As we give focus to World Mental Health Day (October 10), we are reminded that we have the opportunity to come alongside those who are going through a season of distress, of unknown upheaval and of needing to acknowledge the struggle to journey through it.

Our journey to health can bring light to others in the dark wondering how they will get through theirs.

It is so                  very                        hard…
to see the good in the midst of the darkness and the upheaval. There are moments when everything and everyone feels like they are bearing down on you. But… there is always a light, there is always a purpose, to the struggle; there always is with God.

Well-known writer and speaker Ann Voscamp recently wrote…

Sometimes the way out of your misery – 
is to help someone else out of theirs.

…and don’t we know it? How it just happens — when you’re obsessed with your own despair — it’s easy to get depressed with your own life.

Sometimes the way out of your misery — is to help someone else out of theirs.

I’m always feasting a bit on this: you diffuse your own stress by diffusing someone else’s.

And I don’t need to have things together before I can offer a cup of water, open the door, my hand, or reach out to help those outside. I don’t need to not be thirsty myself; I only need to know I thirst too. Why have we swallowed the lie that we can only help if we’re perfect?

So in the midst of right where you are in your hurting places tonight? Remember this: don’t focus on what you can’t give or do — focus on who you could give to — and you will find something to give. When you give when you don’t have a lot — God gives you a lot more of Himself.

And the truth is: Being broke or feeling broken doesn’t disqualify you from being a world-changer. It’s the broken who bust through indifference to empathy because they know the pain of brokenness, it’s the broken who bust through roadblocks to hope because they know what it’s like to be stuck, it’s the broken who bust through the impossible to make change possible because they know anything really is possible because they are still standing!

So this becomes our brave & broken-hearted hallelujah, the one we sing into the dark, even when it’s hard to believe: I am His Beloved, His Beloved, His Beloved… and even now I will be held.

In the name of the only One who loved us to death & back to the real & forever life… Amen.

To reach out is to reach in and allow healing to begin in your own life.

Are you ready to begin to heal?