True Christian unity is not superficial unity at all costs. It’s grounded in Jesus’ love, which is itself a primary truth. Love always speaks truths at the right time in the right way. https://t.co/2ZAY0AJXy3
@AndrewKolvet@TPUSA Dear Andrew, Awesome! All will want to see & hear this Holy Spirit Inspired video! God created Charlie (Both 100% a forces to be reckoned with). Dear Father please continue opening doors as WE ARE ALL CHARLIE!!!
@AndrewKolvet@TPUSA Dear Andrew, I saw you courageously sit in Charlie’s Chair and PRESS-On! Could we distribute this dynamic cop-elation WORLD-WIDE! & Just Keep Them Coming🙏⁉️ Our King Jesus Emmanuel is THE HOLY force to be reckoned with! God created Charlie. Enough said🙏 Thank you.
@BethMooreLPM Amen! Amen!! My Mental Health & Jesus’ relentless LOVE; ACCEPTANCE; TENDERNESS, & HOPE is why I’d join as a listener & a leader-of—the-pack for FUN & LAUGHTER! Me & my psychiatrist adore & follow Jesus!
I’m going to tell y’all right now you don’t have time for this. I think I just needed to put these thoughts into words.
If I could create a support group (in my spare time which for now is 0), I’d design one for Christian women who have dearest of loved ones with chronic long-term mental illness. We’d agree the condition is hardest of all for our loved one. He or she undoubtedly needs compassion and care most of all. But we’d also agree that lovingly supporting and caring for and understanding our person in a long run can be immensely challenging.
People (if per chance we tell what we’re going through which for many is rare) frequently say to us, be sure to take care of yourself, to which we’d often wish to reply, OK, what exactly does that look like?
Yes, a therapeutic massage would help a little. So might a good movie. And certainly talking about it but so few people understand what we can hardly understand. What the person her/himself can hardly understand!
Here’s what I wish and not as a fix but as an aid for those who feel isolated and lonely and overwhelmed. I’d wish for a group of no more than 20 women, all of whom are Jesus-followers. (This vastly changes the scenario because we don’t just want to get by. We want to be godly. And we want to protect our loved ones from the judgment of others. This is huge.)
We’d meet maybe 2X a month in a space with plenty of room. We’d spend the first hour hearing from those who most need to share and praying together. We’d understand one another so much better than others understand us, no matter how much they wish they could. Then we’d spend the next, say, hour and a half doing something fun and carefree — something different each time. An activity like karaoke or paint by number or a game like bingo. Something that makes us laugh and for a little while offers relief from the seriousness of our circumstance. A lighthearted element is important imo because it wouldn’t help me to only have listened to everyone’s plight nor have them listen to mine. I’m an empath and I’d carry it all home and feel increasingly helpless and hopeless and, truth told, we nor our loved ones are either of those things. Thank God! Nothing is too difficult for him.
Camaraderie in Christ and in prayer and in laughter. These elements would help me most in a support group.
All of this was prompted by clearing bookshelves that need painting last night and happening on a journal from my young adulthood. I repeatedly begged God‘s forgiveness for having failed at loving well and for being so selfish. I wish that young woman had known she was trying to deal with a situation almost impossible at times to deal with. She would still have needed so much grace and, yes, frequent forgiveness but the relentless self-condemnation was a sentence that made a hard situation almost unbearable.
Anyway. If you relate to what I’ve described, I want to say to you that you are as loved by God as your loved one who suffers from mental illness firsthand. And your loved one is inconceivably loved by God. Jesus understands all the complexities and he knows how you wish you could be every minute of every day. And one day this broken world will be mended and all we who believe will be made whole.