At last week’s Vestry meeting, Kathleen Dean shared this deeply meaningful devotion. It’s an honor to share it with you.

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Once a month, I help facilitate a support group for family members of individuals struggling with mental illness. Typically, when a parent, spouse or other loved one comes to a support group, it’s because they’re in crisis. They’re at the end of their rope. They’re exhausted and depleted. They are terrified for their loved one’s Wellbeing and crushed by the weight of responsibility that they bear.

We always start by acknowledging that just by showing up, a person has taken a huge step in their journey. So many families struggle alone, fearful of the stigma and lack of understanding that surrounds mental illness in our society. By coming to a support group, they are choosing connection over isolation, vulnerability over wearing a mask. And that takes courage.

As individuals share their stories, there’s a lot of pain. But there’s also a palpable sense of relief. They aren’t alone after all. People sit up a little bit straighter. Breathe more deeply. There are nods. Shared looks. Some smiles and even laughter.

As anyone who has a loved one who has struggled with mental illness well knows, this connection alone is incredibly life-affirming – even life saving. But I’m often amazed at how quickly the group takes their mutual support to a whole other level, moving from telling their own painful stories to reaching out to offer help, reassurance, and above all – hope – to one another.

As I sat down to write this devotional, my mind kept returning to what I have witnessed in these support groups. The typical boundaries that define communities in our city fall away as former strangers come together to share a common pain. On any given night, a postal worker might know just the right thing to say to a banker; a twenty-something might find solace in counsel from someone three times their age; a native Charlottean might gain new insights from the hard-earned wisdom of an immigrant couple.

In that short hour, there’s an authentic egalitarianism and fully acknowledged commonality that to me seems to embody the spirit of Christ among us. I don’t want to sugarcoat or romanticize things. This isn’t a club that anyone would choose to be a part of. But in holding space for one another’s burdens, and finding hope therein, struggling families fulfill the vision set forth so succinctly by Paul in Romans 12:5: so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

In the ten years that our family has been at Christ Church, we have similarly found this to be a community where people show up for one another in ways big and small, fostering the authentic connections that, along with faith and Wellbeing, are integral to the perseverance of hope.