My Mom Believed She Wasn’t a “Good Enough” Christian
Discussing mental illness in the church could save lives
When I stepped inside the hospital to visit my mom, I wasn’t sure what I’d find. I didn’t really know what her mental condition would be like, nor how she would respond to seeing me. I wondered if she would be able to articulate her thoughts and fears or provide me with at least a glimpse inside her ever-tangled mind. In this moment, nothing made sense.
I looked around at the sterile room full of beeping monitors and little else. I sat down on the bed beside Mom and offered a feeble smile. How do you greet someone who has just tried ending her life? Especially when that someone is one of the most important people in your sphere. This is certainly not how I envisioned spending my 40th birthday — clutching my 69-year-old mother’s trembling hand as a stranger’s eyes remained fixated on us. But that’s how it had to be since Mom was on suicide watch. I squelched my desire to come at her with rapid-fire questioning as her body language suggested she wasn’t up for an interrogation.
Her face was pale and panicked, her lips cracked and raw from the tubes that had been shoved down her throat when they pumped her stomach. Her whole body shivered. But it was her puppy dog eyes that revealed the most — a mixture of sadness…
