IN THE NAME OF JESUS In the words of someone who has been there: I’ve told many about how stigma has affected me. My story. My pain. But I realize everyone has a story. Everyone has experienced some form of rejection. It must be one of the worst sources of emotional pain. For many of […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS We had an important rule at the support group I led for many years. It came from the Quaker writer Parker J. Parker: “No fixing, no saving, no advising, no setting each other straight.” That must have been the single most important rule we had, and we kept ourselves to […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS Few people realize the extent of the pain caused by stigma. Please hear what this lady experiences. What can you and I do to bring healing to her? My struggles are no longer so much about my illness as I have learned to handle that now, especially with the medicines […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS There are those who have never felt real love before. They don’t know what real joy is. Could we help them feel what God’s love is like—the love they truly need? The Bible tells us that everything is possible with God. Friends might wonder what this love we speak of […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS Have you ever felt the pain of being disbelieved? If you have, you’ll know how helpless it makes you feel. Many of us living with mental illness know such pain. It’s true. There may be times when people with mental illness have delusions that cause them to believe things that […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS As you’ve been reading through this series, I hope you remember that everyone with a caring heart can support troubled individuals, especially peers. The Bible says, Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS In September 2009 I gave a talk to a group whose members had lost loved ones to suicide. It was an emotionally charged time with twenty-one of us sitting in a circle for three hours. One by one they shared their stories of pain with me. There were many tears. […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS As we’ve noted earlier, prejudice is rampant in our world today, as it was during Jesus’ time. We think that good only comes from those with power, those who are economically well off, those with higher education. We tend to think that only bad news comes from the poor, from […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS When I talk to healthy friends, people who care about me, I realize they will never fully understand what it means to live with a mental illness, no matter how much explaining I do. The issue is not the illness itself and what it does to the person living with […]

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IN THE NAME OF JESUS Everyone lives with bad memories from the past. It’s part of life. But some memories could be classified as traumatic. They’re the result of truly disturbing experiences like witnessing a horrific accident, being in the middle of a war zone, or seeing a vicious crime committed. Such memories tend to […]

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