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Would my friends think I’m crazy?

Muzet Felgar

As I stood to take the microphone that Sunday morning, I wondered what I thought I was doing. Was I actually going to stand up and share this with my congregation? I felt afraid, ashamed. Would parents in the congregation think I was unfit to be the children and youth minister? Would my friends turn away from me? Would they call me crazy, out of my mind, emotionally disturbed (I’d actually heard that one before)?

Yet something in that worship service impelled me. My Lord Jesus Christ loves and cares for me, I thought, and so will His people. Shaking, I took the microphone. I told my congregation I had been suffering with depression since the previous fall. I said I had been on medication but was not finding relief. I said I knew the stigma that is attached to mental illness, and I hated feeling imprisoned because of it. So, on that January morning, I spoke out.

The main reason I stood up that Sunday was to ask for healing and prayer. But I realized as I spoke that I was also asking for acceptance – and thus advocating for everyone with mental illness. I was asking people to let go of the stigma attached to mental illness. I had no idea how my congregation would react, but I suppose I must have believed they would accept me and care for me. The following months proved just that.

Immediately after the service, several people, male and female, approached me. They offered love, hugs and prayers. Some offered suggestions of medications to try or psychologists to see. Others shared their stories. I couldn’t believe how many people in my congregation had suffered with a mental illness or had known someone who had suffered. I had never heard these stories. Our church had recently studied for the second time the book No Longer Alone: Mental Health and the Church by John Toews. Yet I had never heard from the people who approached me now. Many had kept their pain a secret, and some of them still needed the safety of anonymity. My congregation continued in the months that followed to send cards, offer prayers, make phone calls and simply ask me how I was doing. I never felt alone.

From the larger church, however, I felt disregarded, even denounced. During the time I was struggling to become stabilized, I needed to take some time away from committees and other work I was doing in the denomination. I contacted other committee members and told my story. Not all the committees turned away from me – some embraced me and prayed for me – but others seemed not to want to look at me or speak with me, and if they did, they never brought up what was going on with my illness. This was painful to me. I could accept this outside the church but not within my own denomination. I felt hurt.

Then I realized that perhaps people didn’t know how to react. They were not purposely hurting me; they were unable to respond because they didn’t know how. I realized that many people have been taught that the Bible says mental illness is a punishment for sin. I disagree. I have a limited knowledge of mental illness, but I do know family members and friends who have suffered from schizophrenia, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder (which I also live with), attention deficit disorder, bipolar disorder and clinical depression. I do not believe they are all being punished with mental illness. I do believe that we may never understand why mental illness occurs or how to cure it completely.

I also believe that Christ calls us to comfort the suffering. 1 Corinthians 12:24-26 says: “God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” Let us heed Christ’s call and quit creating divisions among ourselves; let us unite in care and comfort of one another.

It took several months for medications and therapy to stabilize me. Now I am struggling to be healthy. My experiences with my family members, my friends and my own illness have led me to believe that only a few things are required to comfort those suffering with a mental illness. Congregational members and other supporters need to educate themselves about the illness, share their personal stories, offer care and help to the families of the mentally ill, help financially, provide a hug or a smile, and pray with them and for them.

Muzet Felgar is children and youth minister at First Mennonite Church, Richmond, Va. This article is reprinted, with permission, from the Oct. 10, 2000 issue of The Mennonite.

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Last modified April 3, 2001.

© 2001 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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