What an incredible thought! That Christ, the newborn King, is a sign as deep as Sheol and as high as heaven of the Lord’s faithfulness to his people, his trustworthiness to his promises.

My hope and my prayer for you as I’ve been writing these posts was that emotions, all the things we’re feeling under the surface, would become an avenue to draw you closer to the heart of the Lord. That you would know his care and provision in the fears and anxieties that are living in all of us right now. That you would know again the depth of his grace and mercy toward you when some of those emotions reveal hearts that need to be cultivated is his own image more clearly. And that the process of sharing these things with those around you would unite you more fully to the body of Christ.

Each of these situations might give you access to one of your emotional indicator lights - Something’s amiss, some action ought to be taken. If we go back to our analogy from the last post about the lights on our car’s dashboard, wisdom and maturity mean learning to heed the warnings, to engage our hearts before the Lord, that we might know his care for us in them. In my next post I’m going to talk about some practical steps for what to do when you do begin to realize that you’re not ok.

Sometimes responding to yet another text string of well-meaning friends trying to maintain connection through Covid feels completely overwhelming. And I begin to wonder… Am I ok? I begin to look around at my friends around me and they’re all describing their own version of the same thing. How do I know when I’ve moved from a normal reaction to a lot of hard things to something that needs more attention? When do I know I should seek help?

Unprecedented. There’s something bound up in that word. It hits a place of anxiety, the uneasiness of facing something that doesn’t have a structured plan to navigate it. It’s the language we use when we don’t how to handle things. When it doesn’t feel like anyone has gone before you. When you feel like your circumstances have flown off the pages of the rule book and it’s a free for all figuring out what to do next. How many things have felt that way this year?

It’s a lovely moment when you choose to live in the reality of your frailty. When you know Christ united to you in it. When you experience the strength of the Father in whose shadow you stand.

Scattered throughout the tree are my childhood memories but in the midst of them are ornaments that carry with them the story of Christmas. Angels and stars. Wise men and shepherds. And a manger with the Savior of the world come to us. There on my tree was my own Christmas story in ornament form. Christ come to dwell in my own broken world, to live among the pain, to know it and feel it. To grieve with us and be grieved by us. To mourn with those who mourn and weep with those who weep. To take into himself, into his own body, the fracture of this world. To place my own story, and yours, into his.

Sometimes in the midst of the complexity of mental illness we despair because we can’t sort it out. But if you think about the three different factors at work in it I’m struck by the fact that Christ is the answer to each one.

This is an idea I hear often. Whether it is someone in counseling describing the struggle not to condemn themselves, or a friend offering me well-meaning advice when I am struggling with my own perfectionism, or the content of a recent blog from a popular Christian author, it’s a common theme in Christian language.

God is not withholding from you. It’s more about the character of God than the specific blessings he chooses to give us. There will always be things he will withhold from us, but that doesn’t make him a withholding God. Not all of us will be brilliant. Not all of us will have athletic prowess. Not all of us will be born in a first world country. The question here is if he can still be the giver of good gifts who generously lavishes blessings upon his children even if he chooses to not to give you certain things. 

Some people’s dreams contain deep and complex metaphors. Mine’s more of a one-to-one correlation, I’m afraid my brain just isn’t creative. Basically if, during my waking hours, I’m in the middle of a situation where I feel uneasy, unsure of myself, unequipped, or fearful, then in my dream world I create the solution. Clearly the problem is that I’ve lost the manual and all I have to do is find it. Sadly though, the manual is always just out of reach and I can never quite get it despite my best efforts. It feels like the formulaic plotline for some cheesy drama on tv.