LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR – Jesus was a radical in the way he treated social outcasts like prostitutes, the poor, the sick, lepers and others. He treated them in a way that was completely contrary to social conventions of the day. Christ’s love brought a sense of dignity and value to those on the margins. […]
Read More...LIVING ROOM OPEN DOOR – Have you had thoughts about facilitating a Living Room group? Perhaps you would like to share how your faith has helped you live with your mental health problems. You may have learned coping techniques that you would like to pass along so that the people in your group could learn […]
Read More...Tulips at Keukenhof Gardens in Holland LIVING ROOM’S OPEN DOOR – All members of the Living Room Open Door faith-based peer support groups, including the facilitator, have suffered, or are suffering from mental health issues. It’s this commonality that pulls them together. Groups are not led by professionals and don’t offer clinical therapy. They don’t […]
Read More...MY PERSPECTIVE – There is a large organization not far away, promising Christian churches that it will equip them to respond to people with lived experience. They teach the ins and outs of mental health and have been doing so for over ten years, offering free online courses about its various aspects. They speak with […]
Read More...COMPASSION – And today I wonder. Does all this fussing about rebuilding Living room come from my will and not God’s at all? Am I trying to push my own will, in memory of how good the experience of Living Room used to be? Is it because of the Holy Joy I always felt after […]
Read More...From March 2019 – I went through years of hard times. During that time, I found solace in my writing through Jesus, to whom I could not have come closer. It was in the suffering, especially in the quiet night times as I wrote, that Jesus came closest. I often pictured myself as a biblical […]
Read More...The following piece was written from the perspective of a person needing care. Have you ever needed care in the way this person did? How would you like to have someone like the Samaritan looking after you? Can you imagine how good it would be to have someone like him—someone so much like Jesus—taking care […]
Read More...THROUGH HIS LOVE I woke up this morning to an extremely painful leg. But I took an Advil, with the promise that the pain should soon lessen. I also knew how good it would be to be able to share with my friends that after all the tests had been done, showing that nothing serious […]
Read More...ONE SUCH AS ME? – In my book ONE SUCH AS ME? I quote Philip Yancey, one of my favorite authors, when he said, “For a writer, nothing really counts in life until you put it on paper.” And that’s so very true for me too. I also wrote, “There are very few things that […]
Read More...CREATING A MOVEMENT When I was in the process of starting up the Living Room support ministry for people with mental health challenges, my psychiatrist at the time became quite enthused. He often told me how what I was doing was very much like how Alcoholics Anonymous had started. This doctor was so eager to […]
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