Morning Reflection related to Mental Health

As Seen on Story Sunday Published by Mustard Seed Generation

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A Psalm that has brought me great relief in my life-long, quiet struggle with depression is the 131st. “Oh LORD, my heart is not lifted up,” is how it begins, “my eyes are not raised too high; / I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me.” Having struggled with other life-threatening health challenges for the majority of my life, the notion of “mental health” was almost an afterthought, like a distant relative. The first words of this Psalm are very much like the state of depression. You are unable to occupy yourself with anything else except your own state of depression. It is like marvelous orchestral music for the deaf or a beautiful night full of bright stars to the blind. And you cannot raise your eyes (or your heart) to these heights because of the reminder that you yourself are in these depths. You even question your cry of “O LORD,” like the Psalmist or Jonah, as if it would not escape the depths of a whale’s belly.

Then you discover a sense of relief in something far different as you read on. “But I have calmed and quieted my soul,” he continues.“But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother;” he says, and then once more “like a weaned child is my soul within me.” Depression is often a two-sided illusion that maybe in the quiet and the calm, it has gotten better. Better than worse, but not that much better. But in letting go, you conclude that no time of darkness before and to come can touch this true time of shalom— something like this “calm and quiet” that the Psalmist has found. Then comes a call to “hope in the Lord,” which contrasts with the hopelessness of depression I have often experienced time and time again. There is a hope in the Father who is the Mother, this maternal figure who is the Lord. Through the years and the endless struggle, I have learned not to raise my eyes too high, but to lower them to that very holy place within my soul where I am truly fed and quieted—this manger where I find myself as the Child, content with just His presence. 

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