For someone who daily struggles with anxiety and depression sometimes finding peace in all the brokenness is a very hard and difficult road. I wish that I could tell you that every time I was feeling lost or alone I pray but if I told you this I would be lying to you. Sometimes my mental illness makes me feel as if God has abandoned me. Sometimes I can't always tell if God can hear my prayers and I feel as if he is ignoring me.

Being a Christian with mental illness always feels like a struggle between how I feel and what I know because you want to keep your faith but sometimes you feel very alone. Although I know I should pray, lately my coping turns into a heap of sobs on the floor covered in a blanket sweating and crying. It doesn't always look like prayer, “God please help me feel less alone and more present in my own life.”

Sometimes it is ugly and scary. Most of the time it's ugly and scary. It's hard to get out of bed. It's hard to breathe. It's constantly feeling like I'm having a heart attack. It feels like bricks are piling on my shoulders and back and they just keep stacking up. My depression and anxiety make everyday a mountain I must scale.

Today is one of those days where I feel like I can’t get the right grip, like my hand are slipping and now I’m falling. I don’t know how to find solid ground or if there was ever solid ground to begin with. I try to give great thought on what I’ve done to deserve this terrible existence. I can hear a voice saying, “Look to God, child.”

On days like this when I am finding it extremely difficult to turn my heart to God I feel like David in Psalm 142: 4 when he says, “Look to my right and see: there is none who takes notice to me; no refuge to me; no one cares for my soul.” I succumb to the feeling of worthless. I have to constantly remind myself to cast my burdens on the Lord.

In my sorrows I have found these verses to lift me up. Look to the word when feel lost or alone and let the Lord guide you.

1. Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”
2. Peter 5:7 “Casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
3. Psalm 34:18-19 “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”

When your heart is heavy and you feel as though you are alone or like God has abandoned you remember Matthew 28:20 “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” My mental illness isn’t going to just disappear but, I must remind myself to pray and give myself to God. Allow the Lord to work in you. Let him heal your brokenness and glue together all your pieces.

Live in peace