Understanding Mental Illness Can Open the Door to Spiritual Wholeness
by Ginny Mosby, MFTI

In many Christian communities there is awkwardness around the subject of emotional problems. Why is that? I noticed in my own church, when we pray, we regularly and openly pray for Alice’s cancer. But rarely do I hear prayers for depression, or other emotional problems. Yet sometimes what appears on the surface to be emotional is really a medical problem. Some well-meaning Christians respond to someone’s expressions about their anxiety with encouragement to pray more, trust God more, or read scripture more. While these are all vital to spiritual growth, for some people it instills a feeling of inadequacy.

A friend of mine described her journey of discovery about mental illness. For years she was fraught with anxiety that was so severe, she felt paralyzed and isolated. She was fearful that if she did something wrong, she or someone she loved would be “zapped” or punished by God. She was obsessed with fears that physical sensations in her body meant something was terribly wrong. And her identity in Christ was shaped by the belief that all these things were her fault and that she was evil, or at least “off.”

What my friend recently discovered is that she has what she fondly refers to as a “Special brain.” She has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Identifying the medical root of her problem has unleashed her not only from the obsessions, but also freed her to grow in her spiritual life as well. With a joyful smile, she said, “Now I worship God in Spirit and Truth, instead of fear.”