When You Are Waiting for the Sea to Part
When you are drowning, you want a parted sea. In Isaiah 43, God promises something quieter: streams in the desert, water rising slowly through the sand. If you only watch the horizon for the dramatic rescue, you can miss the spring near your feet.
What the Church Needs to Know About OCD
He prays the same prayer seven times before he can leave the house. He knows grace does not require it. He still cannot stop. OCD is not tidiness, and reassurance makes it worse. Part 5 of Church Mental Health Series.
What the Church Needs to Know About Schizophrenia
She said something during prayer that did not fit the room. The quiet fell, someone prayed, and she never came back. What she needed was not a pastoral conversation but a hospital. Part 4 of Church Mental Health Series.
What the Church Needs to Know About Bipolar Disorder
He was the most gifted person in the room. Then he would disappear and resurface silent. The church celebrated the high and waited out the low. Bipolar disorder is not a gift with a side effect. Part 3 of Church Mental Health Series.
The Dignity of Small Acts
There was a season when you ran things. Now getting out of bed is a project. Brother Lawrence learned that the size of a task is not what gives it weight before God. The audience is. A single washed cup, offered to him, is worship.
What the Church Needs to Know About Anxiety
She arrives early and leaves before coffee. She loves God and is terrified of nearly everything else, and has never told anyone at church. Anxiety is not worry, and "just give it to God" only deepens the shame. Part 2 of Church Mental Health Series.
What the Church Needs to Know About Depression
The song says the joy of the Lord is your strength, and you are standing in the third row feeling nothing at all. That gap, between what is sung and what can be felt, is where many faithful people quietly live. Part 1 of Church Mental Health Series.
Some Trust in Chariots
When you pray for power, you are usually praying for speed. You want the cavalry. Psalm 20:7 sets the fast chariot aside. God's power more often grows like a root, slow and unseen, doing in years what you wanted done in a weekend.
Keep me as the Apple of Your Eye
On the days you cannot get out of bed, the shame arrives first. You feel like a broken tool. Psalm 17:8 asks to be kept as the apple or pupil of the eye, the most fragile part of the body, and the most fiercely protected. Your worth needs no output.
Why the Empty Room Still Aches
It is eleven o'clock and you reach for the screen instead of a friend. The AI chatbot is relational sugar. A fast, sweet spike that cannot rebuild what is torn. You close it, and the room is exactly as empty as before.
How the Lord Answered When I Clung to the Dust
When you finally break, you want a helicopter. The psalmist clinging to the dust wanted rescue too (Psalm 119:25). What he got was different. Teach me your statutes. Not an exit from the weight, but a blueprint for carrying it without breaking.
In Praise of the Clumsy Friend
A friend sits in your living room and does not know what to say. The silence gets heavy. You may walk away thinking they failed you. They did not. AI or a chatbot have better words, but they will never walk into the room.
