You are not your affliction

The move we can make during mental health awareness month

May is mental health awareness month. I have been a depression sufferer for over 30 years, with a fair amount of anxiety and panic mixed in. I would also like to thank the Christian church for its efforts to improve the way it addresses mental illness. It’s not something to pray away, or read the Bible more, to cure. And I also want to encourage any sufferers to see one way we can improve.

Gone are the days when people tell the depressed to pray more, have faith, or fast to end what are physiological and psychological issues. Those help for sure, but there was a time in the not-too-distant past when those things were the only allowed things. These messages added shame to the physiological suffering of the depressed. So, while it still happens, and sometimes just not openly, there’s been progress away from that, even to the point of agreeing that medicine can offer some help. This wasn’t always the case, especially in the church.

Where I needed to progress, is not living in my diagnosis, or becoming attached to it. It’s a gift to understand I have depression and anxiety, but it doesn’t define me. As with any test or diagnosis, it’s data, not a directive. It tells me what’s going on, but it doesn’t tell me where I’m going.

I’m going to use a very loaded term, so before I do, I want to clarify it. Healing. At times, in my lowest moments, the only version of healing I would accept was complete eradication of depression. This added so much pressure and shame to the process. So, I’ve adapted the concept of healing to encompass many points along a spectrum. At times, the only space I have been able to claim in healing is awareness. You say, “That’s nothing”. But that’s wrong. In my family’s history and even in the present, some are unaware or refuse to accept it. Being aware is a step in the healing process.

And then understanding the quiltwork of help that makes up the best version of me. Diet, exercise, relationships, counseling, medical intervention, and overall, it is all about my faith in Christ.

I never want to be more attached to my diagnosis than I am to the hope of healing. I do this better on some days than others, but it’s a mental shift that speaks of a hope I maintain.

There’s a moment when Jesus comes to a place where people sought healing. It was called the Bethesda pool. There, he met a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years. Jesus asks him if he wants to be well. This almost seems like a cruel question, as the man says he’s unable to make it to the pool for all the other people who get in the way.

He’s in a place of healing and fully aware of what he needs to be whole, but Jesus STILL asks him if he wants to be well. Jesus knows the very human tendency to take up identity in our brokenness. To identify more greatly with our affliction than our healing.

So, as our attention turns to the people living with mental illness, I want to avoid the temptation to glory in the diagnosis. Be present to the affliction and know it is no place to stay.

Our power and our freedom lie in learning to neither negate our suffering nor romanticize it. Yes, we suffer, it’s what it is to be human, but in that know you are also a person of healing. Your identity is in your healing and the Healer.

Be well, friends.