Lily Li has a unique ministry as a Christian serving socio-emotionally underprivileged and marginalized individuals, couples, and families as a therapist—to help people heal, be encouraged, and discover truth and wholeness in their identities and relationships. As a budding therapist pursuing professional licensure in the mental health field, Lily often wrestles with how much Jesus—and creativity—to bring into her counseling sessions due to the ethical limitations of the profession.
Traditional, westernized clinical interventions can be limited in helping people and may not always be accessible to those who need it most. Not everyone can afford counseling sustainably and many do not have easy access because of language, stigma, and cultural barriers. In her own words, “In addition to traditional counseling, I also want to provide avenues for people to heal using more creative, biblically-inspired approaches that can reach more people.” Lily is also a writer and artist and she hopes to be able to integrate her clinical learnings into these formats for greater audiences.
Bridging the gap
Lily considers herself a social justice advocate and believes that ultimately her work is about bridging the “socio-emotional privilege gap”. She has witnessed how children in socio-emotionally functional families can grow up happy and confident, with reduced risks for future unwanted health outcomes, pursue wholesome relationships and suffer fewer mental health issues, while those who do not, can experience layers of impairments later on in life.
While every human was born in the image of Christ in our identities and our relationships, many people are born into environments and societies that desecrate our truths with abuse, trauma, neglect, toxicity, and various layers of oppression. This cultivates false identities and toxic relational patterns that continue to wreak havoc in people’s lives intergenerationally. Lily is constantly chasing the question and work of how to bring people back to their original design in Christ by helping people rediscover who they are—inside and outside of the therapy room.
For Lily, Jesus is her wonderful counselor—the one she can turn to for courage, grace, hope, faith, and love in her daily life and vocational calling. In him, she finds her true identity as a child of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, and safe in the protection of the good shepherd. Just like how Jesus has been the source of these truths for Lily, she hopes to make that source accessible for others through the power of Christ in her work. While she is still figuring out the practical details of how to accomplish her ambitious goals, she continues to rely on God to lead her every step of the way.
Prayer: Holy God, thank you for all those who are helping people rediscover who they are—inside and outside the therapy room. Bless them in their calling and ministry of helping people who have suffered abuse, trauma, neglect, toxicity, and various layers of oppression. Help all of us who see ourselves as less than who we are as image bearers of Christ and help us rediscover our true identities in You, Lord. In Your holy name Jesus, Amen.
