Hope For Those Struggling With Mental HealthExemplo

The Darkness Will Not Overcome

As the worship service was ending, I stood by my wife, Stacee, listening to her sing. Her lengthy battle with mental illness was not holding back her voice or her love, trust, and hope in God. Despite the darkness of depression, the fear of anxiety, and the isolation often caused by this cruel illness, her heart, her mind, and her faith sang. And through her song, God was speaking to me, restoring my hope, and reminding me of this eternal Truth: the darkness will not overcome.

“See, I am making all things new! ….. Write this down for these words are trustworthy and true” (Revelation 21:5).

Your recovery and your healing may not look like what you expected, it may not be on the timeline you hoped for, but God is working in you. God is in the process of making your mind, your heart, and your life new. Our health, including mental health, may struggle, yet God is working in our hearts and minds to renew us moment by moment and day by day (2 Corinthians 4:16).

God intimately knows our minds and emotions – all of our broken as well as whole parts. God is not waiting for you to reach a point of recovery or progress to fully love you. He lovingly invites us to grow our trust in Him, to cast all of our fears and anxieties on Him for He is good, faithful, and true (1 Peter 5:7). He is not waiting for the anxiety, or the depression, or any struggle to lessen or leave before He accepts and loves you.

Hope for your recovery, for your peace, for your freedom from mental illness is permanent and true. This hope can be the anchor for your soul because it has no end (Hebrews 6:19). There is not a place you have to reach, no “mile-marker” of recovery you have to pass, to reach hope.

Recovery, healing, better days and nights, are possible in your mental illness journey. But each person’s story is and will be different. Brokenness, trauma, pain, and failing health are all realities of life. Whatever your journey looks like, you are not alone. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39).

A day is also coming when every tear, every pain, every struggle, all trauma, all mental torment, and emotional anguish will be gone. For those who have trusted in Jesus, in the scope of that eternity, the weight of all the hurt mental illness has caused in your life will feel fleeting and faint – a distant memory which quickly fades in the freedom, peace, and joy of heaven (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)!

Hope is yours now and forever more because the darkness of depression, the fear of anxiety, the loneliness of a personality disorder, the despair of any mental illness cannot overcome the light, love and hope God has given us through his Son, Jesus. “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it”(John 1:5).