Hope For Those Struggling With Mental Healthናሙና

You Are Worth Saving!

By the time I entered middle school in Abilene, Texas, at the ripe age of thirteen, I can remember thinking, “do my friends’ families look anything like mine?” I was scared of the answer, because what I was experiencing in our family of four was more than a lot – looking good while silently screaming in public, but screaming at the top of our lungs in the small home where we co-existed. The verbal abuse followed us into all of our days, through our many moves and homes until my parents officially and finally went their separate ways during my senior year of high school.

Looking back, I can now see that mental illness has run deep in our family tree, painfully impacting my original little redheaded family of four. The aftershock from those years of trauma reverberates still today in each of our lives in different ways. Over the years, I have battled difficult mental illness diagnoses including clinical depression, anorexia, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, all of which, at different seasons, have ushered self-harm into the chaos of my mind and body.

As hard as I have tried to prevent mental illness and its impact from seeping into my current family, in many ways it has resulted in a flood. But guess who is rescuing me, my husband, and our two redheaded inspirations, in His powerful way, every single day? God Himself. One day and then the next, He is providing healing, even if in small steps, and chains are being broken so that my grandchildren will perhaps not suffer so.

I want to be free of mental illness and suffering, and I'm actively pursuing recovery through ongoing treatment and support, including the support of my church and Christian community. I wrestle with the tough question of why God hasn’t removed this from me. Those thoughts and realities are devastating at times, but I also am growing in my trust of Him, and what He chooses to use for his glory. What comes from this struggle is the hope that I get to share and now write to you.

God’s Word is steady even when my mind is so loud, and He has proven in situation after situation, even as I’ve sat on the bathroom floor fighting the temptation to find temporary relief through self-harm, that He is for me and is closer than a whisper. Yes, I experience many challenges to my mental health, yet, I can be surrounded by God’s beautiful and overwhelming peace, if even for a moment, which reassures me of His love, presence and my purpose until my Father takes me to Himself. “I will not die but live and will proclaim what God has done" (Psalm 118:17)!

I invite you, my friends, if you share a struggle with mental health, to keep fighting and taking one step and then the next, even if those steps look more like a shuffle. No matter how loud my mind screams, in the lows and sometimes highs of this mental illness journey, God seeks to speak into my hurt and my need through His Word, and as you read through these Scriptures in this reading plan, His Words will speak hope and life into your heart as well.

If fighting mental illness keeps me attached to Jesus, then I’m in. I’m all in. Why fight? Because YOU are worth saving, and so am I.