A TestaMental Issue

A couple weeks ago I drove a secret agent to the state hospital. Sarah—and I’m using a pseudonym, of course—doesn’t like her picture to be taken, and she told me she has lots of foreign state enemies: Belgium, Germany, and France, to name a few. You see, I’m a transporter for the Behavioral Health unit at St. Vincent Hospital, so I drive lots of people like Sarah to various destinations: residential care facilities, hospitals, and, if they are well enough, home. Many patients that I drive experience delusions like Sarah does—I’ve encountered both Michael Jackson and Madonna on the unit, and to be honest, their performances were less than Grammy worthy—but others suffer from schizophrenia, mania, depression, or other mental illnesses.
Often the drives are long. I go to Fort Smith, Helena, and El Dorado pretty regularly, and on such drives I have the opportunity for extended conversation with the patients. I don’t have a background in psychology, so I don’t understand a lot of what is going on with these people. But I have found that I can listen. When I listen to these patients tell their stories, I find out that most of them are people just like you and me who have come upon hard times either in the present or the past. I’ve heard a lot of stories on these drives, sad narratives of divorce or death of a loved one, miserable accounts of addiction, and heartrending tales of physical and mental abuse from family members.
So what, then, should I do, when I hear these stories that are painful to hear? What, then, should we as a church do, when we are confronted with the disordered lives that walk into our homes and Bible classes and worship service? What should we do when those painful stories are coming from our own pews? I think that, first, we must acknowledge that we are not so different. We, too, live with caffeine and sugar induced addictions. We, too, hear voices—voices that tell us we are not good enough, or voices that tell us we need more stuff, or voices that tell us we really are better, that our lives aren’t as messy as Joe or Jane, or Sarah the spy. We, too, live in relational blunders, bruised from our broken attempts at love and faithfulness. We, too, need help sometimes.
The second thing we must do, as people, and as a church, is to tell a counter-story. Laquisha is a patient who needs another story to tell. She is barely twenty and has lived on the streets, pimped out and beaten, for more than five years of her life, and now her mind has gone into psychosis in order to deal (or more accurately, not deal) with her past. I want to tell Laquisha that there is a bigger story, one that envelops hers. This bigger narrative is about a God who is putting the world to rights, who has made the nations a footstool, who will conquer death, who will balance brain chemistry, who will undo sexual abuse, and who will overcome evil. I want to tell Laquisha that there will be a day when this will all come about, that every tear she has forgotten how to cry will be wiped away, and that there won’t be any more pain, prostitution, or need for Prozac.
Until that day, it is good for us to welcome those with mental illness into our community, because right now things can still be pretty bad. And as we listen to and tell stories, we wait for the undoing of mental illness, doing the best we can, with therapy and pharmaceuticals and patience and respect. I have hope for that day.

But until then, Sarah the spy, may you have no more enemies.