By Katie Ginn
Chris and Kayla White had a plan. Kayla was a counselor, and Chris was a youth pastor aiming for the pulpit.
Then Chris came home one day and told Kayla he felt “unsettled.”
“What do you mean, you feel unsettled?”
“I don’t know if this is where I’m supposed to be.”
Kayla admits she did not handle the moment well. (More on her reaction later.) But God has handled it all and is even now preparing the Whites to be powerful agents of change for Mississippi families – together.
‘You’re going to have to suck it up’
Kayla grew up in metro Jackson and attended Mississippi College. Toward the end of her senior year, a friend named Chase asked if she’d like to intern at his church in Texas, where he served as youth pastor.
“I was starting my master’s (in clinical mental health counseling) in the fall, but I had the summer,” she recalls. So she went to Texas, where she helped with the girls in the youth group. Chase’s best friend, a blue-eyed Texan named Chris White, helped with the boys.
“I was working at a carpet store, helping Chase at the church, and also at a community college getting hours,” Chris says. A summer friendship with Kayla blossomed into dating – and then she promptly moved 18 hours away to Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, for grad school.
“We were long-distance for a semester,” Kayla says. “He wrote me letters.” In spring 2013, however, the letters stopped. Because Chris had transferred to Liberty.
“I had never planned on leaving Texas. (But) I think I knew what I wanted,” Chris says. “I wanted to marry Kayla (and) I knew I couldn’t date her from Lufkin, Texas. It was not hard at all (to move).”
Kayla finished her master’s at Liberty, and she and Chris got married and moved back to Mississippi. She started counseling while he finished his bachelor’s online, along with his MDiv, and started working at churches: First Baptist in Cleveland, Mississippi. Highland Colony Baptist in Ridgeland. Then they moved to Birmingham, where Chris joined the staff of Dawson Memorial Baptist.
“Somewhere along the way, I really started learning about myself that I didn’t necessarily love student ministry,” Chris says. “I think I was using it more as a stepstool to get somewhere – which is a little embarrassing to admit, but that’s just what it was.”
He started at Dawson in September 2019, just a month after beginning a PhD program. Not long after, COVID hit in March 2020. Like many folks, “I quickly found myself underwater,” Chris says.
“I ended up recognizing I wasn’t doing anybody any favors by sticking around longer. It wasn’t fair to the students there, it wasn’t fair to the church, it wasn’t fair to my family or myself.”
That doesn’t mean it was easy for Kayla to hear he wanted a career change.
“I said, ‘Well, you’re going to have to suck it up. This is the plan,’” she recalls. However, she and Chris talked with her dad, Lavon Gray, and Ron Mumbower, a counselor in the Jackson area, and both men gave the couple great advice: Take a year, and let Chris do something that’s not vocational ministry. Pray and see where God leads.
“We moved back to Madison, I started my practice (Kayla White LPC), and Chris started working at a bank, because he had some financial background. And we started praying,” she says.
“And then we were driving home from church in August 2022 … and Chris said, ‘I feel like the Lord is putting it on my heart to go back and do counseling so we can work (together) with families.’ So it took us about a year of praying that, and the Lord started revealing that. And we said, OK, let’s do it.”
Chris ended up getting the same master’s degree as Kayla, from the same institution – Liberty University – online, and is now a provisional licensed professional counselor (PLPC). In November, he’ll test for his LPC, and he and Kayla are planning to open a joint practice.
Meanwhile, as Kayla sees clients who are working through everyday emotional and relational struggles, Chris is clinical coordinator for an adolescent partial hospitalization program at Three Oaks Behavioral Health in Flowood. Translation: He sees some intense stuff.
“My clients are dealing with suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, significant drug use and abuse, and significant family issues and trauma,” he says. “We see a lot of anxiety and depression, but (it) impacts them in ways where they’re not able to function.”
As for partial hospitalization, it stands in a “really interesting gap between outpatient therapy and residential, or inpatient,” Chris says. “I always tell people my goal is to keep them from going into inpatient.”
Many clients start in outpatient therapy with a counselor like Kayla, who, if needed, refers them to someone like Chris, whose goal is to give them the help and the tools they need to return to outpatient.
“Most of our adolescents are not there because that’s how they want to spend their summer,” he notes. “It’s four hours a day, four days a week.” Above all, he tries to be authentic with the teens he serves.
“You can tell them whatever you want to, but people are smart. You can be around somebody and know if they’re fake or real,” he says. “Most adolescents, by the time they leave our program, are really glad they were there. And I take a lot of pride in that.”
Similarly, Kayla says she and Chris both make a point to really “see” their clients. “I think (it’s about) just getting to know the person in front of you. Most people just want to feel seen and known,” she says. “If I feel seen by (somebody), I’m going to be more willing to open up to them. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time.”
Boundaries and foundations
Like any mental health professional, the Whites sometimes struggle to leave their work at the office. Technically, “I’m on an emergency line (so) I do take it home as part of the job,” Chris says. “But I think the biggest way I take it home is just being tired.”
Kayla has a hard time not responding to non-emergency calls and texts after hours. “I have to be intentional because my personality is more so to pick up the phone and help them in the moment. Chris is better with boundaries. He’s helped me with that,” she says.
“Once you do it for a while, you do learn the skill of being able to leave it in the office, because I think ultimately we know that beyond what we do at work, there’s nothing we can do. We have to be able to come home and take care of our families and take care of ourselves.”
Speaking of family, it includes three beautiful children, ages 4, 5, and 8 – and yes, mom and dad absolutely are concerned about how to avoid the pain and danger that have plagued their teen clients.
“The conversation of how do we protect our kids from this or that in the future definitely comes up,” Kayla says.
“Social media, that’s a big one; technology, sleepovers, what they watch on TV, who they’re allowed to spend time with, friendships.”
Chris admits he’s apt to “get addicted to mindlessly scrolling” himself. Teens, on the other hand? “(They’re) just drowning in it. Most of the adolescents who come through our program there is a social media component to it that is driving some of the difficulties. That has made me very skeptical of allowing our kids to have that. I am OK with them having a flip phone. (We) kind of owe it to them to do it.
“With the mental health crisis that you have seen over the last five to 10 years, what’s changed? It’s not the kids. To a degree, it’s the parents, and it’s the technology. This is not to shame parents (because) we do this when necessary, but I think we’ve become too comfortable with using social media and technology to babysit.”
All of that being said, the Whites don’t want to make the cure worse than the disease.
“We always say, our poor kids, they’re never going to be able to do anything. We’re going to have them on lockdown,” Kayla jokes. “But no, we want them to experience life.”
Creating careful boundaries and being present with the kids is key. For instance, the Whites’ oldest son is 8. He does not have a “device.” Instead, he and Chris had been watching the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy together the week of this interview.
“I think the foundation of what you do in those younger years is really important,” Kayla says, even if it looks like sitting down together for a movie instead of handing your kid an iPad for the evening.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Chris says. “There’s a reason that that’s a saying, especially with our kids. Handle it right now. Love them, be there right now.”
But yes, “at some point, you have to trust them. When they’re 15, 16, you can’t lock them in a closet. You have to allow them to make the wrong decision sometimes and trust that they’re going to make the right ones.”
‘Don’t counsel me!’
If you’re married and you work in the mental health field, your spouse has probably had to tell you, “Don’t counsel me!” The Whites are no exception.
“We at times have had to be careful not to lecture or counsel each other,” Kayla says. Instead, they simply try to follow the same advice they’d give to a client. For instance, “if you’re tired, just communicate it,” Chris says.
Being trained in counseling has helped, Kayla says.
“We can communicate in ways that others don’t think of as easily. Sometimes it pops into our brain, ‘I have 20 percent in my tank today.’ I think before being a therapist, I wouldn’t have thought of those things.”
But marriage is hard no matter who you are, she adds. “We’re both therapists, and it’s hard for us at times.”
Some marriage advice is just common sense. Spend time together! Take the 10-year anniversary trip! But some of it might go against our ingrained notions of what marriage looks like.
For instance, “I don’t believe your partner is supposed to be your accountability partner or carry all the things for you,” Kayla says. “It’s a really easy thing to do, to make our (marriage) partner that person that we put everything on. And I don’t think that’s how the Lord ever intended it to be.”
In other words? Get a therapist. “Maybe not in every single season, but having a safe space (and) a trusted person that is going to give you unbiased advice or wisdom – or not even wisdom at all, just to go talk through things with.”
Chris agrees: “Feeling anxious is not a bad emotion. (It) has served humans well … that little danger signal, watch out. Where it becomes an issue is when you live in that danger mode.
“And there’s going to be days you feel low. And that’s OK. But if it impacts you being able to get out of bed and go to work, or when it impacts your relationships … therapy isn’t as scary as you think – especially if you get a good therapist. And you don’t have to go every single week. You could go every two weeks, or once a month, depending on your needs.”
Another tip for marital and mental health? Figure out if you’re an overcommunicator, or an undercommunicator (or “stuffer”).
“We’re opposites. I tend to be the overcommunicator,” Kayla says. “I want to work things out right there in the moment, hash it all out – ”
“And I need a time out,” Chris says.
“Both can be problematic,” Kayla says. “But I’ve learned that sometimes he needs time to process an argument, and I need to give that to him, and he’s learned that I need to talk about it at some point.”
White stones and fresh starts
By the time Chris has his LPC and he and Kayla open their joint practice, he’ll have been working toward this goal for four and a half years. The wait has been challenging for both of them.
“All of my degrees, pretty much, were focused on working in the church, and I think they will be of use and will be applicable, but I had to get a master’s of counseling, which is 60 hours, and then go through the PLPC process,” he says.
“I am somebody who likes to get it done and have it done quick,” Kayla adds. “So the Lord has really used this to teach both of us that sometimes things take time. We have to trust the Lord’s plan.”
And not just for the timing:
“I stayed home during my internship … and she saw more clients,” Chris recalls. “Because she could see (even) one more client each day, and that would make more than what I was making at the bank. So logically, why don’t I just stay home, finish school quicker? And it worked out, but let me tell you: Staying home with three kids is not for the weak.”
Did his ego take a hit when Kayla became the primary breadwinner?
“There’s definitely (that), but I also don’t think my personality was designed to stay at home,” he says.
In the end, they believe all the waiting and awkward transitional times will be worth it.
“We’re really looking forward to seeing the whole family unit together, being able to see couples together (in a counseling session),” Kayla says. “Sometimes we focus on one area when the whole family collectively could use help.
“Being able to do this together is something we’ve been looking forward to for a long time.”
In fact, they already have a name for their practice, Chris says: Whitestone.
“I’ve always wanted to incorporate our name (White) somehow. I was reading something somewhere (and) came across the word ‘whitestone’ and thought that sounded good. So I Googled it. AI popped up with everything it could possibly mean,” he recalls.
“In ancient civilizations and biblical times, in the judicial system, oftentimes somebody would be given a white stone if they were acquitted or made free. Also in Revelation 2:17, John’s writing to the churches, and he says those who persevere will be given a white stone (with a new name).”
For kids, teens, couples, families – and yes, people who change their whole career midstream – the idea of a white stone is a fresh start, he says.
“Who you are today does not necessarily determine who you are tomorrow.”