HOPE FOR A LIFE WITH MENTAL ILLNESS Over the last few days my mind went back to Riding the Roller Coaster, a book I had published by Woodlake Publishers in 1999. It wasn’t hard for me to find a publisher at the time because it was one of the first books written by a person […]
Read More...MENTAL HEALTH AND BUILDING UNDERSTANDING As a person with mental health issues who has helped many like herself, I worry when I see people like us portrayed as victims—a class of people set apart from others, needing special care and consideration. We are as human as anyone else and every one of us will need […]
Read More...MENTAL HEALTH AWARENESS IN THE CHURCH In 1993 the Vancouver Sun published Sick, But No One Brought Me Flowers. This article marked the coming out of a woman who—starting at the beginning of the next century—was to introduce mental health awareness to the Christian Church. She was determined to reduce the stigma affecting people with […]
Read More...MENTAL HEALTH AND EQUALITY Those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Romans 8:29 Just before he passed away, Narayan Vaman Tilak (1861-1919). a famous convert to Christianity in India, wrote the following to a […]
Read More...LACK OF UNDERSTANDING LEADS TO LACK OF CARE . . . and I should realize that by now. I’m sorry if I was harsh on those who don’t. Of course you don’t get it and it’s not your fault. It just hurts terribly to know that those of us who live with mental health issues […]
Read More...JESUS WEEPS WITH US He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Isaiah 53:3 Never have I found myself so misunderstood. Never have I found Christ’s importance to people […]
Read More...MENTAL ILLNESS AND EQUALITY Much has been done to build better mental health awareness in the church. Yet there’s room for better understanding. And a lot more needs to happen than acceptance alone. People with mental health issues are no different than others in wanting to be considered to have equal worth. And yet it’s […]
Read More...The Church has made great headway in offering more accepting communities for people with mental health issues. But is the acceptance and the support it now gives enough? I believe God calls us to do more. One of the most difficult things people with mental illness face is low self-esteem. With the love of Christ, […]
Read More...EXCERPT FROM A FIRM PLACE TO STAND (PAGE 198) – MARJA BERGEN (2008) In the introduction to his book, No Man is an island, Thomas Merton said that loving ourselves properly is “desiring to live, accepting life as a great gift and a great good, not because of what it gives us, but because of […]
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