I am not generalising here but I do think there can be a tendency within the Church to dismiss mental health issues and the reasons why and the consequences.
I know mental illness up close and personal. It shaped my teenage years,
and it largely why I searched out Christ.
I know what it is to spend hours talking through lovingly with a person their
ideas, and trying to find a solution.
Over the last 40 years the only solution has been medication and love.
Medication stops the trauma, lack of sleep, running around the streets, phoning
up the police and making absurd accusations.
Now if you meet other families who have faced this, you know what versions of
insanity mean, how a soul can be broken and shattered, yet Gods love still can
shine through. Now these things come about when people are fragile growing up
and have no chance to develop proper emotional reference points and when pressure
comes they fall apart. I know one family where all three children were dramatically
effected, two permanently disabled and one a recluse.
Some wonder how I am normal, a relative term, when the others are so strange.
And then you learn this is actually very common, and building your house upon the
rock is also about true mental stability as opposed to being shattered and the house
falling down.
A simple example is. A child falls over and starts to cry. Do you laugh at their
distress, or go over to comfort them, check how they are, and help them regain
their confidence. I know what it means to see and check how they are, reach out
and connect or the other side, stand off, and have no clue this is time to reassure
and help. Now the laughing comes from a childhood of being abandoned with no
sympathy, and you just made do. But it leaves real scars, and your kids find it
hard to not be scared themselves.
Now in Christ we have an opportunity to help people heal and grow, to be a real
family, for them to know we care, at a very deep level, and there is no limit if we
can to help. Now these realities I know not because it is theory, I have lived it
and seen it. It changes you when you both have been healed and you have helped
others grow and flourish with loving support. This is not a nice add on, it is part
of being in Gods Kingdom.
And I share not because I am boasting, but because these issues matter, and hurting
people need loving help, a helping hand, someone who can take a burden.
But maybe dear reader this is all alien to you. I want to encourage you, this is the
eternal nature of the Lord at work, bearing one anothers weaknesses and serving
others through His body.