Spiritual Reflections

The Young and the Anxious: World Mental Health Day

I am a baby in the Baby Boom Generation, born in 1964. I remember doing drills where at the teacher's command, we would hide under our desks, get on our knees and cover our heads. The thinking was that in case of a nuclear attack, those wobbly cast metal one-unit desks would shelter us from radiation. We may have been foolish, but damn, we believed in the power of our own resourcefulness. Even though I came from a "broken home," I was encouraged by voices of teachers, coaches, and pastors around me that I could rise above my station and aim for a better life. "You are good student," "You understand the game," "God has big things in store for you." These voices filled me with hope during particularly dark days at home. Wednesday, October 10 is World Mental Health Day. The focus this year is "Young People and Mental [...]

The Young and the Anxious: World Mental Health Daytonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:05-04:00

A Rape Survivor Speaks… with Compassion

by Kelcey R. ... Right now, I am sitting on my couch while an “I Love Lucy” rerun plays in the background. Here and there, my laugh punctuates the low volume of the TV, and the silence of an otherwise quiet night. It’s a nice moment. However, if all someone saw was the snapshot of this moment I am in, it would be leaving out the other roughly 10,920 days of my life. What I don’t share often is that half of those days have been freckled with nightmares, flashbacks, panic attacks, and other symptoms of ptsd. The snapshot wouldn’t be able to show that I spent a lot of those days, months, and years trying to white knuckle my way through grief and anger, before I learned how much more able Jesus is to carry those things for me. This week was a hard week, if you watched the [...]

A Rape Survivor Speaks… with Compassiontonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:05-04:00

Guilt is Good; Shame is Sinful

Some time ago, a friend wrote to me a blog comment in which she raises a very tough question She writes this -- We have a dear, Christian friend who has stage 4 cancer. Although he lives a good life, helping others and spreading the word of God, he believes that God is punishing him for his past sins by giving him cancer. Do you believe God punishes people for their sins? Especially after a person has found the Lord and changed his/her life? I wrote back -- Wow, big question. It depends on how you define "punishment". Certainly, God allows natural consequences for our behavior. A life-long smoker may develop lung cancer and God may choose not to miraculously intervene. I would say, though, that in a case such as this we are really the ones who have punished ourselves, "fallen into the pit of our own making." The good [...]

Guilt is Good; Shame is Sinfultonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:05-04:00

Godly Sorrow Over Deadly Grief: Reflecting on my Suicide Attempt

Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief. My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak. (Psalm 31.8-10) This week I shared my story with a youth group at Eminence Christian Church (IN). I started by having the youth turn to each other and say, "God loves you more than you can imagine," then, "God brought you here to be blessed." I then went through how God had orchestrated events in my life over the past decade to bring me there tonight. The event that almost prevented me from being there. My despair over it. My book. The support of my family and friends moving back to Indiana. My blog post about suicide. The youth leader reading it and inviting me to come. The [...]

Godly Sorrow Over Deadly Grief: Reflecting on my Suicide Attempttonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:05-04:00

Bruised, Not Broken: Resilient Hearts

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out. (Isaiah 42.3) My parents divorced in 1975. From then on, I have been identified as a child of a broken home. This brokenness certainly describes the nature of the family we once had, or hoped to have. That image of family is forever broken, shattered, never to be fixed. But I am not a broken person. Bruised, yes. Even deeply wounded, but not broken. At least not forever broken. Fractured, but capable of being mended. In time, with plenty of prayer and much care, I have passed through stages of recovery to become a wounded healer who intimately feels the pain of others and, by God's grace, responds in love. In her soon-to-be published book Kicked to the Curb, Dr. Susan Lockwood describes resilience is the life of a young woman named Rose. Rose is a twenty-something [...]

Bruised, Not Broken: Resilient Heartstonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00

What I Believe About Suicide

God is more just than I will ever be. And, God is more loving than I can ever imagine. For centuries it has been standard church doctrine that suicide is a shameful sin, deserving eternal punishment. Persons who took their own lives were restricted from church burials, families were ostracized, even excommunicated for fear this deadly infection would spread to the whole body. The teaching that suicide leads directly to hell is rooted not so much in Scripture as in a desire to deter someone who wants to end his life from doing so. Lately, with suicides of prominent church leaders and their family members, this teaching is being called into question. Most recently, Inland Hills Church put out this message: Inland Hills Church grieves with heavy hearts as our Lead Pastor Andrew Stoecklein was welcomed into Heaven on Saturday night after battling depression and anxiety. It’s not the outcome [...]

What I Believe About Suicidetonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00

Choosing Life Over Death

I've been asked to share my story with a youth group next week. Like many teens, they are facing intense issues. More than just what sport to play, who to ask out on a date, what college to choose. No, much more than this, they are asking life and death questions like: how can I cope with this pain, who can I turn to for help, why live. When I was in high school, I had much to live for, or so it seemed. I was a top scholar-athlete. I was in theater, student government, publications. One would think I didn't have a care in the world. But inside I was festering with despair. At high school, I read a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson called, "Richard Cory." It begins, Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole [...]

Choosing Life Over Deathtonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00

Ironic Iconoclasm: Healthy, Holy Humor

Some time ago, I was asked this question: In two words or less, how would you describe your sense of humor? The first two words that came to my mind were - "Ironic Iconoclasm". Then I wondered, "What does that mean?" This post is my effort to answer that question. First, irony comes in various forms. I like how this on-line dictionary defines one aspect of irony - a pretense of ignorance and of willingness to learn from another assumed in order to make the other's false conceptions conspicuous by adroit questioning —called also Socratic irony. I've learned this form of irony not so much from the classic Greek philosopher Socrates as from my self-proclaimed Kentuckian father Veston. When Dad wants to catch someone off-guard with a thought provoking question, he begins with - Now, I only have a sixth-grade education, so you'll have to help me understand this... Dad is actually [...]

Ironic Iconoclasm: Healthy, Holy Humortonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00

Careless or Carefree Speech?

With [the tongue] we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. (James 3.9) Each time I sit down before a keyboard and stare at a blank screen, I say a quiet prayer that my words glorify God and encourage God's people. There is so much hate speech in the world today. I count it my ministry to say something not only truthful, but uplifting. Speak the truth in love, as Paul writes in Ephesians. When we do, we make a tremendous impact on those who hear us, many of whom have been beaten down for years with messages that they are no good, that what they do is not worthy, that they will never measure up, that they are not loved. I had a high school tennis coach who knew the power of encouraging speech. He knew next to [...]

Careless or Carefree Speech?tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00

He Was in Heaven Before He Died

I wrote this story about a decade ago. It is not based solely on facts. I did have a Grandpa George and this was pretty much how he lived and died. But I didn't make it to the funeral. Instead, I was in a hellish heaven of my own on the psych unit of Columbia Presbyterian. I got the call late at night that Grandpa George had died. He had lived a hard life. He didn't have the opportunity to get a good education. He never learned to read or write because his demanding father made him quit school to help in the fields. He worked hard to get by and managed to scrape together a living. He met a woman - Maize - at the tomato factory where he worked. She says he was throwing tomatoes at her, so she knew he liked her. They were married [...]

He Was in Heaven Before He Diedtonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:07-04:00