| Mental illness impacts all people BY MELISSA LAUBERUMCONNECTION STAFF  Gail Harding of Macedonia UMC, believes mental illness and the church should be inseparable.
Her son, Vernon Lawrence Johnson III, was mentally ill. He died a year ago. He lived in Gods grace, held in the arms of the church. A single mother, Harding moved to Maryland a few years ago and struggled with raising a son who was autistic and had been diagnosed with ADD, (Attention Deficit Disorder) PDD (Pervasive Development Disorder) and several other acronyms, she said. A teenager, he functioned emotionally as a 9-year-old would. Everyone who saw Vernon fell in love with him, his personality. He just had an invigorating personality, said Harding. The only problem Vernon had was with himself. He didnt like himself. In a new neighborhood, fighting to assist her son, Harding overcame her fears that church members might be prejudiced against people with mental illnesses. We saw this little church on the hill, Macedonia UMC. We went and were greeted with lots of love and caring, she said. The congregation assisted her as Vernon went in and out of the hospital. At a Baltimore-Washington Conference School of Cooperative Christian Mission, Harding felt led, she said, by the Holy Spirit to approach Bishop Felton Edwin May about her sons difficulties. Bishop May told her the conference would do whatever they could to help her with her child. He was true, Harding said. With the conferences assistance, Vernon found a facility that cared for his special needs. In counseling, Harding learned that Vernon had been physically and sexually abused by relatives. Despite the pain that revelation brought, she thanks God for it. It opened my eyes to understand that the Lord had placed people in our lives to bring forth what we needed to know and to not deny that information. Otherwise, I couldnt have known how to help Vernon. In September last year, in a tragic accident, Vernon fell from a car and sustained fatal injuries. Only days before he died, Harding spoke with him on the phone. I really love you, momma, he said. And I love the Lord. I want to sing for the Lord. She promised him she would get him into the choir at Macedonia UMC. Today, she sings a different song one crafted from pain and gratitude. It is a hymn of remembrance. He was a child who loved the whole human race. He showed me how to love people, Harding said. Her sons legacy now demands that she share that love. My mission now is to support people who are being held back from what God would have them to be, she said. So many children have mental illnesses and their families have been drained. Theyre tired, but the children still need to be loved. The church cant be separated from that. Were quick to give somebody a wheelchair or a ramp, Harding concluded. But what do we do about these children? How can we actually help them? Are they toss-aways or throw-aways? I dont think so. They have so many gifts to give us. The churches of the Baltimore-Washington Conference are being asked to celebrate the gifts and challenges of mental illness on Oct. 12. According to Margaret Stanton, co-chair of the conferences Subcommittee on Ministry with Persons with Mental Illness and Their Families, one in every four people in United Methodist congregations will suffer some form of mental illness this year, ranging from depression and anxiety to schizophrenia and bipolar disease. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 12 percent of the countrys 63 million youth, under age 18, have mental, behavioral or developmental disorders. Yet only one-fifth of those who need mental health treatment receive it. As faith communities we want to nurture those living with mental illness and their families, she said. Too often people with mental illnesses are stigmatized and the church contributes to that. Stanton, and her co-chairman, the Rev. Jackson Day, recently sent out information packets to local churches. The mailing contains information about how to observe Mental Illness Awareness Sunday. For more information contact her at (301) 270-1793 or
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