Former Hillsong pastor Carl Lentz and his wife Laura have revealed in their book Overcoming Infidelity: 10 Conversations to Help Heal the Hurt that just a few short weeks before Carl’s infidelity was exposed, their daughter Charlie tried to take her own life.
We last wrote about Carl after he revealed during his press tour that he believes he is still one day qualified for ministry, and after he took aim at critics who condemn those who commit adultery without ever having the opportunity to do so.
In a chapter titled “How Do We Fix This,” the couple reveals how, while visiting friends, they noticed that they had missed several phone calls from Mike, a Hillsong staff member who was living with the family. Upon checking their messages, they saw one that stopped their hearts cold:
“Charlie is in the ER; you need to come as fast as you can”
The two were three hours away and made it there in record time, with Laura writing that Carl “was sobbing in the passenger seat with an intensity I had never witnessed.”
They arrived at the emergency room and learned that she was stable and alive. Because of the attempt, their daughter would be committed to a psychiatric hospital for children for a minimum of 72 hours for evaluation and further observation.
She was transferred to Silver Hill Hospital, a private, not-for-profit psychiatric hospital in New Canaan, Connecticut, that treats kids and teens. While most kids who attend Silver Hill are part of their inpatient care, which focuses on crisis management and stabilization and whose average length of stay is 7–10 days, the Lentz family revealed that their daughter spent six weeks there.
“There were no phones allowed, and only one weekly call via Zoom. But at least we could visit her in person every two weeks in a controlled, monitored environment….On visitation days, we drove two hours and sat across the room from our sweet, beautiful girl for a brisk forty minutes while a staff member watched in silence.”
According to the book, their daughter had been struggling months before his exposure, after one of her best friends committed suicide the year before.
“A few months earlier, one of Charlie’s closest friends had taken his life. At just 14 years old and still in middle school, she was a pallbearer at his funeral. Our sweet girl carried a casket before she carried a high school backpack….Charlie began to spiral soon after, Sleep got shorter, her appetite receded, her grades plummeted. Morning conversations turned into tense negotiations.”
Ultimately, her daughter recovered and is now in her early twenties attending college while making the occasional appearance on Transformation Church’s worship team.
As far as why a book about overcoming marital infidelity delves deep into this issue, Laura suggests that it was a component in the cocktail of emotional turmoil Lentz was facing leading him to a breaking point. The attempted suicide, the pressure of leading a megachurch, a lack of sleep and demanding schedule. When he came home one night at 1 in the morning, reeking of alcohol, and lamenting that he “wasn’t ok” she observed:
Our daughter was in crisis. He had been working nonstop. He had been drinking. The math held.
At the time Laura didn’t know the affair he was willfully engaging in was also contributing to the turmoil he was feeling, but a month later she would find out about the infidelity, and the rest is history.
Editor’s Observation: Our question, however, is why even include this at all? Why not just say “a family health crisis” or “a family member struggling with mental health issue,” left him vulnerable in order to shield her privacy? Perhaps their young daughter INSISTED that they include details of when she was at her lowest, but it’s difficult not to read this story as self-serving in some way.
