Branch On The Vine

By: Alli Matthews

This week I’m going to share my mental health story and how God moved in those difficult times in my life. Then, I will discuss how faith and mental health actually work together. 

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that everyone’s story is different. My goal in sharing mine is to encourage you and share about how God was faithful through it. My goal is NOT for you to compare your story with mine and feel ashamed. God has all of us on different journeys. He is in your story too even if it looks vastly different than mine.

Okay, let’s dive in.

At 20-years-old, I began struggling with mental health during guess when: COVID-19. To set the scene, I was living alone in an apartment and working two days per week at a nursing home in which residents and staff had contracted the virus. Residents were dying from the virus. The world was chaos. It was the gloomy season of March and April in Michigan that was filled with cold, rainy days. Just in case I unknowingly had the virus, I was trying to keep my distance from people. 

I felt “down” every day, like my heart was heavier than it had been before. Tears became a normalcy in my days. I longed to be with people and felt more alone than ever before. I knew God was with me, but I couldn’t help feeling dreadfully lonely.

I started therapy that summer. Through weekly sessions, God used therapy to challenge and heal me. I was in a better place with my mental health for about a year. 

Then, as PA school approached, I started struggling with anxiety. It started with nightmares and panic attacks. Starting PA school felt like an impending doom, as if life as I knew it would never be the same.

And PA school did make life very different and much more difficult. Through the stress of multiple exams per week, my chronic worrying somehow gave birth to this new social anxiety. I found myself obsessively pondering almost every interaction I had with people, replaying conversations over and over in my head and cringing at what things I had said. The weight of it felt like it would never be lifted. I started to wonder if this was just part of who I am. 

I tried going to a free therapist on campus because therapy had helped me so much before. It did help again, except for one thing my therapist said. It wasn’t like she said it to be rude or unhelpful. She just made a casual comment in which she referred to me as a “worrier”. 

That shocked me at first. Before PA school, I never thought of myself as a “worrier”. Yet, I quickly accepted that term as part of who I am. I would talk about an exam I was nervous about and make a little comment about how it’s because “I’m just a worrier.” I totally let that therapist define my identity without realizing it.

A few months later, God graciously led me to a podcast that reminded me of my true identity in Christ: chosen, a new creation, the righteousness of God, a holy saint. Relearning about who I truly am in Christ allowed me to lean into His strength to overcome my anxiety. 

Don’t get me wrong – I still struggle with anxiety. Some seasons are more difficult than others. God has not fully healed me. However, I can look back on the past few years and see the Lord’s presence and faithfulness in my struggles with mental health. Therefore, I can trust that He will be with me through every challenging time in my life. 

This is how faith and mental health work together. 

Wait what?

You might be wondering how I can say that if I still have anxiety. 

Our God is a healer, but what if He doesn’t heal our mental illness when we ask Him to? What if He allows us to continue to suffer? Does that mean He doesn’t love us? Does that mean He isn’t faithful? 

James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” 

What if God is using your mental health struggles to bring you closer to himself? What if He is using this difficult season to produce perseverance and grow your faith? 

I think it’s easy for us to not feel like we’re growing in the hard moments. It’s easy to feel like we are far from God when we are struggling. However, our feelings are not what define our faith. 

As a reminder from last week, Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Faith is not a feeling. On the contrary, faith is confidence in what we cannot see or do not feel. 

Even though I still feel anxious sometimes, I have faith that God is using the trials I go through, such as mental illness, to produce perseverance and maturity in my heart. 

Even though I still worry sometimes, I have faith that I’m not a worrier but instead chosen by God, a new creation, the righteousness of God, and a holy saint. Because that’s who God says I am. 

Having faith does not necessarily heal us from mental illness or take it away, but God uses mental illness to grow our faith in Him.

I don’t want to minimize the pain you’re experiencing. Jesus sees your struggle and empathizes with you. He cares for you and wants to hear your real feelings. He wants all of you.

But the Bible says we can actually consider our trials pure joy. We can rejoice in our hardships because God is with us in them and is using them for our good. Jesus promises that he is with us in Matthew 28:20 when he says, “…And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Next week, we will continue the Mental Health Series, focusing in on anxiety. The title is Three Practical and Biblical Ways to Fight Anxiety. If you have ever struggled with worry, I highly encourage you to read it. I’ll leave you with a verse of encouragement to remind you that God is for you, even in your struggle: 

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:28