Probably the biggest lie the church collectively embodies is that we have it all together. We tell it to the world. We tell it to each other. Heck, we tell it to ourselves.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a disaster. You may think I mean in the obvious ways, like I’m always late and one or more of my children may not be wearing shoes. This is not what I mean, but it’s usually as far as I’ll let that part of the conversation go. So you will assume that I have poor time management skills but a definite grasp on my emotional faculties and I most certainly did not shout at my husband that morning for absolutely no reason. In that moment, I might even assume it of myself. We would both be very wrong.

But of all places, the church should be the one place we can admit these things. The entire point of the church in the first place is that humanity was broken. We are broken. We are wrong, and sick, and hurting and dying. We needed a Savior and He came and He fixed us. He provided eternal redemption and then He provided us a family to navigate our newly redeemed lives in a broken, hurting world. I think somewhere in the last 2000 years, we lost the part where we were meant to navigate as family. I wrote before about community, but I’m talking beyond that. I mean the church as a whole. We are all different, but we are all the same, and we should all be there for each other.

We forget that we are not these shiny beautiful porcelain dolls.  We are whole only because we are redeemed. We are shiny because of grace. We are alive because His mercies are new every morning. But we are strong because we are weak. Like how a broken bone is stronger after the break heals, we are strong because we have shattered on the ground and He is the superglue that put us back together, and His are the hands that hold us to make sure we don’t shatter again.

Without Him, the entire point of our existence is that we are broken. It is only because of His existence that we can be made whole.

We live in the tension between these truths.

How dare we pretend we have it all together.

We band together when we can see that someone has a need. When someone has a baby, we bring meals. When someone receives a devastating physical diagnosis, we pray. When families are in need, we bring food and clothing and toys. This is right and necessary. This is what Jesus requires of us. But there are so many needs that we as the church do not address, because we do not know about them. We don’t know about them because it is not ok to speak about them. It is shameful. It’s unacceptable to admit that you’re broken in an invisible way to the world’s largest group of admittedly broken people. We forget that no one’s brokenness is better than anyone else’s, and we have all been redeemed the same way, by the same grace. Instead, there is not a safe way to share with your so-called family that you have received a diagnosis of depression. Anxiety. Bipolar. These are as real as cancer, broken bones, the flu. When we hear of cancer and broken bones and the flu, we rise up and say “we’ll help!” When we hear depression or anxiety, we get Christian judgy face and stare. We whisper. Sometimes we offer advice that implies the person in question does not pray enough, or have enough faith, or just needs to snap out of it. Take it from me that if you could talk yourself out of an anxiety attack, no one would ever have them. If faith could cancel out bipolar disorder, drug companies would probably go out of business. These things are real and the people who have them are suffering and need their family. But you may never know because they do not feel like it’s ok to talk about.

It is not ok that we feel like it’s not ok.

Brandon and I were reading about our personality types last night, and apparently mine always feels like they need to have a cause. If you know me, you know that I am actually quite opposite of this, because I pretty much just want everybody to be happy all the time and don’t really want to get all fired up about much of anything. But I am fired up. I am mad. It is not ok that I got message after message after my last post of people saying “I am struggling with this but I haven’t told anybody.” It is not ok that the only way I knew that I wasn’t alone, that I had a friend who had also struggled with PPD was through an offhand, one-time mention she probably even forgot she’d made years before. We should be able to tell people without being scared of being whispered about. We should have clear resources and support and know that our family will be there for us. It should be just as normal to hear of a mental diagnosis as a physical one, and the response should be the same. No, providing meals may not prove as helpful in this instance but there are things that could be done. They are probably different from person to person, so don’t be afraid to ask. Don’t stare, don’t whisper, don’t stop calling or texting and please for the love of all that is good, don’t make that weird judgy face.

I don’t have a plan.
I don’t have a curriculum.
I don’t have a foundation to start.
But I am determined that something needs to change and I want to see it happen. Just think of what we could be doing for the Kingdom if we were all honest with each other. 

I am also open to suggestions.

Tags: accountability brokenness community mad the church