Sarah Jakes Roberts interviews Juanita Campbell Rasmus, author of "Learning To Be" #WEBC #learningtobe

The Pam Perry Podcast

To join the Woman Evolve book club (#WEBC): https://store.womanevolvebookclub.com with Sarah Jakes Roberts.

According to Columbia University Medical Center, the Black community, in particular, is at significantly increased risk of developing a mental health issue due to historical, economic, social, political influences that systemically expose the Black community to factors known to be damaging to psychological and physical health. Add to that, the COVID-19 pandemic and the current climate of protests across the nation taking a stand against police brutality. Hundreds, even thousands, of Black lives have been traumatized.

How does one get their life going again and back to normal when everything seems to come to a complete stop? Juanita Rasmus, Co-Pastor of St. John's Church in downtown Houston, found that she had to learn to be - with herself and with God - all over again.

In her new book, Learning To Be: Finding Your Center After the Bottom Falls Out, Juanita Rasmus provides both practical and spiritual insights. She shares a wise, frank, and witty account of her own story of exhaustion and depression, acting as a trustworthy companion through dark days.

"It felt as though every nerve in my body was popping. Imagine large strong hands slowly applying pressure while breaking a family-size package of uncooked, dry spaghetti. I was the spaghetti. Breaking down one piece at a time," said Rasmus.

Learning To Be is a contemplative book about the journey of depression. In it, Rasmus, shares these key messages:

• Depression and suffering are not death sentences. There is hope, and there are spiritual practices that can serve as means of support as you seek the probable causes and pursue the invitation for the transformation of the heart (i.e., mind, emotions, and spirit) out of the darkness.
• Depression is an invitation into a new way of living by setting boundaries, learning to say no, and letting go of beliefs that no longer serve us, etc.
• Our illnesses, midlife crisis, and other challenges just may be a space for learning what it means to ground ourselves in the central being of who God is, and in so doing to find our own being.
• For many individuals, depression is an invitation to create want-to's, those personal desires that arouse passion, pleasure, and joy for living life authentically.

Learning to Be: Finding Your Center After the Bottom Falls Out by Juanita Rasmus

InterVarsity Press | September 15, 2020 | $22, 176 pages, hardcover | 978-0-8308-4587-3 | www.JuanitaRasmus.com

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