In 2008, I was in my seventh year as an adult discipleship director in a thriving church. I was married to a wonderful man and had two great kids. On the surface, most people would have thought I was flourishing, but beneath the surface, I was struggling. One afternoon, I was sitting at a birthday party for a dear friend, and I looked around. I loved people. I loved my friend. Yet, I had no desire to celebrate her — or celebrate anything.
The next day, I called a counselor to whom I regularly referred individuals from our church. His first question in response to my request for an appointment was, “Is it your marriage?” To which I responded, “No, but I’m afraid it’s going to be if I don’t figure out what’s going on.”
That began my journey to health. One of the books that I read during my healing journey was Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. I realized that I was guilty of so many of the hallmarks of emotional unhealth. I was pushing myself to do all things to perfection — besides, I was serving God, and He deserved my best, right? I was stuffing my anger and fear because I thought these were unworthy emotions. I was doing for God rather than being with God. I was ignoring Sabbath and was blind to the impact of my past on my present. It took months of counseling to sort through the tangle of my emotional unhealth, and I have often wondered if this could have been avoided.
There is no way to know the answer to that question, but what I do know is that God used Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and several other books by Pete Scazzero to plant the threads of health in the lives of many at that church and in our next church in Virginia, where Chris and I led our church through EHS. Some loved it and a few struggled with it. Sometimes what we need is not what is most comfortable. Each time I go through the Emotionally Healthy curriculum, God uses it to draw me closer to Himself and enables me to more quickly notice when I am going off of His path of health. I am not fully healed, but I am continuing to be transformed into the likeness of Jesus.
If you are willing to give eight weeks of your life to working through this material with a small group, I believe you will find yourself on a path of growth and with a few deeper friendships. I encourage you to try to arrange your schedule to join one of the three small group options. Give it a shot. If you hate it, I will buy your book back from you!
Claire