21. While Being

While being reborn in the spirit, the onset of mental illness can be sparked. It is written that what is called rebirth, or being born from above, the rebirth Jesus spoke of, is a great correction of our spirit, soul, heart and mind back into it's proper relationship with God. This tremendous upheaval of our beliefs and the thinking processes that support them, and the views we hold of the world, that come with the awakening of our soul and mind into this new life, sends us onto a path that leads to mental illness. This period of our life that we spend being ill is akin to a filthy automobile, (the person we are at the time of our new birth), then being sent through a car wash where giant cleaning brushes and jets of water (the pain and hell of mental illness), violently clean the car so when the car exits the car wash, it is in a clean, new condition, (us after healing of our illness). Our illness is actually the quickest method God has at His disposal for cleaning and purifying our spirit and thinking, putting us in a new relationship with Him and getting us in tune with the life of Jesus. God's nature is one that includes utter soundness for our minds and part of healing the mind requires learning how His mind works in Jesus, through relating to Jesus. who was given to us that we might inherit His same mind, which anyone can. While mental illness entered the human race as part of the fall of the human race through Adam and Eve, which introduced disease into the world, God uses mental illness as a cleansing, cleaning, and corrective vehicle that makes possible massive transformation in a person who will view their illness as something that can be used to bring about great change in themself and their mind, and the way they are able to live their life.

20. The Day

The day I learned I could change my thoughts I'd spoken to a person on the suicide crisis line.  Although I wasn't suicidal, I called the line a lot. I called because there was always someone to talk to, and I needed to share what I was going through with someone. The workers were always kind. and talked to me as long as there wasn't a "lethal case" call.  

I was hearing voices in my head at that time in my life. I remember getting off a Crisis Line call one day, and realizing I could change my thoughts. Within a month of this discovery I applied for, and received, a new one bedroom apartment in a housing cooperative in Santa Cruz. I was searching for a way to move out of the housing program I was in, and now after my discovery I was able. I could change my thoughts to change my living situation.  So I did. 

I moved into this new apartment, made a couple trips to the mental health unit to change my medication and the voices were gone. Two years later I had to move back into the housing program I'd been in, but the voices I'd heard for seven years were gone. I also found I no longer needed therapy (I'd seen a psychotherapist for four years). The end of the voices came about through tremendous mental effort, and taking possession of my own mind. A medication called clozapine also helped. I still take a very small amount of it today.

19. Why Didn't I

Why didn't I act on the dreams I had when I first became mentally ill?  I've never really known.  I now believe I didn't act because something in me wanted a greater life.  A life I couldn't know when I first started getting sick.  A life that required bypassing the dreams I had back then. 

Now,at age 59, I see evidence of a greater life starting to grow.  I see the necessity of bypassing the dreams I had at twenty.  The part of us that dreams great dreams is hard to discern in our youth.  It's there, but to see what's possible in life we must travel through decades.  We must allow God to develop us into the glorious vision that is invisible when starting our a life after the first rebirth of our soul. 

Sometimes all we see when we're young is a fruit growing on someone else's tree.  All we know is that we want to bear that fruit on our own. But we have no idea how to, or what to do to bring it forth. As our life decays into our growing illness we panic over the loss of our old life.  We find ourselves holding on to our dreams with desperation.  We have dreams, but we're making no effort to fulfill them. 

We may reach for something great, or try to do what someone else did. But we fail.  We crash and burn.  Our old life becomes wreckage, and our mind is now full blown sick.  We have no idea how to make it through life in our condition.  Ironically, God now has His opportunity to rebuild us, and our life. He succeeds by creating a life where it possible for us to bear the fruit we desired in our youth. 

A second chance comes and we're prepared to claim it.  We're prepared to realize our new dream, which becomes God's dream for us. It is magnitudes larger than the one we had when we were getting sick. 

Through a relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ, He makes us fit for long stretches of time.  As we learn to relate to Him, day in and day out, we may realize this new dream.  The dream we were afraid of doing at twenty is now something we're willing to do. 

Because of our fitness in spirit, mind, and countenance, we are unafraid.  We can see Jesus has engineered us for the benefit and gain of others, and we follow our Lord wherever He leads us. Even into the very center of the world.

18. I Remember

I remember the day. It was shortly after leaving the mental hospital and support house I was first in. I was living with my Dad and I saw a cartoon about Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty was in a hundred pieces after falling from the wall and nobody could put him back together again. I remember seeing that cartoon and realizing I too, was now broken into a hundred pieces. I could see no way of ever being whole, in one piece, ever again, and this realization felt tragic. I left it at that. 

As I write this 35 years later, I'm whole. I'm mentally sound and fit. I have a far better spiritual, interior life than I ever dreamed or knew was possible. Back then when all I saw of myself was a tragic brokenness with no remedy. I didn't know that God can, will, and does restore His broken, mentally ill children. He can recreate, and remake you.   He can remove the illness from your mind, and the pain that goes with it. He will give the gift of a new mind, and a new spirit, to allow the living of a new life in a fruitful and effective way. 

The healing process occurs over a long period of time. It requires your help, your own mental effort, if you want to think in a new way, and adopt new beliefs. You must be willing to work for the life you want. You must persevere and never give up. The life that awaits is far better than you can dream, or imagine, when suffering with mental illness. It's kept hidden from view. 

Mental illness is a catalyst in our life. It's meant to bring about a dramatic, and radical change in who we are. Mental illness is terrible and tragic while  it is being endured. But the person who can come out of it is one we didn't know we could be.

17. Even After

 

Even after decades of healing your mind, and achieving soundness, you may still feel a dark reality in the soul.  Things around you may be fine and well, but within the spirit exists a different world. If you are anchored in Christ you might see your inner world as beneficial.  You might see it  as the world of wonder it is, despite what it feels like.

Spiritual books say that some of God's children are like flowers, and that they only open their petals at night. They say some of His children blossom only in darkness.  Maybe the darkness in us is a glimpse into a spirit world we'll one day live in.  It will appear frightening now, but will feel like home when we arrive.  It will be a place of wonder and discovery.

If Christ has become the head of your life and the rock your feet stand upon, you can taste these worlds in spirit.  If God appoints us to live in such a place one day we'll find great joy there.  Greater, even, than what we know on earth.  We'll find an environment that lets us develop into who we truly are in the world. His true home for us is in His heaven.

16. Mental Soundness

 

Mental soundness does not mean that the mind has stopped developing or healing. It means it has come to a point where it can be quiet, where it can be at peace. It means thinking in ways that make the life you are pursuing possible. 

A sound mind will sometimes feel pain, yet it's the pain of growth, not the pain of needless suffering. Once you've won a sound mind, nothing  will ever take its health away again. Not if you learn to guard it from what you let in. God's will for each of us is sound mental health and a capable mind. Even for those of us who are the most mentally sick. We can achieve soundness with effort, perseverance. and the determination to never quit pursuing the life we want.

15. Unusual Habits

 

Do not fear some of the habits you may develop to survive your years of mental illness.  For example, it is not uncommon to chain smoke. Or to pace back and forth in your house for hours.  You may keep the windows covered all day to lessen the paranoia you endure. You might drink a couple pots of coffee per day, sometimes even adding a two liter bottle of your favorite soda on the same day, day in and day out. 

You may find yourself going to sleep early in the evening so you can get up early in the morning.  You may spend as much time up as possible when the rest of the world is sleeping.  You may find it is easier to deal with the voices in your head when everyone else is asleep. 

You may drink alcohol to get drunk enough to go back to sleep for an hour or two.  Sleep provides a rest from the pain in your mind. You might drink in the morning, or whenever, just to have something to do while you are house bound with your illness. 

Habits like these will not hurt you.  You will, one day, outgrow them.  You will develop healthy habits, and a sound lifestyle. These unusual habits help you survive your illness by offering structure to your day.

14. Catastrophic Cleansing

The furious mental pain of mental illness is God's way of giving a catastrophic cleansing to the mind. It removes the useless dead end thinking processes.  It gets rid of any ineffective belief structures.

 This cleansing makes room for the formation of Christ's mind in us. For it is Christ's mind that works right for the mentally ill. Christ's mind is sound, so a mind formed in the likeness of His prospers in life in all things. 

Old ways of thinking must be burnt away by pain.  This process may go on for years.  When the mental pain has done it's work our mind is ready to be re-structured with a new thought process.  It's open to new beliefs. 

When you come into your new mind you will look back at your mental illness and see what a gift it was.  You'll see how it made this wonderful transformation possible. The fire of pain that burned so strong, and hurt so much, cools into calm.  You can think accurately now.  This will become the greatest asset in your life.

13. God's Love

God's love makes it so that when we look at someone of the opposite sex we see a love and beauty far beyond what human life is capable of without it.  With God's love there is no desire to possess..  We simply behold this unspeakable divine beauty.  When we see this heavenly beauty in the opposite sex our hands loose their desire to hold, and are freed from carnal desire. This freedom is breathtaking,

12. Others Will Heal

Others will heal. If while becoming mentally ill you failed to get ready for the future you envisioned find peace in the realization that God will heal things.  He will bless the people you could not be there for.  Do not torment yourself with thoughts of what may have been 'meant' to happen.  Others will heal.