Leah Ruhland on mentoring youth and building resilience
During the pandemic I’ve noticed how some young people’s perceptions of themselves have changed over a period of just a few months. The unfortunate reality is that people are at home more often and lonely. They have more time to be on social media, but a lot of social media is not positive and can lead to people feeling ashamed that they don't look a certain way or lead them to feel like they're not enough. They have the choice to either be alone or spend time on social media to help fill their loneliness, but neither of those options are very good.
What you really want to do is have friends that you can call or go for a walk with, and you can actually talk through what you're thinking, but right now our youth aren't able to do that. This summer without summer camps, and with parents working, a lot of kids aren't being engaged in very good ways. It's not to say that they're doing dangerous activities, but they are just stuck. Sometimes your mind can be the most dangerous place to be because of where you are in a certain place in life. Sometimes you make the choices to be on social media, even though people aren't being nice because you're just craving anything that you can grasp for instead of really cultivating your own self-esteem and understanding to make change both in your life and in other people's lives.
One of the things that unfortunately our CYC has had to cancel but we really want to go get back to is our outreach efforts, like going out and volunteering at homeless shelters or collecting for our food bank. We try to be out in our community doing things because that's one way to empower youth and show youth that they can make a difference. That youth empowerment is now missing because a lot of places are closed due to the pandemic, but we need to create opportunities for youth to empower themselves and know that they have an ability to make a difference. That can have a really positive impact on their mental health.
The Bible tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. God wants us to use and respect our bodies. There are so many places that talk about our talents that we have and our responsibility to use them. Look at 1 Thessalonians 5:11, “encourage each other and build each other up.” It's a commandment for us to go and work with each other, and how can you build other people up if you yourself are not strong at that point in time?
When you're looking at self-esteem in the Bible, we're told to esteem others better than ourselves. The focus is on other people, but we can't take care of other people if we're not first taking care of ourselves. It's not a humanistic perspective. It's not about vanity. The value that we place in ourselves comes from knowing God made us beautiful, and that we are lovable, capable, and unique. Self-esteem means having a healthy view of yourself, having a quiet sense of self-worth, having a positive outlook, letting your strengths shine and building on your weak points. This will help you mature and grow, so that you're able to be in a position where you can do good works by helping other people, and that's what I'm trying to empower youth to do themselves.
To listen to the full interview with Leah and Helen please check out A Little Faith podcasts.