A Path of Steadfast Love

Turn to me and be Gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.
Psalm 25:16, ESV

Life with mental illness, the only life I’ve ever known, can be very tedious. I am currently deep into one of my depressive cycles and it feels like there is no light anywhere. All I want is to sleep and forget. In head, I know that this will pass, but in heart it feels like it has always been this way and always will be. And my heart is so heavy with this feeling that every step I take is a kind of torture. A long journey towards home where the path rolls beneath me like a treadmill; never closer but with the end tantalizingly in sight.

I’m so very, very tired.

The trouble of my heart are enlarged; bring me out of my distresses.
Psalm 25:17, ESV

It gets hard to read my Bible when I’m like this. I’m too exhausted to find hope it another promise that seems so far away. But for all the times I’ve wished life to be over, the reason I keep trying is that I believe God has a purpose even in this. So yesterday I sent out a desperate text to a few trusted friends and family. I told them I needed help. I didn’t want to read my Bible, but I knew I needed to. I asked them to send me passages to read, something that they held close for comfort lately.

My dear friend Beth sent me a link to the song below and encouraged me to turn to Psalm 25. It took me almost 24 hours to finally do this, but when I opened my Bible to read its words, one verse in particular stood out to me:

All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.
Psalm 25:10, ESV

The path the LORD has chosen for me right now is one of slow, steady pain and darkness. It feels cruel too, because the origin of my mental illness is based in childhood trauma, something I had no control over by people who should have loved and protected me. In the height of suffering that feels rather cold and calculated for a loving God. But there was this verse to remind me that all the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness. All of them. Even this one, because He is sovereign and He is steadfast in His love for me.

Even in this time of darkness and suffering, God has given me love-light through His word and through those He’s guided onto my path to help hold up my torch when my hands are too weary to do it alone.