A Believer's Guide to Mental Health

I recently had the opportunity to chat with some friends at the Certain Uncertainty Podcast about a quick take on Mental Health, especially for the Christian believer. Whatever you've been told about mental health with regards to faith, hear this: mental health IS health. You can have Jesus AND a therapist. You can pray about it and seek help about it. You are not less than because you have anxiety. Or because you've battled with depression. You are fully loved, fully valued, and fully seen in the eyes of our sweet Lord.

In this episode, I mention a couple thoughts from scripture, some life experience in this area, and my own personal thoughts on the church and mental health. Here are 2 things you can hear more about in this episode:

Jesus + Therapy

I grew up in a culture that didn't quite understand mental health, and whenever I or anyone around me was struggling we were told we were being dramatic, overreacting, or when it came to the church to just "pray about it." Now, many of those same people are now understanding of mental health, my family included, but it didn't make it easy to actually admit what I was struggling with. I remember the very first time I realized I was struggling with anxiety as a teenager. I was on Tumblr (lol) and reading things about what it felt like to have anxious thoughts and I thought to myself, "I might have that." & the more I learned, the more I realized that this battle in my mind was a real thing. But even so, it would take nearly 5 more years for me to first see a therapist. Since then, I've been weekly attending sessions with a therapist. & can I be honest with you? My faith and my commitment to Christ has never been stronger. The Bible tells us to take our thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. My therapist helps me identify the thoughts that I'm struggling with, talk through processes to help clear the fog, and make my thoughts obedient to Christ, not just freeing me in a moment but getting me in a rhythm of freedom. You can have Jesus and a therapist! In the words of Dr. Anita Phillips: "Prayer is a weapon, and therapy is a strategy."

God is not afraid of you expressing your emotions

I've been studying a few characters in the Bible who specifically have wrestled with anxiety, doubt, fear, confusion, etc. named Gideon & Habakkuk. You may know Gideon by his asking God for a sign, but I've read and learned that before all of that, Gideon doubted whether the Lord was really for him. In Judges 6:13 Gideon replies to the angel of the Lord appearing to him and saying "the Lord is with you," by saying back, “if the Lord is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all the miracles our ancestors told us about? Didn’t they say, ‘The Lord brought us up out of Egypt’? But now the Lord has abandoned us and handed us over to the Midianites.” The Lord responded to Gideon's doubt in Verse 14 saying "Go with the strength you have." In reading all of this, and the verses that follow after, I can know that God will use me just as I am. Gideon needed his faith to be bolstered, and God wasn't afraid of all of Gideon's feelings. "Go with the strength you have," tells me that I can be scared and go to God, but I'm still supposed to go. Ask Habakkuk. The book of Habakkuk is 3 chapters long, and they flow from Habakkuk's complaint, the Lord's reply, Habakkuk's 2nd complaint, the Lord's 2nd reply, and Habakkuk's prayer. He complained, cried out, asked why, struggled and wrestled, and the Lord still replied to him. There is nothing that you can feel that God does not feel with you. There is nothing you can't go to God with. So take your scared, your anxious, your pain, all of it, and take it to Jesus. He's ready and waiting.