Mental Illness and Spirituality

I’ve written a couple of blogs before entitled; “The Church and Mental Illness” and “Be Anxious For Nothing”. Please read them again or read them for the first time, if you haven’t already read them. I believe there are so many misunderstandings, misconceptions and lack of education when it comes to Mental Illness. I’d be the first to admit it is a very complex and complicated issue to deal with. I don’t fully understand it myself and I’ve experienced a mental illness all my life. But I feel compelled to write another blog on this topic, in hopes of helping us to understand, to educate ourselves on the issue and to help us better relate to someone with a mental illness.

This no doubt has been a very difficult week, I have fought my anxiety with everything I have in me. There were moments I felt I was loosing the battle. There were times when I thought my strength was gone and I could fight no more, I was so exhausted and fed up with life that I couldn’t understand the purpose of it all. It was all so overwhelming. The more I prayed to God, the further away He seemed. I felt like Job, when his wife said to him, “Curse God and die”(Job 2:9) But Job said,(Job13:15) “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”. It’s so easy to trust when everything is going fine, but trust when everything seems out of control; that’s another story. But I will trust, even when my faith  is small and discouragement comes in like a cloud. I will stand fast and believe His promises, even when things are bleak and uncertain.

The church in general tend to expect a Christian not to feel this way. Christians should not be anxious or depressed. Because the Bible says, Philippians 4:6,7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus”. So why do I feel this way? I certainly have made my requests known to God. Does God not answer my prayers?  Does God not care about me? Do I not matter to Him? If I took these verses literally, all hope would be gone and I would give up and die.

I wish it were that easy and all I would have to do is give it to Him and BOOM! It would be gone. Sorry people/church but that’s not the way it always works. I have an anxiety disorder that is not gone away, I would hope and pray it would but God did not take this illness away from me. No more then He doesn’t always heal someone with cancer or any other illness, He can but chooses not to. But because mine is a mental one, I’m supposed to be rid of it by just making my request to God and it’s gone. That could work maybe for someone who has a math exam and are anxious but being anxious and having an anxiety disorder are two different things.

It would be so easy for me to be a Christian if God answered every requests I make to Him. But God doesn’t work like that, His will must be done. And in this life we will have trials, tribulations and sickness for which we may never understand. But being able to still believe in God when our requests are not granted is what I believe makes us a stronger, wiser and more compassionate Christian. Believe in spite of it all!

So if you’re a Christian and you are experiencing an anxiety disorder, depression, and any other mental illness. Then God still loves you even in your brokenness and if you haven’t had a healing, remember God is in control, He has no respect of persons. Believe in your heart that God will see you through no matter what the illness; deliverance or no deliverance, healing or no healing. You are a child of God even in your illness, God loves you!

Some churches (and I’m generalizing) have tried to explain it away by saying, “There must be sin in your life”. To that I would quote John 9:1-12, “Jesus saw a man who had been blind since birth. His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him”. Oh that God would use my illness to bring Glory to Him.

And then there’s the explanation of “You need to have more faith’. To which I would quote Matthew 17:20 “I tell you the truth, if you had faith even as small as a mustard see, you could say to this mountain, “Move from here to there and it would move”. So our prayers aren’t answered by the amount of faith but by having faith.

This blog is not an attack on any church, but is meant to bring us all to a better understanding of God’s love, compassion, grace and mercy shown to each of us through His Son Jesus by whose stripes we are healed. And sometimes I believe that healing comes from acceptance of our illness and not a total miraculous recovery. I have said this many times before but it needs to be said again; “Mental illness is not a spiritual battle but an illness”. Until we come to that realization, the stigma of mental illness within the church body will  forever be present.