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No one in ministry had taught me about the two weight-loss foundations. It wasn’t diet and exercise but trauma and stress.

It was October 2015 when I started feeling nauseous, anxious, tired, and sick. By November, I had gone from 208 to 165 pounds. It’s not hyperbole when I say that starting in 2016, I saw different specialists weekly. Every doctor thought I was experiencing something different and scarier than the previous one. In the span of a few months, doctors thought I had:

Yes, you read that last one correctly; because of how much weight I lost and how quickly I lost it, Aids couldn’t be immediately ruled out. From October 2015 until October 2020, I was constantly sick without a precise diagnosis of what I was experiencing.

During this time, I was on staff at a mega-church in Austin, TX. Admittedly, almost everyone I worked with or pastored in the church was concerned and genuinely sought to care for me. I don’t question or doubt people’s genuine concern for my well-being.

Looking back, what seems strange to me is how the church supported me. I was regularly met with ‘thoughts and prayers,’ my family often had a meal brought to our home, and my elders were quick to remind me God had a plan for my illness.

There were times when pastors would try to encourage me by sharing how they believed what I was going through was a test from God, how my suffering brought me closer to Jesus, and how this season of sickness was ultimately for my good.

After two years of illness and my 47th primary care doctor (PCP), my doctor asked if I’d be willing to take a brief psychological survey. I assumed this was part of establishing care, and I’d already let doctors poke and prod every inch of my body, so a psych survey seemed like no big deal.

To the doctor’s surprise, I scored 19 out of 20 on the survey. I initially thought I must be mentally fit as a fiddle with an almost perfect score. The doctor quickly burst my bubble when they shared that the higher the score, the more severe the stress a patient is currently experiencing. Neither the doctor nor I knew, but this survey would eventually help me regain my health. But not before the church was done Jesus-juking me into believing there was nothing wrong with my mental health.

After taking this test, my doctor recommended that I see a mental health professional for counseling and to be prescribed medications for the severe depression, stress, anxiety, and PTSD I was experiencing. Being on staff at a mega-church meant we had an in-house counseling center. Because I was a staff member, I was also offered the opportunity to receive counseling from the director of the counseling center.

For the first time in years, I felt a ray of hope press against my spirit. What if all the physical illness I’d been experiencing was a result of mental and not physical issues? OMG, this could be game-changing! But then it wasn’t…

My counselor quickly acknowledged that the survey results pointed to an issue. However, the issue wasn’t due to mental illness but a lack of trust in the gospel. The remedy wasn’t counseling to talk about my past and current trauma.

The solution was to fast for a week. I needed to spend more time in prayer and reading my bible. Journaling would help. I was advised to focus on journaling where I wasn’t trusting God and where I felt like I needed to be in control instead of letting Jesus be in control.

I was also reminded that I was on church staff. It’s ok that I was sick; it was understandable that I was experiencing an unknown illness, but the church needed to see my faith and trust in God to get me through. Sure, I had trauma, but so what? I was taught that the trauma didn’t define me, but the gospel and Jesus Christ did. I needed to remember I could do all things through Christ who strengthens me! The problem was I didn’t get any better. My physical symptoms worsened.

In February 2020, I left the mega-church I had been a part of for the previous decade and moved my family out of state. Based on a friend’s recommendation, I was connected with a psychiatrist friend of theirs. To be clear, this psychiatrist identifies as a Christian but does not offer ‘biblical counseling.’

Within the first 30 minutes, my psychiatrist was able to diagnose my physical symptoms as clear signs of mental health issues. As many people have now become familiar with the term, I was learning that, in fact, “the body does keep the score.”

I suppressed much of my childhood trauma that was now resurfacing as an adult through various stress responses such as anxiety, panic attacks, and, at times, severe depression. What compounded these symptoms was the constant pressure of ministry.

Seriously, what other job on earth is your performance tied to your morality, depth of faith, commitment to God, fidelity to seeing the gospel save the world, etc.? Of course, presidents, kings, and world leaders have nations and countries to run, but the fate of their citizens spending eternity in heaven and hell isn’t part of their responsibilities.

During my years in evangelicalism, I found myself in spaces led by men who were fixated on discipleship, and discipleship always meant three things:

The rationale was, “If God didn’t call this leader, why is there so much fruit in their ministry?”

Let’s be honest. ‘Fruit’ is a Christian code for a leader’s ability to increase money and attendance through a local church. Based on this criteria, any successful capitalist endeavor could be known as the same ‘fruit.’ We could say Jeff Bezos is called by God because Amazon bears ‘fruit.’

Smashing personal trauma with the unrealistic and often toxic expectation that comes with being in ministry created a perfect cocktail of sickness. It took years to find a medical professional who took my mental health seriously. My health wasn’t suffering due to a lack of faith or trust in God. It suffered because I required the right medications and counseling to help me cope and work through years of heartache and trauma caused both within and outside of the church. My physical ailments weren’t ‘prayed away’ but subsided as the root cause, my mental health, was addressed.

According to Johns Hopkins University, 26% of Americans 18 and older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. That’s approximately 58 million people who experience some level of mental health illness. For those who are also evangelicals, their mental health is often compounded by the way churches respond to ‘care for them.’

Based on my experience, one of the most dangerous decisions churches have made is to convince themselves and others that biblical counseling and mental healthcare are synonymous. When we take a step back and examine the idea of “biblical counseling” from a fresh perspective, we can see how nonsensical the concept is.

For example, let’s say someone is experiencing heart palpitations. Their chest has tightened, and they feel like their heart is pounding a mile a minute and perhaps evening skipping a beat. Worried and nervous, they reach out to their spouse with their symptoms and share they think they should go to an ER. However, the spouse is a good Christian, so instead of agreeing that their spouse should go to the ER, they recommend, “Why don’t you go to a Biblical Cardiologist before visiting the ER?”

If you think that example sounds ridiculous, I would agree. Yet, we do the same thing when we direct people experiencing mental health issues to a biblical counselor instead of a licensed mental healthcare professional. The Bible is many things; a manual for diagnosing and treating mental health isn’t one of them.

The sad reality is biblical counseling tends to emphasize spiritual or moral explanations for mental health issues, which often leads to a stigmatization of conditions like depression or anxiety, viewing them as spiritual weaknesses rather than medical conditions. What if instead of slapping ‘biblical’ in front of an entire medical profession, the church learned to walk in the tension of holding matters of faith and the professional expertise modern science and medicine offer?

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