Michele Gyselinck
I am a 62-year-old woman. I was born in Montreal and grew up in a western suburb of the city. I became a confessing member of the local CRC, First Christian Reformed Church of Monreal on May 15, 1977, so this year will be the 43rd anniversary of that event. I have two B.A.s, one in LInguistics and the other in English Studies with a Major in Professional Writing in English. I developed schizophrenia around the age of 28.
Posted in: The Path of Discernment — Knowing What God Wants You to Do
I just finished reading the latest issue of Word Alive, the magazine of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and in it there is a devotion that should interest everyone seeking to know God's will for their lives. I recommend it, but I can't provide a link. Maybe somebody can find it?
Posted in: An Unusual Sensitivity
Wow! I hadn't heard of that one yet. Although no disability is ever convenient, that one would take the cake for inconvenience. Sorry, but I can't talk to the members of your congregation. Have you asked the Regional Advocate of your classis or if your church has one, your church advocate to speak to them about it?
Posted in: An Unusual Sensitivity
People are selfish. I guess the reason they don't want to turn off their phones is because having inactive phone makes them feel important. I hope that your church does not also use a computer and projector because if so, even if people turned their phones off, that technology would still affect you. Our church does.
Posted in: A Foolish and Dangerous Assertion
The point of the de-institutionalization was that community support resources were supposed to follow the discharge of psychiatric patients into the community, but those resources never followed the patients. That's why so many of them are homeless. Another problem, especially in the U.S.A. is that access to healthcare is expensive unless you have insurance. I understand that Medicaid is supposed to provide that for those who cannot afford to buy insurance, but I saw a program years ago in which a pregnant young woman looking for an ob/gyn was turned down when she mentioned that she was on Medicaid, so apparently its not that easy for poor people to get treatment for their mental illness, and most people who have mental illnesses are poor.
In Canada the issues are different, and access to doctors and medications varies from one province the next, so its very difficult to generalize.
Posted in: A Foolish and Dangerous Assertion
I disagree. I think the president is using simplistic answers to complex problems to avoid addressing the real issue which is restricting access to firearms, especially assault rifles, which are not necessary for civilians to either protect themselves or hunt. The president has made a habit of singling our groups as scapegoats, and I think he's doing it again. It's a lot easier and cheaper than standing up to the NRA which provides him with a lot of financing for his campaign and that of the Republican Party. Making people with mental illnesses disappear by putting them away in institutions is not going to make the problem of mass shootings go away, because other people are going to do it. For one thing it would not be that easy to round up all psychiatric patients since they would not volunteer for it, and you have to know who has an illness and who doesn't. It's not written on their foreheads.
Posted in: How Important Is a Church?
I am not a missionary, but I wouldn't last long without my church family which acts as my anchor to sanity. In fact, while I was completing a Bachelor's degree in Sherbrooke, QC, my work term coordinator who had taken me under her wing, impressed upon me the fact that I needed a support network to get well and stay well. She worked at developing it for me there, and when my mom decided it was time I move back to Montreal, the First CRC to which I had belonged since I officially joined it in 1977 became one of its pillars.
Posted in: My Journey With PTSD
On the channel Animal Planet there is a series called Collar of Duty, and in one of the episodes a young woman had developed PTSD after having been bullied while in school. She either found or was provided with a dog specially trained to help people with PTSD. Just to say this is an option for people with PTSD, and they should not be ashamed of needing the help or of availing themselves of it.
I am a Regional Advocate for Disability Concerns for Classis Eastern Canada.
Posted in: New Hearts and New Prayers
Yes, we all need to be more grateful and remember when God grants our prayers. But when it comes to praying, I find that writing my prayers works best. I write them in a journal because that way I can go back and check the date of a prayer request and see if it's been granted or if anything has happened since. Also, I find that I don't repeat myself so much and am less prone to have my mind wander off. Of course, if you write you have to do it with your eyes open, but praying orally never worked well for me, so I stick to writing.
Some years ago, we had a prayer meeting in church and my elder sitting next to me asked God for help with her prayer life. She felt she needed more focus, so during a pause in the meeting I suggested she write her prayers, and when I asked her how that was going she said much better. If you need to pray out loud to stay awake, maybe you should consider writing your prayers too.
Posted in: How Does Your Church Share Prayer Requests?
In our congregation we do a bit of both ; i.e. there is a time during the service, just before the congregational prayer where prayers are requested for specific needs, or in the Welcome and Announcements part, and we also share these in the church bulletin, so people will remember to pray for those needing prayers during the week.
Montreal CRC
Posted in: Tourette Syndrome Awareness Month
As I read this post I often felt like saying,"Tell me about it!" Although I don't have Tourette's myself but schizophrenia, my experience was similar. Mocked by peers and bullied by both them and my father for my difference, the onset of my illness was triggered by a stressful summer working the graveyard shift.
Schizophrenia also has a genetic component to it, but scientists believe it to be a mutation at conception since people with schizophrenia don't usually reproduce. Then again, neither my mother nor my father had the illness, but a younger sibling of hers often said while he was alive that he had an undiagnosed case of Bipolar disorder, and a cousin of mine through my mom's eldest sister developed paranoid psychosis in her 20s. Both of these relatives took their own lives a year apart, and I considered it about ten years before that.
By the way, I DID say it was similar, not identical.
Posted in: A Dance of Assumptions
Speaking of assumptions, a former member of my congregation, who moved west after he retired, used to say that "assume makes an ass of you and me." He may still be saying it in his current congregation for all I know.
Posted in: Time to Rename Classis?
I have no opinion, but I don't see what is the urgency in changing that sort of name just for the sake of changing. There are more important issues to address than that, and it strikes me as a Major in Minors. If you're going to reform, why not reform the tendency to pass judgment on victims of abuse, as though they were to blame for what happened to them, for example.