The gifts mental illness left me with... what I have learned....

What happens if you are not healed?

I found an old journal the other day and wept as the words soaked into my heart...

Have you ever had a scar upon your body that you run your fingers over and over and remember the  moments around the creation of the mark?

My son, Caspian, has a fading scar upon his cheek.. I remember the day, oh so many years ago, when the call would come in and I would be told that Jim was rushing him to the hospital.  I remember the words that came that spoke that I might not want to go in, that I might not want to see what had happened to his gorgeous face.

The cut was brutal, long and deep.

My son beyond brave as they placed nerve numbing shots into the open flesh.

That was over ten years ago.  The scar has faded.  He was sitting with me and I ran my finger alongside the scar.  Grateful his eye had been spared. Grateful it hadn't been worse.  The scar has faded.  But yet it remains.

There are moments that have faded from my heart, my mind, my soul... moments that I used to force from my memory but now just run my finger alongside the skin outside my heart.  Those moments have faded and yet they remain.

Reading the old journal entry brought back awareness of those faded marks.  The moments when I didn't know if my mind would ever "feel" normal, I didn't know if I would ever be truly capable of feeling attached, of feeling and knowing remorse... When my eyes would grow dull and memories would flood my being and send me back towards other times and places in the drop of a second.  

Is God good if I live my life mentally ill?  Is God good if my mind never "feels" normal?  Is God good if the sorrow in my heart debilitates my life and steals my days?  Is God good if I feel tormented? Is God good if the weights of this world suffocate me and it is all I can do to simply breath?  Is God good when to breath takes more effort than I can muster?  Is God still good?  Is God good when my past screams abuse, neglect, suffering?  Is God good when my past over shadows my present and any hope for the future?  IS GOD GOOD?  HOW?  How do I know God's goodness if I am not healed?  If my children are forced to have a mother who is mentally incapable?  If my husband is left?  How is God good?

What do we learn from suffering?

What do we learn when anguish is our food and despair our drink?

I traced the words of my old journal with my fingers as tears fell anew upon its pages.  As memories of days gone by filled my heart and my mind... What do we learn?  Is God still good?  Those were the questions...

What I have learned?

I have learned that a mind that has known great brokenness perceives the world very differently, healed or not... I have learned that having had a broken mind has been a tremendous gift...

I have learned patience

I have learned gentleness

I have learned compassion

I have learned to weep

I have learned to embrace weakness and to relish in the strength of the Lord

I have learned to see people in ways that are beyond me, I have learned to see people through a lens of Heaven and not through the eyes of man...

I have learned what comfort is

I have learned to care

I have learned to love

I have learned that dry bones do indeed live again and never to write someone off because of where it is they dwell today

I have learned hope

I have learned to appreciate the smallest of moments and the grandest of times

I have learned to not take sanity for granted... I have learned to not take life for granted... I have learned to cherish and treasure the beauty of humanity in ways that I don't think I would have but the gift of mental illness having left its impression upon me...

So I will trace the invisible scars upon my mind and within my heart and I will be grateful for the gifts that I have been left with...  in brokenness He made me whole... having knitted me together.. He reformed me and refashioned me back ... Having been created in His image I have learned that nothing can ever separate me from His love... not mental illness, not abuse, not destruction... not the thoughts and opinions and hands and words and actions of men and women.... nothing can truly ever snatch me from His hand and I stand convinced of His goodness.... His goodness in healing me and His goodness in the remembrances that are left by the scars....

I have learned... I have learned much and have much to still learn...  but this journey carries me forward... It carries me onward... God is good.. Having lived in great darkness I appreciate the light in depths of me I could never find expression for, Having experienced such great hatred I revel in the beauty of love ...

God's goodness astounds me and conquers fear....  I love Him... I have learned to love Him all the more.. I have learned to receive His love.. I have learned that I am loved.. beloved... daughter, lover, friend, Bride to be... I am His and He is for me... That I have learned... That I have learned is truth regardless of situations and circumstances.. That I have learned....