Mental Health: Kay Warren describes life in the crucible

TYLER—Christ shares in both the suffering and the comfort of his people, Kay Warren told participants at the Peace of Mind Conference on mental illness, held at Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler.

Warren—who co-founded Saddleback Church with her husband, Rick, in Lake Forest, Calif.—described how knowledge of God’s character helped her continue after the suicide of their son, Matthew, last year.

“We are getting through—Rick and I and our family are getting through—the darkest, deepest heartache, struggle, nightmare, hell on earth that anyone could go through, because of what we know. It is what we know that is getting us through, and it is what you know that will get you through,” Warren said.

For others whose families have been touched by mental illness, Warren offered a few truths she learned from her experience.

“Life doesn’t make sense, but we can have peace because we know God is with us and loves us. We are often confused and surprised. We can’t figure out what has happened to us, and we don’t understand what has happened to those we love,” Warren acknowledged.

She pointed to two biblical passages—Isaiah 43:2 and Hebrews 13:5—that testify to God’s presence in trying times.

“Even though you may not be able to put a finger on everything and why it has gone the way it has gone in your life, you can have peace if you know that God loves you and that he will walk with you through every experience, every day—the darkest days, the best days. God will not leave us. He will not abandon us. He has promised us his presence,” she said.

God’s promised presence

“Frequently, God does not offer us explanations, but he does offer his presence.”

Even if she had an explanation for her son’s suicide, it would not change the fact that he took his life, she said.

“It wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t bring him back, and it wouldn’t bring me comfort,” she said.

“Explanations seldom comfort us, but God’s presence with us does bring comfort. The fact that I know he will not leave us, that he didn’t leave Matthew, that he didn’t turn his back on Matthew, that God’s eye was on Matthew even in his most desperate moments—God didn’t abandon him. I receive comfort from that, even in the chaos of loss.”

Brokenness characterizes life, Warren noted.

“But we can have joy, because we know God has a greater plan,” Warren said. “Everything on earth is broken—our bodies, our minds, relationships, government, the weather, every facet of love has brokenness to it. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be joy. Even if we are going through terrible times and everything is broken, sometimes in shreds—we can still have joy if we know God has a greater plan.”

A quest for joy

For most of her life, she considered joy outside her reach, she acknowledged. Her book, Choose Joy, grew out of her quest for the joy Jesus promised.

When her son took his life, she recalled standing on the driveway at his house with her husband as the police entered to confirm what they feared to be true. She clutched a necklace in her hand that said, “Choose Joy,” and she showed it to her husband.

“How could I do that? Because for more than 50 years, we’ve been sending our spiritual roots deep into the love of God, deep into our Savior, down into the richness of God’s love, mercy and faithfulness,” she said.

“Because of that, as Romans 5:3-5 says, the troubles that come our way have the opportunity to produce endurance and hopefully character and hopefully joy.”

That doesn’t mean her family didn’t experience deep sorrow and disappointment when Matthew committed suicide, she added.

“If we know life is chaotic and yet God gives peace, if we know this life is broken and in the middle of that God can give us joy, I want to tell you this last thing I know: Life is a battle, but we can have hope, because we know there is more to the story,” she said.

When her son’s mental illness took a turn for the worse five years ago, she knew she needed spiritual reinforcement. She enlisted friends who committed to pray for her family and send her Scripture verses of support and comfort.

‘My hope box seemed to mock me’

A friend sent her a box with the word “hope” on it. She wrote on cards the Bible verses she received and placed them in the box. Every night, she read the verses in her “hope box.”

She began to believe without reservation Matthew would be healed.

When he took his life April 5, 2013, “Well, my hope box seemed to mock me,” she confessed.

“I didn’t open again for a month, because contrary to Romans 5:5, hope had severely let me down. I felt very bruised and wounded—by hope.

“So what do you do when hope doesn’t look like you think it is going to? What do you do when you’ve put all your eggs in the healing basket, and it doesn’t happen the way you were so sure it was going to?

“You can curse God and decide he’s a phony, a fake and a tease. You can walk away from him entirely because you have been let down by hope. Or you can give God an out and blame yourself and say: ‘If I’d been a better Christian, or a better mother, or if I’d just had more faith, if I could have just said the right thing the right way, if I could have just done something better or different, Matthew would have been healed. He would have been alive.’

“I’ve decided neither of those responses is helpful, because what I know about God prevents me from concluding that he is a tease, a phony or a fake. And what I know about myself prevents me from concluding it was my fault. I’ve had to accept that my love was not enough to keep him from hitting that mental illness wall.”

A ‘big fat mystery’

When hope disappoints, Warren said, “We are left with mystery—big fat mystery.”

Just as Warren once kept a box by her bedside to house her hopes, she now has a small Le Creuset—which translates to “crucible”—piece of bakeware. In it, she places the questions for which she doesn’t have answers.

“On my table where I have my quiet time, sit mystery and hope—because I am rebuilding my hope. We have to come to the place in our walk with God where we can acknowledge mystery—that doesn’t have explanations, that doesn’t have a pretty little bow on top. We have to understand that God does not give us all the explanations that our souls crave,” she said.

“You and I have to decide that if we are going to be in relationship with this God who is good, who gives hope, who gives joy, who is in control and who is bringing a better end to the story than the end I could have conceived, we have to live with mystery and at the same time, live with hope.”

Warren acknowledges she is still in the process of rebuilding hope in her life.

“I can’t live without hope, and there is nowhere else to go but to Jesus Christ. Where else would I go? I could walk away, but where would I go? There is nowhere else to go but back to the God who is in control, the God who is loving, the God who is good and the God who has better things in store than what I can see with my eyes,” she said.