crazy travels

Lately, I’ve been wondering if people resent the fact that when I blog it is mostly about faith things. Do they feel mislead, deceived when they come to read my blog which is supposed to, more or less, be about what it’s like to live with a mental illness ?

But when I share my story, it is impossible to separate faith from my struggles with bipolar. For me, they go hand in hand. I can’t share the truth—the whole uncensored truth—without including the very thing that, above all else, got me through some very difficult times—my faith in a loving God. 

It was during this period of my life that I clung to the truth of God’s Word like never before. Whenever I sat down to read my Bible, if I found a promise that God seemed to be whispering to my heart, I would underline that particular verse and write the date beside it. It was like I was reminding God to make good on all his promises and, I have to say, he has not disappointed. 

You see, mine is a story of redemption.  How God took the worst years of my life and created something beautiful out of them. 

Psalm 84:5-6

Happy are those who are strong in the Lord, who set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. When they walk through the Valley of Weeping it will become a place of refreshing springs, where pools of blessing collect after the rains.

Pre-diagnosis I had more than my share of days when it took all I had just to trudge through the Valley of Weeping, hoping and praying for better days to come. And the good news is, they did. 

I live in a place now where many pools of blessing have collected at my feet. I’m on the other side of the Valley of Weeping and I can testify to the fact that my whole world has changed—for the better.

I’ll leave you with a quote from my memoir, Pools of Blessing. In sharing it, I hope that it will lift your spirits no matter what you’re experiencing as you travel through your own Valley of Weeping:

“Yes, inevitably the rains come into our lives.  After all rain does bring about growth doesn’t it?  But when the rains have come and gone, the pools that quench our thirst, wash our feet, give us hope, are the very ones formed from the thing we hated most, the storms.” (taken from Pools of Blessing)