New Voices: By and about young adults

“I guess they’ll figure it out in therapy,” is a common comment made among my fellow mom-friends when speaking about their young children and their difficulties in parenting.

In expressing this, subconsciously, they acknowledge and accept how their parenting does not measure up and consequently how they share some of the responsibility that their children may need professional help once they’ve come of age.

Now this might be true, and we all may find ourselves in 20 years paying for our children’s therapy bill, but I wonder if this is more of a reflection of where my generation is than where we anticipate the future will be.

Therapy junkies live in the shadows. As a society we are pretty oblivious to the large number of people and couples who have sought out counseling. There still remains a stigma for reaching out and a measure of criticism for paying the common above-the-$100 mark per hour. But once you’ve found yourself in that place of desperation, loneliness or confusion, the unsolicited recommendation of caring friends is professional help––no matter what the cost. There may come a time when the need for direction and healing take precedence over moving in the same direction, usually the wrong direction.

And today I can include myself among the masses. Whereas months ago the idea of going to therapy was an accusation of having a disability or weakness, I now see it as part of my journey of learning how to live out the wholeness I’ve always had but didn’t know how to access. I’ve found rest in accepting that there are areas where I am sick and need the great Physician to heal me.

Among my friends, I conducted an informal survey in which I asked who had received or was receiving therapy, who wished they could receive it and who had never received therapy. Out of the 35 who responded, 22 had been or currently are going to a therapist, five wished they could go, and eight had never gone.

These numbers surprise me. Not only is it the majority but almost three-quarters of these women have sought out an outside voice to provide comfort, direction or clarity. One of these mothers spoke of the benefit therapy can have for all of us throughout our lives.

Yet as helpful as therapy has been, there is one part of the therapeutic experience that has not set well with me. Privacy and intimacy with your therapist is essential for going to those inner dungeons that need Christ’s light to shine, yet in some form therapy remains an individual exercise rarely incorporating community or church.

There is a disconnection our society has established between the inner life and communal fellowship, and my hope is that Christians who seek out therapy also find among other believers acceptance, safety and above all prayer for this journey. For people like myself, it takes humility to admit I am weak and need help, and even though this is easier for me to accept now, it still feels like I carry around with me a secret illness––one that would not be appropriate for me to give updates on during the worship sharing time, as I would if I had newly diagnosed diabetes or cancer.

At what point is it helpful, not only for the patient but for the congregation, to know who is seeking professional counseling and for the congregation to lift that person up in prayer and emotional support?

While sitting with her spouse in the waiting room before her appointment, a friend spoke of the time when unexpectedly a fellow couple from her church entered. The unwritten rule in such situations, she says, is to keep the silence, barely looking at each other in the eyes, as if with shame or embarrassment––whereas in a church setting, they may have greeted each other and made small talk. Yet here, for some reason, that congenial conversation feels awkward if not inappropriate.

This reaction tells me that as a society we have not been honest about our common confusion and disappointment in life. As Christians, we need to admit that being a perfect Christian is not the point. The point is to find strength in humility and abounding grace in community.