This feature article ran in the July issue of The Mennonite magazine, focusing on mental illness and the church. You can view the full issue online here. To subscribe to The Mennonite and receive feature articles like this every month, visit our online subscription page. 

Jill Stemple is a member of Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster. She lives in Harrisburg, Pa., and works for the Pennsylvania Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services as a grant manager.

Most days I function in the world. I wake up, do some yoga, put on a business casual dress, go to work and work hard. You would never know there is anything wrong. And some days nothing is wrong. But on too many days it’s all a well-rehearsed act because I live with severe and persistent mental illness. And on other days, when I can’t even manage to get out of bed, my biggest accomplishment is not giving in to my self-loathing, inner monologue’s demands that I hurt myself.

There is a certain privilege to my struggle—it isn’t terribly visible, and I can hide it most of the time—a choice that someone with a physical challenge often does not have. But in some ways this has also been a curse for me. If I could hide my struggle, then I thought I should. If I could appear functional most days, then maybe my mental illness wasn’t real at all; maybe I just needed to try harder. If other people couldn’t easily see it, it would be wrong of me to burden them with my unseen illness.

And so I stayed pretty quiet about it, hiding it as much as possible for years. At times I had to say something. I was missing work or needed a ride to the hospital. But I lied—I had a cold, not crippling depression. Or I minimized it as much as I could. I showed up the next day, put together and falsely cheerful, assuring everyone I was fine. All the while I felt more and more alone.

Being in the church did not always make that easier for me. Although there is still a stigma in many faith communities, in some places it’s become OK to discuss depression or anxiety. But it’s the “common colds” of mental illness that get talked about, the unfortunately all-too-common struggles so many people go through. I’m not trying to minimize or dismiss these experiences as insignificant; even “mild” depression or generalized anxiety can be a struggle. But those experiences do not fully resonate with my own.

We’re beginning to talk about managing common feelings of depression and anxiety. We aren’t talking about psychiatric wards and hospitals. We aren’t talking about the police coming to take you away in handcuffs to be involuntarily committed. We aren’t talking about suicide attempts or self-injury. We aren’t talking about electroconvulsive therapy. We aren’t talking about struggles that last for years, even for lifetimes: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe and chronic major depression.

And, should they ever happen to be mentioned, we’re talking about “the other.” The unfortunate homeless or incarcerated individuals or those in group homes. Certainly not the person sitting next to us in the service. As the saying goes, When you point your finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you. How could the people sitting next to me know when I wasn’t saying anything? When I was in fact going to great lengths to hide my illness?

I wish I could tell you exactly what gave me the courage to speak. Who doesn’t love a good how-to? But it was years in the making and not so easily reconstructed. There have always been people in my life who gave me much love and support. My devoted best friend has taken more calls over the past nine years than anyone could expect. My Mennonite therapist has patiently stood the test of many difficult times. My gracious pastor sat with me in an ER until 3 a.m. and let me but sob on her shoulder. And being a part of a church whose ethos truly comes from the core value “You are known and loved by God” eventually replaced the hateful, self-loathing voices of depression.

After being rebaptized to officially join the Mennonite church I love, I was challenged to think hard about my self-destructive actions, particularly cutting myself. I couldn’t reconcile my newly official claims to a peace church with intentional violence toward myself.

Being a good millennial who believes the answer to most anything is on the Internet, I Googled numerous combinations of “Mennonite” and “pacifist” and “self-injury.” But when the Internet failed me, I somehow found the courage to talk to my pastor. Self-injury was so shameful to me that I expected it to be a painful, horrible conversation. Instead I received what was at the time an inconceivably compassionate response.

At the end of the day, though, I can only say the Spirit moved, because my public “coming out” wasn’t anything I thought possible. I have no earthly explanation for where that courage suddenly appeared from. I attended Mennonite churches for seven years without ever sharing at sharing time, and I had no expectations of breaking that trend. I’d sat in services before with responses in my head but drowned them out with anxiety and put-downs. Then I’d gone home with regrets, feeling unknown and unloved.

But the words from the pulpit that morning could not have been more convicting for me to speak. As a part of her sermon about Thomas asking to see Jesus’ wounds, our pastor, Susan, said: “I give you the reminder that when you boldly, vulnerably speak and ask, you might be empowering more onlookers than you know. I give you the reminder that wounds sometimes bear great gifts, and no one can know the real you without your scars. I give you the instinct that scars are to be honored, not feared.”

Still I sat, paralyzed with anxiety, until I felt it coming, a silence long enough that they might wrap up sharing time with a prayer. But instead of an endless stream of putdowns, this time I told myself, “You want to be known and loved, and no one can know the real you without your scars. Don’t go home with regrets this time.” And, less profoundly, “Just put up your hand already.” And I did. And words came calmly out of my mouth that I still cannot believe I said in church, something like, “This was a challenging sermon for me because I’ve spent most of my life trying not to be known by my scars, because my scars are literal, physical scars from self-injury.”

I proceeded to have a complete vulnerability hangover. I received overwhelming affirmation from my church. Nearly every person at that service came to find me afterward, which was beautiful and generous. And terrifying. I did not know how to respond. I may have hid in the bathroom for a while. But I’m learning. And maybe, as importantly, I’m unlearning. My autopilot is set to convince everyone I’m fine, all the time, at all costs, and it’s easy for me to fall back into that. It’s slowly being reset. Like most things, it will take time.

Speaking up has been life changing. It isn’t quite the miracle I would have chosen. I longed for mental illness to go away forever. Mental illness is still a part of my life. I barely made it out of bed this morning against the amazing gravitational force of depression. But I’m not nearly as alone in it.

I had the honor to be given a special symbol of love and support from the women of my church this spring, a beautiful heart-shaped rock that is passed along every year to someone in the midst of a struggle. Every morning, just before I leave the house, I hold the rock to my heart and remind myself that the voices of depression are not the voices I want to believe. I remind myself I am known and loved by God, by the women of Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster, by Susan, by Chris, by Megan.

And maybe, just maybe, the next time someone Googles Mennonite and self-injury, they can also find that message: You, too, are known and loved by God.