Easing the Burden on the Walk with Mental Illness
November 1, 2021
Christians struggling with mental health issues will find a powerful, persuasive ally in Lutheran pastor Kegler (One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins). Kegler, who has dealt with her own mental health demons along with her wife, Michelle, shatters myths that depression and other conditions are a moral failing. She takes a nuanced approach, writing, “I cannot offer the magic words that have healed me or others; what I can offer, however, is the sketches of a wide and wandering map in which I and many others who live with mental illness of all shades are walking.” The church, she suggests, has misunderstood and mistreated mental illness, while derision of conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder and schizophrenia litter modern conversations, which fuels a sense of shame for those needing assistance. Helping others to walk their own paths toward mental health recovery, Kegler caps each chapter with questions for the reader to ponder—without judgment—as well as suggested further reading, along with healing, normalizing analogies (“We have much greater grace for a broken ankle than we do for our faltering minds”). While encouraging readers to continue their prayer practices, Kegler also gives them permission to seek pharmacological interventions and talk therapy. Kegler offers impassioned salvation to fellow Christians who have struggled with mental health; this book could in fact save lives.