Sep 27th: On the Days You Don’t Know What to Choose, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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On the Days You Don’t Know What to Choose, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Unhurried. A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Mark 1:35–39 · Matthew 11:28-30 .
Feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to care for yourself? This week’s message invites you to slow down, notice your own pain, and make space for mental health, just as Jesus did. Join us Sunday, in person or online, for a warm, honest conversation about caring for the soul in a hurried world. All are welcome.
Transcript:
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Do you remember when during the pandemic, we, we wore masks on in public to slow the spread of the virus?
Speaker 0 00:01:10 How am I really? September is mental health awareness month and, and National Suicide Prevention Month. This is the month we’re given the important reminder that it’s okay not to be okay. That asking for help is not weakness. And that on the days we, we don’t know what else to choose. We can choose our mental health. In fact, sometimes the most important choice we can make most days is to choose our mental health. A friend told me recently over coffee, you know, she said, I, I’m sorry. You know, I’m sorry. I’m just not myself today. Life, life is just hard. I’m, I’m really struggling. I I’m not okay. You know, I’m sorry. And I found myself wondering, what kind of culture have we have? We built where we, where we feel the need to apologize for simply being human. If your life feels hard right now, that doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong. Life is hard. Struggling doesn’t require an apology. It requires compassion. You know, we are strange creatures. You know, if I told you my, my knee hurts, you’d probably tell me about your knee. And we’d we’d trade doctor recommendations without, without a second thought. But if I told you my, my heart hurt that some mornings I wake up anxious and that grief still catches me up, guard the room would get quieter.
Speaker 0 00:02:59 There’s a stigma attached to emotional pain. We don’t attach to having a bad back. And it makes no sense because your brain processes emotional and physical pain through many of the same pathways. Pain is pain. Only one kind gets spoken out loud without shame and the other doesn’t. You know, our culture stigmatizes vulnerability as weakness. We put on our armor, we try to impress each other with our strengths, and then we wonder why we feel so disconnected and lonely. But it’s never been our strength that connects us. It’s actually our vulnerability of what we actually share in common. All of us is loss, heartbreak, the need for one another. Our real strength is found in the courage to say, I’m really hurting. And to ask for help. Asking for help is not weakness. It’s the desire to be strong.
Speaker 0 00:04:26 Here’s something I want you to notice today about Jesus. And in Mark’s gospel, Jesus has just had one of the most demanding days of his ministry healing people late into the night. The whole town gathered at his door. And what does he do? It says, very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place where he prayed. He didn’t wait until he collapsed in the middle of, of real urgent demand, man, Jesus got up before dawn and chose to step away. He chose quiet. He chose his own soul. When his disciples finally tracked him down saying, you know, everybody’s looking for you, Jesus didn’t rush back to keep everybody happy.
Speaker 0 00:05:40 He already had given himself to what he needed. Now, I don’t think that was being irresponsible. I think that was Jesus showing us what health looks like. You cannot pour out love, wisdom, presence from a well that’s run dry rest. Wasn’t Jesus taking a break from his calling? It was how he managed to continue to live his calling. In the midst of all the demands now of Jesus carrying the weight of a hurting world, believed his own soul was worth stepping away for what makes us think that ours isn’t on the days you don’t know what to choose, choose your mental health. You know, I really love that phrase because it doesn’t pretend that life is simple. I mean, most days you’re choosing between a a dozen good necessary things, your family, your work, the people you need, the people that need you.
Speaker 0 00:07:04 This isn’t asking you to abandon any of that. It’s asking you on the days when, when everything feels equally urgent and you’re running on empty to let your own wellbeing be allowed into that decision. Not be the last decision. Not not never looking at your own wellbeing, just allowing it space, actually making room for yourself. You know, that might look like admitting out loud to one person that you’re not okay. It might look like finally calling a counselor or therapist. It might look like sitting in your car five extra minutes before walking into a house full of needs just to breathe.
Speaker 0 00:08:12 It might mean calling 9 8 8, the suicide and crisis flightline. Not because you’re in the deepest darkness, but because someone on that line is trained to help with exactly the kind of pain that doesn’t have anywhere else to go. None of that is weakness. All of it is what it looks like to take your own soul as seriously as Jesus took his. You know, I also wanna speak to, to those of you who are actually doing okay right now, because I guarantee almost, almost everyone near you is carrying something heavy that doesn’t show. You know, there’s this old story about, about pilgrims going up to the temple in Jerusalem. Most would climb the steps and they were told to circle to the right around the courtyard, exiting where they’d come in.
Speaker 0 00:09:30 But anyone who happened to be broken hearted would be asked to turn left instead and to walk against the flow of the crowd. And their tradition was that every person walking the other way was required. We required to stop and ask what happened to you. And the broken hearted person would answer honestly, and the other’s only obligation that day was to listen and then offer a blessing before continuing on. I love that image because it flips our instinct. Our instinct is just to keep walking due to, you know, to a swim. Everybody’s fine because everybody says they’re fine.
Speaker 0 00:10:34 What if the most sacred thing we could do for each other is to notice who’s walking against the current to stop and ask, are you okay? And then actually wait long enough to hear the real answer. Don’t rush to fix it. Explain it away. Or you don’t have to save anyone. You just have to be willing to sit in the dark with them a little while without needing them to hurry back to the light so you can feel comfortable again. There are so many people barely hanging on by a thread right now. You could be that thread sometimes. All it takes to change the direction of someone’s whole day is one person willing to slow down long enough to notice.
Speaker 0 00:11:53 So here’s what I want to leave you with this week. Build in one moment. You know, even a small one where you honestly ask yourself, how am I doing? And let the answer matter and build in one moment where you, you ask someone else the same question and actually stay for the answer. If, if you’re struggling right now with anxiety, depression, despair, maybe with thoughts of ending your life, please hear this clearly. You are not alone. There is, there is no shame in what you’re carrying. Help is available right now. You can call or text nine, eight, eight any hour of the day. You can also reach out to me or any member of our pastoral team. We would much rather be interrupted by your pain than have you carry it silently. And for the rest of us this week, let’s choose to notice, let’s choose to ask. Let’s choose on the days we don’t know what else to choose. Let’s choose our own mental health and the mental health of the people around us. Uh, this is after all is what the, with this whole series Unhurried is, is all about. Let’s, let’s not be in such a hurry that we forget the health of our own souls.
Speaker 0 00:13:57 May it be so.
