Be brave enough to let the light find you

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Key points:

• A United Methodist lay member shares her story in honor of Suicide Prevention Awareness Month.
• Ännä White says a former pastor’s honesty about depression allowed her to realize she didn’t have to be healed to find a home at church.
• “In my experience, that light hasn’t come in exceptional or demonstrative ways. It’s been quite ordinary. It’s looked like acceptance and laughter, food and care. It’s felt like love,” she writes.  

 

Ännä White. Photo courtesy of the author.

I’ve spent most of the years of my life wanting to leave. A home. A faith. A job. The planet.

There are layered reasons for that, but at the bottom I wasn’t sure I deserved to be there. I thought I’d surely be gone by my 40th birthday, because there was no way God would put me down here with the self-preservation skills of, in the words of one of my kids, “a wet noodle,” and leave me.

Then, I turned 40, and something changed. I started to ask myself, “What would it mean to want to stay?”  

The United Methodist Church I first attended, Maplewood United Methodist Church in Sulphur, Louisiana, was pastored by the Rev. Roger Templeton. I slid into the church’s back pew on the first Sunday of Advent in 2014. I had never attended a Methodist church and had not been inside any church for years. My heart felt shrouded in grief.

Then Roger stepped up to the pulpit and preached about heaviness of heart. He didn’t present it as philosophical or metaphorical. Instead, he talked about his personal experience with depression. 

I was raised in a faith tradition with conclusive narrative arcs. People shared their stories, but only after they were healed. People not yet healed were extolled to step up their fasting and prayer regimen. I didn’t see a space for people whose struggles did not resolve themselves into tidy packages, and over time I began to feel there was no place in the church for someone like me.

Roger’s honesty was a balm to my heart. I knew nothing about what it was to be a United Methodist. I just knew beneath all my layers of shame and hurt and confusion, a spark still survived, and suddenly I felt the smallest bit of hope.  

Roger moved to a church assignment in another town a few years later. Before he left, I came to know him as a friend and as a man of deep faith. His struggles with depression did not make him less pastoral to me. He was real, and that gave me permission to be real too.

He showed me there could be a place in church for me. I didn’t have to be healed to belong. Some services I sang, but there were other days all I could do was arrive. I learned that was OK too. 

Roger died by suicide Oct. 1, 2019. I’ll never know why Roger felt like leaving was his best choice. I do know I’ve felt broken and tired in a way no amount of sleep will fix. I know what it is to feel so devoid of hope that the idea of leaving began to feel like a worry stone in my pocket.

I grieved when I learned of Roger’s death, but I did not respect him less. Roger showed me that listening matters more than speaking, and honesty can move a person more than scholarship. He didn’t walk with me long, but he was there for the beginning of this path I’m on, and I’ll always be grateful.  

I’m 44 now, and an active member of Henning Memorial United Methodist Church in Sulphur. I’ve been privileged to journey with many members of The United Methodist Church since I first snuck into that back pew. I’d love to name them, but I couldn’t possibly. What they all have in common is that they’ve accepted me as I am. 

I didn’t have a lightning bolt moment or a miraculous healing, nor do I have five easy steps to tell anyone that will change their life. I doubt I’ll ever be “healed,” but that has not been a prerequisite for belonging.

Some days it’s still like living in a darkened room. It’s dim, but there are enough glimmers of light to move. In my experience, that light hasn’t come in exceptional or demonstrative ways. It’s been quite ordinary. It’s looked like acceptance and laughter, food and care. It’s felt like love.  

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. If that feels close to you or to someone you love, please reach out. Call your people, your pastor or your friends. Call on Jesus. Be brave enough to be real. Sometimes that’s where the light finds us. As Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”  

White is a lay member of Henning Memorial United Methodist Church in Sulphur, Louisiana,

News media contact: Julie Dwyer at (615) 742-5470 or [email protected]. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.