Help! A Woman in My Church Is in Crisis

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Hope Blanton
All right, you guys, we love, love seeing this many women coming to care for other women as us as therapists. This is just like we’re so excited. So, my name is Hope Blanton, and I am a therapist that runs a private practice in San Antonio. I also co-author Attas Feet Studies. This, this is Summer Vincent Berger. She is a therapist as well, but she is the executive director of care at the Village Church in Dallas, and a fun, crazy fact, we had never met before. We worked on this, but we grew up in the same town in Texas, we went to the same high school, we played the same sport, we overlapped one year, never met each other, so just if that doesn’t show you that God’s got it all under control, y’all, it’s going to be okay. So, and you guys are women that want to care for other women, and that is a beautiful thing, that is a necessary thing, and that is a thing that the church needs. So, we are hoping in this small amount of time that we can equip you just a little bit better to do that, and love those women. Well,

Summer Vinson Berger
I have been thinking about y’all all week, and in particular, I’ve been thinking about you the past two days. I’ve been thinking, who are the faces that I’m going to see? What are what are in their hearts that prompted them to sign up for this breakout? What are they? What are the questions there? They’re thinking, what do they want to take home to their communities, to their churches, to your sphere of influence? I had dreams about y’all last night, which might sound weird, and if we’re trying to gain credibility, that maybe I don’t know what that did with your bank account with me, but I, I have you have been on my mind, in my heart. There’s a reason that you opted in for this breakout, right? God is intentional in how we spend our time and what we choose, and so I don’t know what your reason was. Here’s some assumptions that I have, probably was maybe a tender reason that you chose this breakout, it might be because this, there’s a passionate reason, there’s something you feel called to, and you’re like, oh, I could start here, maybe it’s because of your own story, you remember that you wished someone could have cared for you well during a crisis. I don’t know the reasons, but there’s an assumption that we have, as we’ve been thinking about you and praying for you, that there are stories attached to all the faces who are sitting here going for 45 minutes. We’re going to do our best to put some principles in front of you to really going to leave you with more questions than answers, so you can take these ideas and want to learn more, study more, take it and contextualize it for your community, your church, your culture, we’re going to give you all that info, but I have also been praying, going, ‘Hey, Lord, what, what do you want me to say to them outside of this good content to speak over them, to encourage them? So, here are some of the things that I want to say, just really briefly. In the last 48 hours, I’ve been praying over you, and I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been praying for you, that you would know that you would leave here knowing more, that you have what it takes to do this kind of work, that through the Holy Spirit He has equipped you, and He will carry you to do this hard, heavy work of care, of advocacy, of support for women in your local church. I have prayed that you would know and feel that the Holy Spirit would give you courage, that He would give you courage, that you would find a place of bravery to step into the gap when women need advocacy and support and care, care and advocacy spaces. You have to have a lot of courage, and I’m guessing if you’re here, that means you’ve already, you know, that, and you have been brave, and you’ve experienced the courage that the Holy Spirit and the Lord can give you. So, I pray that you would, I’ve prayed that you would feel courage, that you would be brave, and that you would know that you have what it takes to do this work, and while I was praying that over you, I want to say it was like this week, but it was a few hours ago. I, of course, the Lord, I started thinking about Rahab, and I’m not going to teach and talk about Rahab and Joshua too, but I thought about her, and I thought, okay, Rahab, she had some of these characteristics. Rahab was not in a formal position of power, right? She was not, but she sure did end up being positioned to have influence because of how the Lord ordained things. She was brave, she broke the rules, defied authority for the greater good. She broke the rules. I don’t have fun breaking rules, but I don’t mind breaking a bad rule. But she, right, she didn’t. There was no rigidity in her decision making. She was brave. She broke the rules. Goals. She was shrewd and soft. She told the spies, ‘As I have been kind to you, will you now be kind to me? Remember my family. She was shrewd, she was soft. She advocated for herself and for her family.

Summer Vinson Berger
Remember us and be kind to us, as I have been kind to you. She saved those men’s lives more than once, she saved those men’s lives, and she was shrewd, and she was soft. She advocated for her family, and then they left, and she was there waiting. I don’t know what happened to her during that waiting. I know usually women were not protected or had a lot of rights, so she had to wait and wait for them to come back, but God remembered her, so I don’t know if she was caused harm, I’m guessing probably so. So, as I think about what I want for us, what I want for us, we have what it takes. You don’t have to be in a formal position of power and have a title to influence and save lives and break some rules for the greater good. So, that is my prayer. I hope that encourages you. We have been thinking about you, and I’m excited to get into this content. If you’ll pray with me, and then we’ll jump in, so we’ll do shoulders down. Let’s do a deep breath. I know I just kind of came hard, so we’re just going to go deep breath. Lord, I thank you for today. I thank you for new mercies. I thank you for women who have descended upon this place to learn more about you, to study your word, to be equipped to do the good works that you have prepared for them in advance. I pray for our time. I pray that you would give, give me in hope, clarity, energy, discernment on what to say, Lord. I pray that the women here would leave feeling the courage that you have given them, that you are with them, you go before them, Lord. I pray that anything that we say that is not helpful or wise, I pray that it would not be remembered. Thank you for your son, his death, his resurrection, and what we eagerly await on his return. Amen. Amen. Okay, so we are going to give you some ideas and concepts, and some principles to think about. There’s no way in 40 minutes that we can say, “Hey, this is what you do in all crisis situations with women, right? And it actually wouldn’t be helpful, because you know your community and your culture and your context, and how these principles need to be applied. So we put some things in front of you that we hope stirs the pot in a good way to go. I need to learn about that, or I hadn’t considered that. Let me ask some questions. So, if someone were to come to me and say, “Hey, I want to get better, I want to build a care ministry, or “I just want to get better at caring for women in crisis in my church, in my community, in my sphere of influence. What’s one thing that you would tell me to do? One of the main things, not the only thing, but one of the main things is I would say I would like you to start working and learning and understanding the concept of trauma. Understanding the concept of trauma, certain counseling and psychology words, they can become buzzwords and misused. I don’t know what the word on the street is. I find this to be incredibly important, so I would say, learn and understand the concept of trauma. Not all suffering is traumatic. You can be deeply wounded, deeply hurt. You can experience deep grief and pain, and I would not say, ‘Hey, this is you’re having a trauma response. So, not all suffering is traumatic, but all traumatic experiences are surely a form of suffering, right? So, if this is a nuanced way, it’s a category of suffering that will be really helpful, not for, not to say, ‘Hey, let’s get you all clinically trained, we’re going to set up trauma clinics in your churches, just to go, ‘I, I understand that, I can recognize that, and I can respond in a way that not only does it not harm others, but it can help build a bridge into understanding for what they have been through. So, sometimes we’ll say we want you to be trauma aware, and trauma aware is just meaning, oh, I understand what trauma is.

Summer Vinson Berger
Trauma-informed is, I know the definitions of trauma, I know how it impacts the body and brain, and I make changes in my environment to respond to those who I’m caring for through that lens, and so it’s just kind of two different steps. But why does that matter for Christians? Why am I telling you, like, go learn about trauma? We’re believers, we’re studying the Bible, we’re in churches. I think it matters a lot. I think that Christians should be at the forefront of care and understanding the body that God has given us to steward, and trauma has a huge component to the brain, body, and soul. So, let me give you a high level. Definition of trauma, and hope can clean up behind me if I say something wrong later. I, when I teach this, I love to spend 45 minutes talking about all the different definitions, so you will find, like any good word, there’s good arguments about what it includes and what it doesn’t. Let me give you a paint of, like, a broad stroke here. Diane Lane Berg, she says trauma is when suffering overwhelms normal human coping. Suffering overwhelms normal human coping. So, an event has happened that is distressing and you cannot cope in the way that you used to, I would add to that, that that event is deeply distressing, that it overwhelms your physical body, your nervous system, and there’s a physical change to your brain chemistry, which makes our reactions not just spiritual and moral but science, so that’s a big deal when it comes to how we care for people who have been hurt and wounded, because we have another category of care, not just, oh, you’re anxious, you’re feeling anxious, I wonder if, in a very well-meaning way, challenging someone to go, do you, maybe we should trust the Lord, what does it look like to grow in spiritual maturity, that could be helpful, but if we have another category and another lens, then we can go, oh, this thing happened, your hippocampus is shaped differently now, so it’s going to respond differently, so I’m not going to reduce things to only moral, I’m going to include your body in the care, so I love her. I love her definition. So, typically it’s your body. There’s a frozen part of that event didn’t metabolize. There’s a high level of powerlessness when there’s a traumatic event. I did not have any agency or choice, real or perceived, in what happened. And there’s also a lack, like a stripping down of dignity. So a traumatic event kind of takes away someone’s humanity. You feel subhuman because of what happened. So, again, why are we talking about this with, like, the church? Well, because we believe in Genesis one, Genesis 127 right, in the imago day that we’re image bearers. So, when someone loses their agency, their power that God gave them when their humanity is stripped from them, a desecration of the imago dei. That’s my business, that is our business, and no one’s going to push me out of that. We got something to say, and so if I so to answer the question, why are we talking about trauma, and why does what does a local church need to care, because the Bible and the theology has everything to say about how we engage those who are hurting and suffering, and that we have a physical body to steward. So, to answer the question, it was one thing that I would say, go do this to care better for women in crisis, do some work on understanding the concept of trauma, and then think, what would that look like in my, in my context. And now I’m going to shift it to hope, and she’s going to share through the lens of trauma, but also in general, what are some of the common things that you’re going to see that women struggle with in the local church.

Hope Blanton
Yeah, and Somerset, a really important name during all that, Diane Langberg. So, if you want to know more about trauma from a very godly woman who’s been counseling for 40 years, can go to her website. She has a lot of free resources, and she loves the word and is excellent at what she does. So now we’re going to talk about seven areas of crisis that are very common in the church that we see the most. We’ve narrowed them down, summer and I’ve narrowed them down to that. Of course, there’s other areas I will say, in my private practice, you know, a lot of times we think, well, these things are happening outside the church, they’re not happening in the church, right? Well, that’s not necessarily true. 95% of my clients are Christians, but I’ve seen every single area that I’m about to tell you in my office in the last month, so it’s not just happening out there, it’s happening in here, and as I list these and talk about them, just briefly, I want you to write a name of a woman next to each of those numbers, someone that you’ve been caring for, love in your church or in Bible study, could even be you, could be someone you’re related to, write their name, get in, so that you can be, you can picture, okay, this is what she’s going through. So, the first area is abuse. So, this covers a big, broad thing of not just abuse as a child, which could be in sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, but also as an adult in a domestic violence situation, in a marriage, or with a partner, where they are experiencing also physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, and this woman is probably riding a roller coaster of all kinds of emotions and probably feeling unsafe in a lot of settings. So one way you can help and love on a woman in that situation is ask her, what does make you feel safe? How can we make you feel more. Safe here when we’re in certain settings or talking about certain things. The second crisis area is betrayal trauma. Now this comes in a marriage when we’ve had someone who’s had an affair or multiple affairs or has an addiction, whether that’s sexual or to a substance or gambling, and this woman is probably riding a huge roller coaster of, do I stay, do I go, how do I honor the Lord in this? What does this look like? One way you can really help her is to refrain from giving your opinion or your, hey, I think you need to do this, and just really pray with her, and sit with her as she goes up and down because she’s probably going to vacillate for a while. She tries to make a decision. The third common area is bereavement or grief. These are women who are in deep grief because they’ve lost a loved one or they’re experiencing the loss of dreams, maybe through infertility, and they’re just trying to reorient themselves in their lives and kind of don’t really aren’t fully participating, maybe, and you can come in and give some felt needs, where you’re like, hey, can I, you know, do your laundry for you, but also you can say, hey, do you want to talk about the grief or not? Some women really want to talk about the loved one they’ve lost, or really want to process their infertility, others don’t want to talk about it at all. So, the best way to know that is to use questions and find out what they need, instead of assume. Well, I think they probably want to talk about this, because they may not want to. The fourth area is involves children, so if the woman has children, there can be all kinds of things going on. This can be a child, maybe that’s left the faith, this can be an estrangement situation. This can be a child who’s questioning their sexuality, and you’re they’re trying to navigate that. This could be a child who’s received a diagnosis that they’re like, I don’t know what to do with that. How do I navigate that?

Hope Blanton
And so they’re they’re experiencing a lot of dilemmas that are new to them, and they’re trying to assimilate their faith and who they are with this new dilemma, and figure out how do I do that. One way you could really care for a woman in that situation is to ask, how can I specifically pray for you? What can I pray for by name about this child that this is going on? How can I, can I text you once a week and say, “Hey, I prayed for Stephanie, or whoever their kid is, and I prayed for these things just so they can feel cared for and not alone. The fifth area is just caregiver stress. This can be people who are caring for aging parents or a medically challenged person in their family, and these women are tired. I mean, they are exhausted, they are trying to do so much, and they really probably need help with things like running to the grocery store, or maybe sitting with their loved ones, so they can leave the house for two hours and feel normal for a little bit, so maybe just ask them, How can I step into this with you and be in this with you, and then our last area, I think I said all of them, am I on seven, no, six. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is mental health in this area we know is anxiety, depression, maybe someone struggling with bipolar, which is highly stigmatized in the church, OCD. These things, these women are carrying around these things that are very heavy and hard, and they’re trying to make sense of them and their faith and where God enter in enters into that and so for you one great way you can care and love on them is just to help them not feel alone you don’t have to have all the right answers you don’t have to give a ton of advice but you can just be like hey when you feel like you’re alone in your mind I’m sitting right here with you or I can sit with you at Bible study when you feel anxious when you’re in the room those things are huge, and then the last area, number seven, is friendship stuff, you know, where we women, you know, we can get into all kinds of conflicts with people that have been so dear to us for so long, even people that we’ve been sitting next to Bible study with for 20 years, and it can be hard because it can create a lot of tension of, do I keep coming to this church, do I not, so that can be a real crisis for women, for you is just helping them, listening to them, maybe not taking sides, and just giving a space for them to process and sort that out, and pray with them. So, we have those seven common areas of crisis, and I want you to go back and do something. I want you to go back to each of them, and I want you to either put a heart or a star, but let me explain why. If that area is an area you feel really comfortable helping with, I want you to put a heart to go through and do that, and then I have another step for you, do Now, let’s go back through these seven. If that’s an area that you really struggle with, and you’re like, I don’t know what to say. I try to avoid those situations. I want you to put a star next to that area, so it makes you uncomfortable, and you don’t know what to do. Put a star, so for those heart areas, that’s what Summer was saying at the beginning. You have been equipped, the Holy Spirit has done stuff, so those areas that you put a heart, He’s been equipping you to do it, whether that’s through experience or learning or something you’ve learned through the Word, and you feel like, hey, I can help these women, and keep your eyes out for those women, because that might be something that God’s asking you to do. The areas that there’s a star, and you’re like, oh, I’m not so sure, look around at your church and other places and watch women who are really good with those women. What kind of questions do they ask?

Hope Blanton
How do they engage with them? What do they not do? What do they do that they do well? And seek them out and say, hey, I really want to love people that have caregiver stress, but like it overwhelms me. Sit down with them for coffee and let them show you and teach you and mentor you in that, and obviously you can do all kinds of learning and reading with all of these things. So those are just things to keep in mind as you encounter these crisis areas, and obviously all these areas you absolutely can go and get more resources and learn about them, but we just wanted to do a quick fly over, so you can see that these are kind of the areas that we see regularly in the church.

Summer Vinson Berger
Okay, we’ve covered a lot of ground, right. We’ve talked about Rahab, which I always love. I had a green and a red shirt that I brought. I was going to pick which one to wear, and I wore my red one in honor of her, because she ties the scarlet thread. So we’ve talked about Rahab, we’ve talked about that super high level about trauma, the definition, and why it’s important, why we feel it’s important to have that as a tool in your tool belt to engage women in crisis. And then we just heard, here’s the most common things that any woman will experience, probably in your sphere of influence. So, like, that’s great, it’s lots of good information. So, what do I do now? So, thanks for telling me what I need to learn more on, and what’s coming my way if I want to enter in this space. So, now what do I do? And, like, the good news is we can’t really tell you what to do, right? Like we said, you know your context, and you, you have been with women who are hurting, so you’re not probably as out outside as you think you are on how to do this, but we can give you some principles to think through. Okay, so that you can go, okay, here, that here’s like a 123, of what, when you feel in front of somebody, might be frozen or you’re not sure. Go, let me ask these questions and think through these principles, kind of help triage, right? Like, triage the needs in front of you. Okay, there’s depending on, you know, your role somewhere, you can go, okay, this this is the level of severity that this person is experiencing, that these are the resources we or I do or don’t have, and you can help place people where they can receive care, so that kind of is the idea. It’s not you need to be equipped to handle everything at all times and all seasons. It’s what are the principles that I can use to triage and get people where they need to go to get the support and care they need, and then what am I capable of? So that’s what we’re going to put in front of you next, quickly. Okay, so when you’re in front of anyone, but especially a woman in crisis, the first two things that I will always think about is I will assess or ask questions around her safety and sanity, her, and I got those taglines from Leslie Vernick, she does a lot of work with abusive and destructive marriages, I think it applies to any situation. Is I’m look, I’m thinking the first principle is, is she safe? Are her kids safe? What does safety look like for her? And if that is something that is shaky or we can’t answer, that is our first priority that we address. We’re not addressing her sin, we’re not addressing it’s what do we need to do to get you safe. Okay, so safety is the first principle. Sanity is the next one. And what we’re not asking is, oh, is she sane? Right, that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is you can be in a situation in life where you feel like you’re inching closer to the edge of your mental health, kind of going over right, don’t raise your hand, but we probably all could raise our hands and go, oh, I know, I know what that’s like, whether it’s something that is traumatic or just something where you’re like, I’m being pushed to the edge, so we are checking in on her mental and emotional well-being, and we’re taking that seriously, so if she is not doing well mentally and emotionally, and she’s on the edge, especially if there’s any kind of self-harm. That is our next priority to address. That’s again, we’re not going to go, “Well, have you read this Bible verse? Have you confessed? Right, it’s like safety and sanity, and that’s like, “Well, thanks, that’s obvious. It’s not as obvious as you think, right. And if it were easy, we wouldn’t have all of you in here, and I do this for a living, and it’s really hard for me sometimes. The quietest situations have the most harm and pain.

Summer Vinson Berger
So, being a good listener, being attuned, and asking really good questions is a part of having really good care systems and care presence. So, the first principle: safety and sanity, this plays out a lot in marriages, where sometimes in our Christian circles we can value the institution of marriage over the individuals in it, right? And because of the imago dei, that’s not my value, I don’t think that’s a biblical value. So, when safety and sanity are being threatened, we care more about that, the individual safety and sanity, right? Then then fixating on the institution of marriage, and I’m, I’m going to, I’m trusting that y’all know my heart and what I’m saying here. So that’s the first principle. The second principle, I’ve been teaching this for 10 years, it’s one of my favorites. I do it in all my counseling offices. Know your role and your goal, okay? What’s your role and your goal in this person’s life? Am I their mother? Am I their therapist? Am I their minister, pastor? Am I their student leader? Whatever your role is in their life, that is going to help you answer the question on how you should engage them, what your boundaries are, what the next step would be. What I can do with someone as a therapist or as a director of care is different than what I would do if it was my sister. Right, there’s different levels of what access you have, what responsibility you actually have, and it helps guide what do I do next. It can help create safety for the individual who needs help, and it helps those of us who might be not codependent, but we love – we’d love to be all things to all people, right? And we cannot do that in terms of care, and so it can help. Go, this is my role with you, and I know someone all going to find someone who can play this role for you, and I can pay for that, or I can pray for that, but I can’t do that for whatever reason. So, knowing your role and knowing your goal, it’s going to be really helpful. Let me tuck something under there, if we have time. Oh, we’re doing great on time. Okay, within that, within the safety and sanity, and within the rolling goal, I’m going to throw that word agency or consent. Where is her agency, her ability to make choices for what kind of care she does or does not want, or what she has or has not invited you into. So, a lot of times someone will come to me, whether it’s at church or personal life or counseling, and they’ll say, “I just talked to this woman, and they’ll tell me this kind of the situation she’s in, whether it’s really horrible or it’s like, “Oh, she could use some help here, and I’ll listen, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you tell me now, and I’ll say a version of this. So, what is the ask? What is her ask? Because has she asked for help? Does she want us to intervene? Is intervening going to have, like, break another safety thing? Because now we’re exposing that she came and spoke with someone, right? It’s that idea of we don’t want to be the next controlling force in a female’s life, who’s coming forward asking for help, and then they can go, “Oh, sometimes I’ll say, what’s the most helpful thing that I can do today? And that just enables her to go, “Huh, I’ve never been asked what I want to do about this situation, and I’m like, “Well, welcome, I’m here to help you think through that. I’m not going to tell you that. So, honoring her agency, her ability to choose next steps, and then going, what has she consented to? Where does this information go? Which, which hope is going to talk about. So, again, these are – I’m oversimplifying – these are principles that I just want you to look in for, sit in front of, and go, okay, Lord, what does this look like for us? First and foremost, safety, sanity. Second, what’s my role and my goal? And then tucked in there is her agency and her consent to invite you in, or to ask for help.

Summer Vinson Berger
Sometimes people just want to tell you, be prayed for, that’s all they want, and that’s not praying, asking for the presence of God to come and heal and move is no insignificant thing, so that can be if that’s all that that’s the ask, then okay, we’re not going to follow her and stir up and right, what, what is the ask? So those are the first principles that I think will be helpful for y’all to think through. I’m going to hand it over to Hope for the next

Hope Blanton
one, and then the last, the last three principles conveniently all start with the letter C. Okay, y’all. So we are helping you out here at the end to give you a little more. The first one is confidentiality. So confidentiality is just that this woman might have come to you and told you something that she thinks is not going to leave your, your lips ever, that you’re not going to go tell your best friend. Or anything like that, and you really need to honor that. You need to honor that. She doesn’t, you know, you’ve told her, and then you’re gonna go get in the car and call your best friend. That’s not how that probably should go. You really need to hold that close to you. If it feels hard to hold that close to you, then you need to seek out other helpers that are helping her to confide in, whether that’s a pastor or women’s ministry director, and things like that. Now, there is one clause in this that breaks the confidentiality, and that is, if the woman is going to harm herself, if she is talking about suicide or wanting to die, that changes things. We have a fancy word in clinical circles called suicidal ideation, and it is, it’s kind of a ranking system, and it really takes a professional to assess, so I’m not expecting that I’m going to give that to you guys, and you’re going to be assessing, you are going to want to get that woman to someone who can, and part of that looks like letting the people that she lives with know what’s going on, or you taking her to the ER and letting them assess, but you don’t take, oh, she told me that she’s, you know, wants to harm herself or kill herself, and then you just keep that by yourself, you know. We don’t hold that, but we do hold a lot of other things. The second one, the second C word is capacity. So we all have limits on our time and our ability. We are finite, God is not, but we are, and so what that means is we have to really make decisions when we’re caring for people of how we divide our time. I often talk about having like these little energy coins, and you get to decide how much to spend them, and you have to spend them first and foremost in the areas that God has made very clear you’re responsible for, and then those other times you have extra coins, you know, like when my kids went to college, I had some extra coins to spend, so I might spend some more time caring for a woman or mentoring her who’s going through a hard season, but then maybe a kid moves home and I take some of those energy coins back, so it’s all about that capacity, and you definitely should ask yourself the question, How is me helping this woman keeping me from doing things that I’m supposed to be responsible for? So, if I’m spending all this time helping someone that’s in crisis, but like I haven’t done anything, whatever it is, in my home or at my job or whatever, then you know we’ve got a – that’s a big red flag waving in your face. So, just you need to think about that when you enter into this, and just remember, because you’re not God, you don’t have to be there every second, and it’s going to be okay, and He will take care of her.

Hope Blanton
And then the last one is competency, so all of us are called to love our neighbor, but not all of us are going to love our neighbor in the same way, so the way we might love our neighbor, because we’ve been trained in a certain way is different than maybe you would, and so it’s assessing that, and knowing you know what, I’m in over my head, or I don’t know the answer to this, or I have no idea, and it’s okay for you to say to her, you know, I don’t know the answer, but maybe you and I could go together and talk to someone who might, maybe the women’s ministry director, maybe we can look into a therapist for you, or things like that, but for you to know when you’ve crossed the threshold of I don’t know, and I need to probably stop, because this might be hurtful or unhelpful. So you need to be ready to assess that, and kind of be like, okay, I need to have a list in my mind of places I can take this person once it’s gone beyond my pay grade, so to speak.