For Mental Health Week, Rev. Dr. Sarah Lund shares about the important impact being a friend can have for mental health and wellness.
Feeling unwell can be a lonely experience. Sometimes we need to isolate ourselves to keep other people from getting sick. Sometimes we isolate ourselves because we have no energy or desire to engage other people. But what happens when the illness or condition is not a contagious virus, but a chronic illness? It’s one thing to feel lonely and isolated for a week or two. It’s another thing to live years feeling this way.
In my family we experience the loneliness and isolation of chronic, serious mental health challenges. The symptoms of the depression, anxiety, addictions, bipolar disorder, and complex post-traumatic stress syndrome impact our abilities to communicate and connect to meaningful relationships. It can make for a lonely life. Connecting to other people takes tremendous energy, intentionality, and courage.
It can feel shameful to feel so lonely. We can wonder if there is something wrong with us, if anybody likes us or even cares about us. We can feel unloved and unlovable. Living with mental health challenges impacts our sense of belonging because loneliness makes us feel like we don’t belong.
This is where mental health and wellness ministries of the church can share hope and healing for people living with mental health challenges and their loved ones. Jesus models for us the gift of friendship. Throughout the gospels, Jesus seeks out the lost and lonely. Jesus heals people through relationships. To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a friend of Jesus.
What people living with mental health challenges need are friends. In addition to mental health care and services like therapy, medications, and treatment, we need true friends. Jesus was a true friend who did not judge people based on their mental health status. In fact, Jesus wanted to be friends with people who were different. Jesus sought out the people who the world stigmatized and shamed.
The church is invited to be like Jesus, to love like Jesus, and to be a friend like Jesus. Let’s expand the reach of God’s love and embrace the calling to mental health and wellness ministries of the church. In doing so we will be less lonely, and we will encounter the living Christ through the gift of Christ-centered compassionate connection. What a friend we have in Jesus!
— Rev. Dr. Sarah Lund, Minister for Disabilities and Mental Health Justice, National Ministries of the United Church of Christ.
Please take a look at the new collection, "MentalHealth and Wellness: Worship Resources for All," created in partnership with the Mental Health Network of the United Church of Christ, the United Church of Christ, and The United Church of Canada.
The views contained within these blogs are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of The United Church of Canada.