Mental Health and Pizza

Let me tell you the story of pizza that saves lives.

Friends are the real lifesaver. Jesus saves lives often through people. But pizza is sometimes the simple tool that God uses as a bridge to accessing hope.

Our home and the people in it have had mental health struggles. Sometimes they need very little attention and sometimes they demand attention like a toddler who isn’t getting a toy they want in the store. I could tuck the struggle inside, but then, guess what, it demands more attention and more energy because it feels unheard and disconnected. Instead, my family talks about our mental health. I talk about my mental health.

No one really likes to talk mental health. We like to throw around phrases, sure:

“You should go see a counselor.”

“God brings good out of everything.”

“You’ve got to keep on top of that, make good choices.”

For some reason, mental health is a “disease” we’re afraid of catching. We think we can control so much, but mental health is shockingly universal. We all have the basic gene pool to create a mental health struggle. No one is exempt, or “better made.” People’s stories are different, diagnoses are different, and the help we need is different, but you and I and the whole world around us have a brain and a nervous system and emotions and losses and they occasionally will need attention. The world is impacted by brokenness, by sin, by hurt, by injustice. It affects all our lives in frustrating ways. While all of these ways may not need professional help, they do need conversation, connection, and normalization.

How many of you have family members touched by

addiction

dementia

anxiety

depression

learning disabilities

sensory processing

autism

trauma and distress?

Still people often back up and back away when mental health enters the scene.

Our culture loves immersing itself in the drama and trauma of the latest television program, does not like to be confronted by someone’s trauma and drama when it lives next door.

What if instead, we brought pizza.

Once upon a time, we were in a season of distress. Two of my friends walked in the door, not blinking at the metaphorical mess of my life. They toted a large pizza, an order of breadsticks, and a two liter of pop. They showed up. They sat around my table and made me laugh. They asked questions and didn’t offer easy answers. They may have offered help, but what I really remember is that they offered hope…with pepperonis on top. Their presence made life feel a little more normal, a little more manageable. They wanted to be part of my life, even if my life looked kind of messy.

Mental health struggles don’t discriminate, but prejudice does. While all of our mental health needs attention, not all of us have safe people who will open the conversation and normalize sharing where our mental health might need more attention than we’d like. The stigma of mental health is real, whether in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our communities, or even our churches. You and I, we, have the ability to change the tide. We don’t have to be therapists or medical doctors, or 24/7 on-call friends. All we have to do is bring some hope in the form of a pizza. Along with the pizza we might speak hope by saying,

“Hi.”

“This stinks.”

“I’m sorry you’re hurting.”

“I love you.”

“Life is hard and good and hard.”

“This will not break you or our friendship.”

You might do a million other things to break the stigma of mental health. But know this…sometimes it starts with a single pizza.