the blue door

What do You Say About Your Mental Health

            We live in a time when mental health disorders have become a part of everyday communication. The term “overshare” has become synonymous with people who share their mental health stories. The word “bipolar” has become common aa well as “OCD.” We often say things like, “My OCD won’t let me leave that there…” or “my depression just will not let me out of bed…” or “my anxiety keeps me in a constant state of turmoil…” .

            For many years, I did not know how to reconcile mental health issues to my faith in a healing God. I struggled with diagnoses of my own. The church would say things like “hogwash,” while the professionals would say, “just take the medicine.” Two of the world’s most effective warriors against mental health issues stood at polar opposite ends of the spectrum while I stood in the middle ripped apart by some sort of dysfunction that often had me “tossed in the fire and into the water,” (Mk. 9:22) and too scared to run in either direction for help.

            While I agree that we live in a time when the church has been quiet long enough and needs to roar like the lion of Judah, I believe it’s time the church reconsider its views on mental health or at least not be so quick to toss out uneducated opinions on the matter. I believe fully that Jesus is a healer and that there is none like Him. I have lived freedom because Jesus set me free. But I also spent some years running away from the church because I refused to be shamed for seeking help by professionals. But on that same note, mental health professionals lean too quickly into behavior modification therapies, resorting to superficial means for solutions, leaving Biblical regeneration and renewal of the mind completely out of the picture.

            So, what’s the right answer?  

            Philippians 2:12 can point us toward the solution. Paul says, we all must “…work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” I say if you’ve ever been plagued with a mental disorder that keeps you in fear and trembling, we must take some authority on our own matters and work out our own treatment plans too.

            I’m always shocked by the people on pews that don’t read the Bible. I’m not writing from my lofty and prideful stance or lording my opinion over you. If you know me at all, you’d know that whatever high horse I thought I owned rode out years ago and took my pride with it, possibly while it was hauling me to jail or some other institution.

            What I am suggesting though is that maybe for too long the church has been too free with its opinions about our mental health disorders and not practiced enough self-examination to know that most of the people that attend don’t even know who they are or why they go.

            I mean, if you join a club of any kind don’t you want to read a handbook that tells you who you are, why it’s important that you attend meetings, and the purpose behind the club rules and rituals? I do.

            So, maybe I’m being a little hard on the church and professionals and not hard enough on the people who go without picking up the handbook.

            See what happens when we leave out personal accountability? The whole scale gets off balance.

            Just like our treatment plans.

            Too long we’ve separated our mental health from our spiritual health. We can blame the government for taking prayer out of schools. We can blame our godless society. But to what end?

            I challenge you today to get out of problem focused thinking and move into a solution based plan of action. Stop blaming, stop shaming, stop stigmatizing – whatever your part is in the faulty thinking, the first step is looking at the person in the mirror and saying, “it doesn’t matter who or what – today, I’m going to take responsibility for me.”

            I’ve been medicated. I’ve self-medicated to destructive ends. I’ve been through behavior modification. I’ve had counselors. I’ve worked the twelve steps and followed the twelve disciples.

            But I still get out of balance sometimes. I still have hard days sometimes. I still suffer.

            Because it’s a part of God’s plan. Sorrow and suffering, like it or not, walk us Home. There is no substitute. There’s nothing anyone on earth can do to eliminate it. We simply must find healthy ways to cope.

            Depression is real. Bipolar is real. Schizophrenia is real. Anxiety is real.

            But so is deep sadness, the wrestling of two natures within, being tossed into the fire and the water, and chronic worry.

            Hear my cry today. Don’t stop taking your meds. But do pick up your Bible. Don’t stop reading your Bible. But don’t be ashamed to reach out to a professional. We were not meant to suffer alone.

            David experienced deep sadness. Saul struggled with two natures and so did Jacob. We all do. The young man in Mark was thrown into the fire and into the water. And poor Martha was so full of anxiety that she couldn’t stop working in the kitchen while Jesus taught in the living room.

            Probably none of them were sent to the apothecary with a prescription though.

            However, there were physicians in the Bible and medicinal remedies for certain things. Science had not developed to have some of the solutions we have today, but there were doctors and medicine appropriate for their time.

            Let’s just offer some grace to the hurting today. Including yourself.

            But while we’re extending grace, let’s not be so quick to look over the Author and Giver of grace. Leaving Him out of things has gotten us in a lot of trouble. Before you dare to leave Him out of your treatment plan, why don’t you give Him the same chance that you give the professionals? Aren’t you at least suspicious of why everybody wants to kick God out of everything? Have you ever just picked up His Word and sought Him? If you are a believer, His Word is alive and active to you by the power of the Holy Spirit that lives in you. If you are not a believer, you can still approach His Word and maybe you’ll become a believer (unless, of course that’s a fear you’re not ready to face.)

            Believer, ask yourself why are you not reading His Word and encountering Him daily. Unbeliever, how can you know He’s all bad if you don’t see for yourself?

            Psalm is a wonderful place to find help. David is a master at expressing his own struggles. He pens his own inner anguish and his anger with God. He journals his regret, his Godly sorrow that led to repentance. He writes about his fears and anxieties and his desire to see wicked people destroyed. He is the epitome of the human condition.

            His life is lived out before us in First and Second Samuel. His insignificance at home amid his brothers, his victories over giants, his successes in war, his love for his most trusted friend, his fleeing from Saul,  and his failures with Bathsheba – all in these two books. (Repeated in First and Second Chronicles.) Psalm is his own journal about the events of his life.

            How could any treatment plan created to heal leave out a book overflowing with insight to the human condition and hope for our inner struggles?

            And King Saul is the life of an insecure King who becomes victorious, creates his own solutions, operates in his own authority, looks to witchcraft to solve his problems, and is so blinded by rebellion that he can’t even see the problem with himself. He is a master mind of manipulation so much so that he manipulates his own self. As his unconfessed disobedience turns to rebellion, his mind tricks him. He becomes a fearful, anxious, and paranoid. One minute he loves David and the next he is throwing daggers at his head and chasing him through the fields with an army of 3000 men.

            Some things are mental health. Some things are just the nature of sin and the consequences thereof. And sometimes it’s good to see ourselves in others – especially those messed up folks whose lives were so significant that they are written in a the only book we have on earth called Holy.  

            But it’s up to you to decide.  

            Stop taking the world’s word for it. See for yourself.

            1 Timothy 4:8 says that “…Godliness is profitable for all things.”

            There is so much more in this book than do’s and don’ts. It’s a book full of hope and solutions. It is balm for our weary wrestling souls. What have you got to lose?

            Some practical prescription:

            Ask God to help you be disciplined about reading His Word. Proverbs 16:3 says, “Commit thy works unto the Lord and thy thoughts will be established.” Even when you don’t understand, keep reading.

            Read one chapter in Proverbs per day. There are 31 – that’s one for each day of the month. It’s a wonderful way to develop the habit of picking up the Word and you get some new things to think on too.

            Read one Psalm per day.

            One Psalm and one Proverb is approximately ten minutes of exposure to the light. If a doctor told you to spend ten minutes sitting on the porch to get sun, most of us would do it to alleviate our physical suffering. What about our mental condition? We don’t always need some complicated remedy. Just ten minutes of exposure to the Son for thirty days will start letting light in.

            Challenge: I challenge you to study the lives of Saul and David and see how many parallels you find to your own life. Both can be found in First and Second Samuel.

            I pray you find hope in the Scriptures and a new passion ignites in your Spirit for His Word. Let it be to you what it has been to me – a lamp unto my feet and a light to my path (Ps. 119:105).