When God Finds You in the Dark ...

Psalms 139:7-10 The Passion Translation (TPT)

Where could I go from your Spirit? Where could I run and hide from your face?

If I go up to heaven, you’re there! If I go down to the realm of the dead, you’re there too!

If I fly with wings into the shining dawn, you’re there!

If I fly into the radiant sunset, you’re there waiting!

Wherever I go, your hand will guide me; your strength will empower me.

Confession? I’m not sure how to write this blog post. I know what’s on my heart to share but I’m hoping I’ll get my words out in a way that ministers to you.

Today is World Mental Health Day and I can’t help but feel reflective, thinking back on my own journey with mental wellness and the hard seasons I’ve had to go through in the area of mental health. But today, my mind has gone back to a particular season in my life that felt so dark, yet God brought me out of it. 

In 2021, I got diagnosed with a Connective Tissue Disorder. It felt like it came out of nowhere, given that I was seemingly ‘perfectly healthy’ leading up to that point in my life. I’d experienced a lot of chronic anxiety, stress and fatigue leading up to that point, but I never imagined how much my body was being damaged by it all. At the start of 2021, I’d sensed God asked me to prioritize my health that year. So, I finally mustered up the courage to start going to the gym and exercising regularly as a way to help my body regulate the internal stress. But two months in, I got a seemingly minor injury that never fully healed, and I started to swell near my joints any time I tried exercising. It was so so painful.

Getting a diagnosis with words like “autoimmune”, “life-long” and “incurable” attached was terrifying for me to hear. I felt so ashamed of myself for being sick and I blamed myself for it. I’d read articles that talked about the link between trauma, chronic stress and autoimmune diseases and I felt like I was being punished for not getting a better handle on stress and anxiety. Verses like “Take every thought captive” and “Be anxious for nothing” kept flashing through my mind as chastisements and I felt like being sick was my punishment for dealing with anxiety, or for doing too much deep diving into the wounds of my heart that I was trying to work through in therapy and journaling. 

Eventually, the doctors put me on some medication to deal with the inflammation in my body. Steroids and a bunch of other things I still can’t pronounce were put into my body and the effects were apparent. Physically, it seemed that the inflammation was going down (very) slowly. But my mental health was suffering. The medication left me feeling combinations of intense anger, intense brain fog, sleeplessness, excitement and memory loss. I’d start sentences that I wouldn’t know how to finish because I’d forget what I was saying. I felt incredibly embarrassed at work because my mind couldn’t latch on to simple instructions, or remember anything I didn’t write down immediately. Prayer was so hard because I couldn’t get sentences out. Reading scripture seemed to be triggering more anxiety. The only books I seemed to be able to read were Psalms and Proverbs, and I was only able to listen to them via Audio Bible. But I just had to get the word in somehow.

Overall it was a really hard season because I felt like I failed my body, and that I was failing God. I remember one day, I was lying in bed feeling totally disoriented and out of it, and I said in a voice just above a whisper, “God, what is our relationship if I can’t perform? I have nothing to offer you right now. If I can’t pray and read scripture and serve at church…if I’m not even being kind to my boyfriend because I feel like a crazy person…what’s left of my connection with You when I’m struggling like this?” It was one of those deep moments in my life that I’ll remember forever. God didn’t say much. But I remember feeling like I was being surrounded by deep comfort. And I remember sensing God say, “You’ve never been strong enough to impress me. I’ve always been strong enough for the both of us. This is the very nature of my gospel…” And in that moment, I knew He wasn’t saying that my devotion doesn’t matter. But He was revealing something about Himself that I’d never truly understood in my heart of hearts until that moment. That was the moment when God revealed Himself as the God who is strong enough to handle my weakest weak. He is the God who sees me clearly in pitch black dark nights of the soul, and dark nights of the mind, and dark nights of the body. 

To be loved in mind, body and soul is the greatest gift I have ever received in my life. When Steff Gretzinger sings “no one ever cared for me like Jesus,” I truly know what she means. It is a deep love to be loved when you seem to have nothing to offer. But this gift from God is available to every human who is humble enough to admit the areas in which they are weak...the machoest of men included.

One Sunday morning, I had a dream, and in the dream I started singing a song over and over. I woke up and recorded the melody immediately, and within 20 minutes, I had written the full song. I wrote the song called “Strong Arms” that day, which is now on my album. But that song has and always will have a special place in my heart because it is a memorial stone reminding me of that moment when God saw me in what felt to me like an embarrassingly weak position and He said, “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” His love was strong enough for the both of us during that time and has been since.

Praise God, God has used that diagnosis to make me the healthiest I’ve ever been. Only by the gracious hand of God, my body has been learning how to grow strong, how to exercise without flare ups, how to find its ideal rhythm of work and rest, how to manage stress, and how to eat in a way that supports health and limits inflammation. I have come to know God as the God who isn’t too lofty to sit with you in the center of mental or physical illness. He has shown me that He truly does understand the weakening effects of human weakness. Meaning, He knows that depression isn’t just depression. But depression can affect motivation, which can affect energy which can affect how you engage your spiritual practices with God. And illness, in all its forms, does impact us in multifaceted ways. He’s the God who is mighty to hold you, yet loving enough to come near and say, “Hey I understand, rest a while with Me. I’ll fight for you.”

I have countless other stories of God rescuing me from what felt like deep pits in my mind and body, scary places of feeling like I lost myself. But now, I’m learning that God always knows where I am and He IS always where I am, holding back what could be worse, holding up what’s trying to fall, and holding on firmly to our connection like a marriage bond that is not easily broken.

Happy Mental Health Day loves. Listen to Strong Arms here.