I’ve never been diagnosed with a mental health issue, but I have a mental health issue at least once a month. Sometimes, less often. My hormones either skyrocket or dip dangerously too low for my mental health.
When it happens, I remember all of the things that I hate about my life, all of the things that are out of my control to change or make better. And in that moment of hormones out of whack, I am angry and sad and on a rampage for a better life. I know that I am supposed to be in control, but I’m not. I don’t know how to help myself.
If everyone has an addiction, mine has always been people and approval. I crave more than what the people in my life can give, and I crave more than most people want to give. But I am so broken in thought, I cannot ask for what I need, so many times, no one gets the opportunity.
One of my best friends has an eating disorder. When she desperately needs to gain weight, it is not as simple as just eating a ton of whatever wonderful food she loves. Unlike most of the world, she doesn’t find any pleasure whatsoever in food. Her eating disorder has robbed her of freedom and joy, and she longs for the day when the Lord restores the years that the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25).
I’m starting to realize that just like my friend, joy is not an easy element in relationships for me. For some time, I felt like God designed it that way so that I would return to Him rather than the comfort of the closeness that comes from another. Now I understand that my dissatisfaction is not His design, but simply a signal to seek Him.
Relationships are not only simple joys; they are simple joys I don’t always know how to enjoy.
In the moment of my weakest and worst hormonal days, sometimes my actions tell my people that they are not enough. I plead with them to please give me more. But no matter how much I plead, they never do. I’m not sure if they can, and I’m not sure if they should.
They are not enough.
I am left standing alone because my people could not be for me what I wanted or what I thought I needed.
I am aware of how utterly sinful it is that I place such a large weight on the people whom I love and treasure and whom love me.
I pass through this life feeling largely unknown and unloved to the fullness I want to be loved.
Through the years, I’ve spent various moments and seasons blaming God or feeling defeated because He would not give me what I wanted in people. I felt and sometimes still feel (when the lies are strong) that I am receiving a lifelong punishment for things that seemed simple mistakes. I long for the day when the locusts return the years.
I’ve experienced a type of suffering that cannot be quantified. It’s not a chronic illness.
It’s not a mental illness on most days.
How do you tell people that you suffer because you are not “with me” enough or as much as I want? There is no pain pill for heartache. When you grieve your own life, how do you numb the pain?
While I know that my people are not enough, I am just as aware that I am not enough.
I kick and I scream and I gnash and wail waiting to be enough. In all the ways that I think people failed me, I keep trying to be that thing for someone else. Really, I am just trying to do it for me. If I can succeed, maybe all these people can succeed in pleasing me. I try harder to be all the things that I wish I had.
I keep trying to do things to be enough for all the people so that maybe I will be lovely enough to receive the love that I want from them. And so that maybe they will be lovely enough for me.
But I fail. Every. single. day. And so do they.
Last year, when I was studying and writing a bible study on Romans 8, I experienced a type of healing.
I’d always heard and at times said that the Gospel was enough. But I had never truly experienced the reality of that.
After begging for God to move me away from sin, He showed me that the Gospel was truly all I’d ever need, even if I continued to suffer all the days of my life with wanting more from people. Even if no one, including me, ever changed.
I hope that one day I experience an even greater reality of this truth – the freedom to enjoy people fully.
Jesus is always with me. He knows all the intricacies of me. He loves me, and no matter what I do, He never leaves me. He never makes me deal with pain on my own. There’s no pain pill, but He numbers my tears. He holds them in a bottle.
He’s a God who’s stepped down from His grandeur into my crap. And He stays there with me. It’s unfathomable.
The Father is no stranger to pain. He knows what it is like to lose a Son. He knows what it is like to step out of Heaven. He knows more than we sometimes think He knows. Yes, Jesus too knows what it is like to love someone to the death and back again.
Maybe He feels pain over the lost sheep that we are too? Maybe it drove Him to a cross to save us?
He understands my pain. He’s sent me rescue, but sometimes the pain stays. He doesn’t leave when all I do is
On my bad days, when I’m low on hormones and down and discouraged, or when I’ve spoken out of turn and in sin and shame, I long for the day when I can step out of this rugged shell of a body full of sin and deceit, like a cicada molting and leaving behind an empty shell.
These dry bones are weary and ready to return to dust.
“Not today, Satan,” says the Lord. “I still have plans for her. She is mine.”
The Gospel is for today, renewing the spirit within me, giving me new life in and out even on bad days, changing the skin I am in. But the Gospel is for the future too, turning dry bones, ashes, and hearts of stone into blood pumping veins of life, holding the promise of a new body with no indwelling sin.
The Gospel is for even me. Even when I was not enough for me.
The Gospel is for even you. Even when you were not enough for me.
He died for us.
His death made us enough, because we came under the blood of Jesus.
But we were never really enough. He was the One making something out of nothing. He just loved us in spite of our complete lack, even though we will never be enough. He said He would make a way in the mire.
Thank you, Jesus, for giving death to weary places.
When I’ve had enough of this life and of not being enough. When I’ve not allowed others to be enough.
Who is the Gospel for?
Who is the Gospel not for?
Look around. The Gospel is for us, and nothing can stand against it. Not even my bad mental health days.
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