People With Mental Illness Love Jesus Too
In honor of National Mental Health Month we are encouraging families to start talking openly about personal experiences and normalizing the stigma of mental illness. With that in mind, my husband Michael and I share a bit of our story in this short video.
Each one of us face struggles. We all need God’s love and grace in order to redeem the brokenness we encounter in this world. Whether we have hardships in our relationships, our finances, or our physical bodies we need to seek restoration holistically. This especially applies in the area of mental health.
Approach Mental Health Holistically
- Engage with community and share our stories.
- Get educated in the area of mental illness.
- Collaborate with the church, counselors, and the medical community for effective treatment, in order to address the spiritual, emotional, and biological aspects.
- Reach out with love and acceptance toward those suffering and their families. You don’t have to have full understanding of an illness to have compassion.
- Stop identifying mental illness as a spiritual disease. Mental illness is a biological issue that can affect our relationship with God, as well as any other relationships.
People with mental illness love Jesus too. – Angela Howard
We all experience more suffering than we expect in this life, so we are often left feeling disillusioned and disappointed. What if we altered our expectations to realize that we live in a broken world and our troubles are nothing to fear. We have a God who loves us and our trials draw us closer to our Savior who knows our suffering and has experienced the same loss and pain that we have.
Since he himself has gone through suffering…Hebrews 2:18a (NLT)
Prayer
Lord, we know that you are sovereign and we trust you with our trials and struggles. We pray for each person and family facing mental illness today. Strengthen them, guide them, direct them, and enable them to find good health care and counseling. We ask that you hold out hope to them in their time of need so that they will persevere. We pray that you would break the stigma of mental illness in the church and in our communities in Jesus Name, Amen.
Further Steps
If today’s post was meaningful to you, would you share it with a friend on social media? This is how we will help to break the stigma of mental illness! And if you want further help with mental health or relational issues, please visit our Counseling Referrals Page.
This post was first published on Angela Howard’s personal blog: No Ordinary Days
