Things I have run from and why I am stopping... Number 3: Mental Illness, Depression and the Past ... Part 3

The biggest... The most profound... AND I AM NOT GOING BACK... Is this post! Here is my heart... here is my journey. Within these words rest my confidence and within this journey I have been set upon a path. While there is still more unseen then seen in ways of where this journey will take me, I am more anchored in Him than I have ever been. And it is well with my soul.

There is no image that needs to be maintained. There is NO IMAGE THAT NEEDS TO BE MAINTAINED. I have met too many pastor's wives, heck too many pastors... too many people in ministry that spend more energy maintaining an image that is exhausting them, crippling their ministries and hindering their walk into true authority.

What happens when you start saying that you have been healed of mental illness. There comes those voices. (laugh... hearing things are we:) ) Come on... I was saved by a visitation in a psych hospital do you think I haven't heard those comments. There was a bright light, there was a calming presence... seeing things, hearing things.. my goodness I am just glad there didn't up my dosages of whatever I was taking back then.... Love my sister in law.. love them all. But my sister in law, Jenn... I always think of her in moments like these... We get a good laugh together over this stuff. Not making fun but adding a bit of levity. (actually not my forte just ask Mary Cargain.. so that I can do it is fun)

But seriously what happens? What happens when the testimony of your life is that God came and put your mind back together and left you sitting in peace, like the Gerasene Demoniac, but the winds and the waves are coming and leaving you a bit wind blown and drenched. Guess what? That was my fear. That was my concern. What happens to my testimony if I touch sorrow again? What happens to my testimony if I can't walk it out? What happens to my testimony if something happens and I can't cope and I end up back where I started from?

Guess what happens?!?!

I learn the even deeper lessons! I learn that hope does not ever disappoint. I learn that it never had anything to do with me... not really. I learn the redemption of Christ goes even further than I ever imagined and I learn that my redeemer lives and moves and dances upon my life in ways I could never even ever dared to dream.

My healing wasn't something birthed forth from me... my desire to be made whole wasn't birthed forth from me... He planted a seed, I made choices... but He led me and guided me and sustained me in the driest and most weary of places and He has set my feet upon a rock... He has set my feet upon a path and we walk together... I lean.. He walks...

There is nothing I need to be other than that which I am..... Within the truths of 2 Corinthians 3:18 I find my refuge. I am becoming more and more like Him. His image.. His daughter... His bride.. pure and spotless... Not something of my own making or out of my own effort but through and by His grace. There isn't some place that needs to be maintained, I am moving from strength to strength, and He who began a good work in me is bringing it to completion.

These truths have been so precious to me, because what happens when current days or similar situations or emotions come up and they hold within them remembrances of the past or realities of the present. I was so concerned last Summer when under great transition and in the middle of a season of wilderness that spawned the distance of the Mojave desert, that the terrain looked too familiar and what did that mean for me. What did that truly mean for me?

You know what I was asking? Had I really been healed? The doubts and accusations of the enemy and the remembrances of my own flesh joined together to play with my mind, to lay torment to my soul. It felt too similar. The emotion, the turmoil, the upheaval, the pain.. it felt too similar. The enemy calling into question... he did it to Jesus, “are you really.....”

The temptation, the wilderness... calling into question anything and everything that can be called into question. Was my identity based on having been healed? Was there fear of what it would mean if current situations swept me back into habits of the past? Because guess what? My identity isn't based on the fact that I was mentally ill and now I am healed! My life isn't based on the fact that I overcame abuse and that I survived my childhood. Who I am isn't dictated to or determined by my past, present or future!

Who I am is set in stone, upon a rock! Who I am and who I will always be ... no more.. no less.. Is HIS!

But I didn't know that last Summer. Not like I do now and not like I will even more in the days and years and lifetime to come.   Last Summer I needed to know that I was not ever going to touch the places that I had touched while being made whole. Guess what? There are no guarantees. The fear of it began to cripple me and opened me up to the place where I cared more about the opinions of man then the truth of my God. This world holds within it the promises of tribulation and trials, but we are not of those who shrink back but of those who overcome. Though I fall seven times I will arise under the power of His love and His grace, maybe limping, maybe crawling, maybe needing a cane.... but I will arise but ONLY... Only because He rose!

The strength of my life and the words of my testimony isn't what I did... it is by the blood of the Lamb and the word of my testimony and that I will not love my own life.... I don't have to maintain my testimony,not in the way I thought. We were created to live in His image... everything I encountered growing up came to thwart that, He moved heaven and earth to redeem it and is redeeming and will continue to do so until the day I die and go be with Him or until the day where He returns. I am grateful for that fact.

Again my dearest of friends would step into my life and speak truth... You aren't who you were back then, there are resources upon earth and within Heaven that you didn't have, that you didn't know about when you were a child. This is not the same. You are different.


 I hear this all the time from people... the why am I back here? The what happened? And I can't answer it for you nor will I give you a blanket answer... I will say this... for me I am not back anywhere....


Yes, does all suffering and sorrow and torment have similar characteristics.


YES.


 But each step I have taken.. each step I take.. whether it feels as if I am being pushed back a mile or being flung forward two... some of that thinking is of the world and the flesh and surrounded and encased with fear. Perfect love assures me that I am crowned in loving kindness and loving kindness pursues me and goes before me and surrounds me, perfect love dictates that though there are trials and though there are tribulations and though and though and though... perfect love says it has overcome! Perfect love says HE has overcome.

The path through the wilderness isn't necessarily a linear one but why do we fear going around the mountain again and again.. that is such a crappy line that Christians have bought and non-Christians have bought and it is garbage! So what if the mountain is similar if each time you go around you are going higher and higher and higher... of course you are going to be going around the same mountain... It is from strength to strength and glory to glory and the mountain is the mountain of God... It is your life and you are climbing and leaning and walking with Him and He is making your feet like hinds feet and you are journeying in places you never thought you would tread.

Does sorrow come back around? YES!!! Does pain come back around? YES!!! But guess what!!!! Guess what?!?!!? So does joy! So does triumph! So does love!

The things I have run from and I am NOT going back.. IS FEAR!!! That is how my God started this whole thing in the first post of this series.... “ARE YOU READY TO SAY GOOD BYE TO FEAR?” No! I wasn't but in less than a week His grace is pouring out and understanding is coming and I am ceasing to perish in places I was perishing because He is bringing understanding.

I started this week begging Him to father me. Coming to Him and asking, “What does it look like for you to father me here? HERE! HERE! In this place.. in this place of pain, of suffering, of loss, of sorrow, of grief, of agony... WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE FOR YOU TO FATHER ME HERE!!!! Be my God.. I want to be Yours.. But what does it look like?”

THIS IS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE.

Freedom is precious. And freedom is exhilarating.. because it is not the promise that suffering ceases... But it is the promise that perfect love comes in and casts out all fear!!!!

What does it look like to be fathered by a God whose heart is ravished by one look of my eyes? Hey I know what happens in my heart when Elizabeth, or Gregory, or Rebekah, or Gideon, or Caspian, or Joshua looks at me and spends time with me and comes to me..... What does it look like????? It looks amazing.........

There are no better words to end on then these from 1 Thessalonians 5

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He who calls you, and He also will bring it to pass.

AMEN AND AMEN......