Someone asked me this morning, “Pastor, why are you so passionate about mental-illness and inner healing, why was the Garden created?” I began to reflect on this question, and as I did, I began to share with her my answer, and I pray that this helps someone.

As a Christian, who has fought her own battle with mental illness, I’ve always been frustrated by one message I consistently heard: Mental illness makes you “a bad Christian.”

Growing up in a Spirit filled church, I internalized harmful messages that inspired fear rather than encouraging help or healing. I would hear statements like:

Accusations like these, as you might expect, have the power to shame and derail anyone living with mental illness and hinder them from seeking necessary care. In my late teens, I tried again. I had an individualized prayer session where I was instructed to scream at the demon of depression and to stomp on an invisible dark cloud that was beneath me. I thought the exercise was therapeutic at the time. But when the depression inevitably returned, I felt guilty that I hadn’t done the session right or believed enough.

I Was Rejected By My Faith Community

I felt rejected, and ashamed in my mental health journey. After recovering from a period of intense suicidal ideation, I credited much of my progress to my faith and involvement in church. The combination of effective health care, Bible study group and social connection had grounded me and bolstered my recovery.

Ultimately, I also hoped that my story of using faith and fellowship to improve my mental health could be an excellent part of my testimony and reach others who might have turned to the church for help. My church, however, felt differently.

Despite my involvement in my faith community as a successful participant in prayer groups, children’s church, and community outreach I was not permitted to volunteer in a church youth group because I disclosed my past struggles with suicidal ideation. At the time, my primary goals were to help, and to be there for youth that were struggling as I was. I also believed that volunteering in this capacity would be beneficial for my mental health.

The youth pastor dismissed my concerns. Ultimately, this rejection hindered my recovery by making me feel “less than” and untrustworthy. Moreover, it damaged my relationship with Jesus Christ and my involvement with the church. I was angry and hurt and felt shame. The very place I ran to for help, denied me. The voices in my head began to confirm all that I had already been feeling, which put me in a place of anxiousness to be around others.

Overcoming This Setback Meant Embracing Two Mantras

While the rejection by my church was a painful experience, I still returned to my faith to guide me. I am thankful for my mother’s prayers, and making hard decisions for my life as her daughter. As I have navigated my recovery, I remember traveling to Alabama living with two Pastors, and hearing all the time and embracing two principles:

1.      God loves you Veronica and you were made for and on purpose:

Those words shot right into my heart. I remember Pastor Leon said, “read the book of Psalms”, as I began to find my love for journaling, I wanted to learn about the man who wrote Psalms, as I studied him. The Lord began to reveal to me “Daughter, find you in the text.” As I studied, I realized that the writer David’s heart was for God. He had won many victories in the name of the Lord. He was anointed to be king in his teens, but he spent his youth being chased from cave to cave by Saul, who wanted him dead. Then it hit me, “wow, God David experienced years of trauma.” Then God revealed to me that there were some terrible moments in David’s life, and he gives clues in the Psalms that he also struggled with depression. Psalms 38:6-8 “I am troubled, I am bowed down greatly; I go mourning all day long. I groan because of the turmoil in my heart.” Or “Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him for the help of His countenance. … For You are the God of my strength …” Psalm 42:5; 43:2. Of course, David repented of his sin and God surely helped him all the days of his life. These scriptures gave life into a dry place in me. “God can help me!”

God had given me the resources to treat my depression and that was not only His Word, but by allowing those to love me, their arms were my recovery, this is where I discovered that as living stones, I could not forsake the assembly. I began to be used, even in the state I was in, while fighting I was serving. Now by all means please note that medication, counseling, and therapy worked, but truly it was finding myself in the scriptures that began my healing journey, and I realized just as He gives resources for all my physical needs, He had given me resources for my spiritual needs as well.

God began to share with me, “I gave you the gifts you house to heal your depression,” WOW, God loves me regardless of my emotional state. I do not need to earn God’s love; I did not have to do all these things to receive His love. All I had to do was learn who I was in Him and BE, and embrace His love for me, and walk in His love for me, and through this walk I would discover how to replace the lies with the truth and see His love & His heart of healing for me. At one point a young girl that did not have Hope, became a woman of Hope.

2.      I am not alone

When I was dealing with these thoughts, one thought that was on repeat was “your alone,” it was then that Pastor Leon said, “you’re not alone daughter, God will never leave you nor forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:8). I then realized that truly that I housed a gift, the Holy Spirit, that as I was battling with depression, I was gracefully being molded for the ones I would one day speak to. As a daughter of the King I fought with isolation, but I began to see that with God’s love and the support that He had provided me with what I needed to begin to heal. As I journeyed through, I learned that God not only understood the seesaw of depression, but He understood it far better than we can in our humanity. He brought me to Isaiah 9:6, God is called the “wonderful counselor” to His people, and Matthew 5:4 reminds us that “God comforts the hurt and mourning”, I got to see and experience the depths of Jesus sorrow and grief in this passages, and God desired to sit with me, and He desired that I offered Him my chair of comfort, and receive His comfort while He allows me to sit in the chair of faith. At this point, I had to decide that I wanted to exchange my comfort for faith. At this point, I had to decide and understand that to start my journey was to understand that I was not alone.

Even after that I still dealt with mental-illness, and everyday I would wake up not sure from one moment or another how I felt. One thing remained consistent: God had called me to embrace the fullness of my story, He had called me to the Garden, where I first met Him. Where it was just me and Him, and Him and me.

In all of this, here comes the birthing of Blossom by Being in 2021. When God originally gave me this ministry, I truly did not know what it all entailed. I remember when God brought my Pastor/Apostle into my life and he said, “Daughter, God will use you in the arena He has healed you from.” These words launched me into the waiting room of creativity. I knew that this was confirmation that there was a woman suffering, and it was my responsibility to create a safe place for her where the Spirit of God resides, where she can come and just BE. I heard the Lord say daughter “I birth beautiful things out of dirt” and He gave me the vision of  women rising out of the dirt, a woman rising out of depression, and giving birth right in that hard place. I knew this was my Kingdom assignment, and finally I knew this would all happen in the Garden, where God’s beautiful flowers can embrace their thorns and their dry seasons, but understand that there was life connected to their roots. Today, God has given me not only a beautiful Garden to steward, but He has given me beautiful flowers which add so much color and life in my life. I realized and am realizing that the best part of the Garden for God, was the ability just to BE in communion with His people. My prayer is that we will continue to reflect His love and peace and He will continue to give me the Grace to help those in our faith communities that are battling mental illness, that are battling trauma, that are battling isolation and so much more.

My prayer is that this safe place that has been created by the Father, continues to birth warriors for His Kingdom. Today, I am not ignorant to the enemy’s devices, I am a warrior for God’s kingdom, and God has given me the gift of the prophetic to bring His word in territories that are bound. I continue to learn how to be an instrument for the Father’s use, as I understand now that the greatest gift that God allowed me to embrace is my BEING in Him. We as a Garden will continue to Blossom into our Being in Jesus Name.

I am thankful for the men and women of God that allowed God to use them to water my ground, because of their obedience, today all the seed they have sown has and will continue to reap a GREAT HARVEST OF FLOWERS.

Truly you are loved.

God’s daughter Pastor V.