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Addiction and recovery: Presbyterian congregations respond to opioid epidemic

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Robert Hedges, a Presbyterian minister who leads the Resurrection Power recovery ministry in Washington, Pennsylvania, describes the work he does as “the greatest show on earth. We have the privilege of working with people who want to start to get well. They come in, and they’re angry at God, and their eyes are glazed over because they’re stuck in that lifestyle” of drug and alcohol addiction. The men and women living at Resurrection Power’s four recovery houses attend 12-step meetings. For those who stick with it, “they start to stay clean because they want to stay clean, not because their probation officer is going to drug test them every week,” Hedges said. “It’s really exciting to see God at work, to see their understandings of God evolve. We just say we’re hanging on to God’s coat tails. … We get to see the miracles.” More and more, Presbyterians are coming face to face with the opioid epidemic – in their own communities, churches and families. Talk to Presbyterian pastors … [Read more...]

Tagged With: mental health

Let’s say that we are more than our tragedies and our triumphs

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Unlike that brashness of the snowcapped peaks out West, the Blue Ridge Mountains are elder statemen, gently sloped and quietly easing across the horizon in suspended waves. Tucked away in those ancient ridges like your grandfather’s handkerchief in his shirt pocket are summer camps where you experience the difference between a sixth-grade boy and an eighth-grade girl like that between the Appalachian Mountains and the Rockies. When I was 11, I was small for my age. Adults at church said that I would grow into my feet, although I rarely gave any thought to the future. At summer camp, I spent most of the week in the woods behind the basketball courts, building rock forts with my new friend. Let’s call him Eli. Let’s picture him as even shorter than me with frizzy hair and freckles, sporting a calculator watch on his left wrist. Eli sat next to me in the cafeteria as we pushed food around on our plates. Both of us were homesick, a fact we recognized in each other and so had no need … [Read more...]

Tagged With: mental health

My mom and me: Theological comfort and the suicide crisis

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Guest commentary by Chip Hardwick The news earlier this summer came almost too quickly to digest. Upscale handbag designer Kate Spade, fresh off the 2017 list of Fast Company’s “Most Creative People in Business,” reportedly took her life on Tuesday, June 5. Only three days later on June 8, celebrity chef and former bon vivant Anthony Bourdain was found dead in his hotel room in France after apparently choosing to end his life. As the news ricocheted around, similar reactions emerged. Spade’s handbags have a “lighthearted, all-American style,” which made it hard to imagine her taking her life. Tributes to Bourdain included statements such as, “If I could choose anyone’s life, I would be him.”  No one seemed capable of wrapping their mind around why these seemingly well-put-together public figures would die by suicide. My mind didn’t spend any time exploring these celebrities’ motivations; it was far too busy revisiting 1997.  That fall my stepmother, the only mom I had known … [Read more...]

Tagged With: mental health

Mental health matters: The role of congregations

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Guest commentary by Kathy Dale McNair Good mental health is important. But what does faith have to do with it? A lot. All of us go through life experiences that challenge our mental health. But mental illnesses are more serious than the common ups and downs that most of us experience. Anxiety is the number one mental illness in America. Depression is second. With mental illness, the desire to be part of a faith community, to worship, to participate in outreach activities and even the desire to pray can fall away. Most people with a mental illness isolate and withdraw from normal activities. They feel hopeless and helpless, weighed down and shut down by the stigma attached to mental illness. Mental illnesses are disorders of the brain, affecting behavior and mood. Although behavior and mood disorders are the identifying markers, mental illness is felt in the whole body. Mental illness is an illness just like cancer. Just as there are many kinds of cancer, there … [Read more...]

Tagged With: mental health

Failure, relapse and other forms of grace

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 This month we asked our bloggers to share how they are caring for their bodies and souls in the midst of the demands of ministry. Here are their stories. When I was eight years old I fell out of the tree in my backyard. In memory, I must’ve fallen 20 or 30 feet. The reality of a tape measure reveals I fell around six feet. Whatever the distance, I landed square on my back without getting an arm or leg down to help break the fall. Immediately the wind was knocked out of me. This was the first time I’d ever had the wind knocked out of me. I did not even know that such a thing existed. And so as I lay there, trying to breath but being unable to, I legitimately thought this was how I was going to die. Even at eight, I knew enough to know that a person had to keep breathing to stay alive. Terror set in and my terror was only compounded when I also realized that there was no air in my lungs to be used to scream. Every other time in my life when I’d fallen or gotten hurt, I could cry … [Read more...]

Tagged With: mental health • self-care

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