe spaces. And that’s what Care to Change gets to do. We get to say, “Hey, come, let’s sit, and let’s let the healing begin,” because we can get really honest about what’s happening.