Hey! There’s a lot of new faces here - so let me catch you up on what’s happening. We’re at the end of the second dimension of life that we offer to God: our emotions. We’ve spent the last two months covering obstacles to life with God, offering our attention to God, our emotions, and next up is our limits. If you’ve read my book and that sounds familiar - these are thoughts I’ve had in the two years since I turned that manuscript in. If you want to catch up, jump in here and read the Tuesday newsletters.
On to this week.
For 24 years, my father held the office of statutory probate judge. He served in law that deals with end-of-life care, guardianships, mental health, and honoring people’s desires as expressed in their will. I share this because I grew up in a home context that did not call things crazy or bipolar or ocd. I learned early on that behind these labels are people struggling to meet and make sense of their daily world.
This made it all the more difficult for me when at 19, I was struggling to meet and make sense of my daily world. I feared I was losing my grip on what was true and what my mind told me was going to happen.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the awareness of a mental health crisis has risen sharply. We started to pay attention to the impact of screen time, social media, and diet, even as we focused on children/teens while adults commented on their fatigue and inability to concentrate. The reclamation of self-care became a mantra for those feeling worn around the edges and fighting back against hustle culture or compulsion.
A few months ago, I spoke with another church staff about mental health, and called the talk: Mental Health, Yours, Ours, and Theirs (subtitle stolen from Steve Cuss’s book). I included the yours, ours, and theirs language because central to our daily work as Christians is regulating ourselves in relation to God, ourselves, and others. It is to engage what is happening within us to engage what happens in others and around us.
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