I thought I’d do this before the year is out and I didn’t want to do the new year new me sort of post. This year has been tough on everybody but has probably taught so many people so many things about themselves. It has definitely taught me a lot!! One of the main things […]

This year has taught me

Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash “You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.” ― Henri-Frédéric Amiel In a way, who I am is inseparable from my suffering. My pain dictates my personality, my emotional resilience, and my ambition. My struggle to establish a […]

Selling Our Pain for Likes and Reads

If you are haunted by a memory, we have the brain capacity to dive in and alter it. To replace the strong negative emotion that is trapped, by inserting someone into the memory who can help you. Playing out what should have been done, tells your subconscious the confusion is over.

The Confusion Is Over

At first I was very reluctant to go but every Monday I faithfully attended Celebrate Recovery. One night my husband and I got in a heated discussion. “This was it, I had it!” I slammed the door leaving behind my husband, my hopes, my child EVERYTHING and drove to the park. Ironically my old parking ground to drink. I was listening to Linkin Park “In the End” if you’ve never heard this song it repeats obsessively “Its doesn’t even matter” and that’s exactly what I needed to hear as I set crying and screaming in my car. I was sulking in my failures. Suddenly, I realized I had an enemy on my shoulder and I let him beat me up for far too long. I remembered a song I heard in Celebrate Recovery. “Chainbreaker” by Zach Williams. I turned it on. It repeats several times, “There’s a better life.” Yes, I believed in God and I’ve been baptized but inviting him in, like inside my heart, that was a whole new way.

Im not being the person I believe I can be

Im drowning in my sorrows, my weakness

Im drowning in the past unable to reach forgiveness

Im weak and lost

Im barely holding on, I’m struggling

Im alone and scared

My disease is baffling

Im no longer confident

Im no longer a strong women

Im no longer anything

Im tempted for things to end

Im weak, where did I go?

What happen to me?

I’ve lost everything

Im standing but barely

Something has to give

I truly want to live

I’ve struggled, I’ve crawled, I don’t want to fall

Im weak, I have nothing at all

Bitter sweet to be deeply saddened

To be anxious and feel tossed

To be weak and on your knees

Im praying and fighting for all I’ve lost.

T.R.B.R.S

The first of these points out the obvious—namely, that having faith does not immunize us from mental health problems as we see in the lives of people like St. Louis Martin (1823-1894, father of St. Thérèse of Lisieux) and St. Benedict Joseph Labre (1748-1783). Both were firm believers but suffered in their minds. Second, not every mental illness has a spiritual cause, so having weak faith or no faith is not necessarily the cause of poor mental health. Third, religious or spiritual therapy is never a substitute for medical treatment of mental illnesses. 

The Gospel frees us from the burden of being self-referential and the confusion of not knowing who we are, where we have come from, or where we are going. For the person of faith, everything unfolds along the journey of life that we walk as fellow pilgrims, empowered with the fundamental truth of our identity as God’s beloved children, brothers and sisters in Christ and destined to share eternal life with him. The Gospel insists that life has meaning and that every human life is meaningful. In the words of Cardinal Newman: “God has created me to do him some definitive service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission.”

With the mental suffering of Jesus, God did not take away mental agony but filled it with his presence. Our God does not console us by abolishing anguish of the mind but by entering it and sharing it. United to us in our darkness, Jesus invites those of tortured mind to transcend the darkness with him towards the light of resurrection. By embracing humanity, sorrow and mental pain are no longer foreign to God but have been taken up into his life to be transformed into hope. For those who suffer in their minds, they have a friend and refuge in the sorrowful heart of Jesus in whose suffering they participate.

In the Gospels, forgiveness is a core teaching. Jesus Christ reveals a merciful God who desires to forgive sins and heal wounds caused by human failings. This is the same forgiveness with which he empowers us to forgive ourselves and each other (Matt. 18:21-35). With his forgiveness we are unburdened from guilt, self-loathing, and shame. With God’s forgiveness that we have received and extend to others, we are freed from anger and bitterness and other emotionally destructive feelings such as hatred and revenge. Our faith also enables us to distinguish between the sin and the sinner—to forgive the wrong done to us without denying the wrong that was committed.

Why not have God? If nothing else the Bible is a guide on how we should treat others. A guide to better be kind human beings. Shouldn’t we want to always improve our mental health?